How Did I Get Here? My Amazing Genealogy Journey

At last, some genealogy right?!! LOL. I decided to jump back into things with an Amanuensis Monday post. I have to thank a fellow genealogy friend of mine who helped me out a couple of months ago, Nathaniel Glasgow. He brought to my attention a deed which documents the sale of about an acre land from a woman named Charity Ambrose  to the trustees of Mt. Olive AME Zion Church in Riverdale, NC. Guess who's listed among the trustees. My maternal 3rd great grandfather and his son, Mortimer and Alfred Mitchell.  State of North Carolina}      Craven County This deed made this 6th day of November in the year 1893 by Charity Ambrose of the first part of Craven County, and Mortimer Mitchell, Charles F. Hall, Anthony Dennis,  Edward Hooker, Killis Green, David Sampson, Phillis Borden, Ezekial Pastuer, and A. F. Mitchell of Craven County and State of North Carolina of the second part , Trustees of the Mt. Olive Church, African Methodist Episocpal Zion Ch...

I cannot express enough how kind and generous fellow genealogists, researchers, and family historians can be . This week I decided to pay a visit to the Find A Grave website to see if there were any updates to one of my ancestral places, the area around Riverdale, NC. I saw the results of all the hard work that fellow researcher Nathaniel Glasgow had completed last year. He and I had connected last year via my blog post that had I had written about how I learned that my maternal 3rd great grandfather Mortimer Mitchell had worked the lands of Col. Peter G Evans from about 1860--1864. You can check out that post here . Nathaniel traveled around Craven County, NC photographing old cemeteries and uploaded his work to Find A Grave. Now you are probably wondering how this helped me figure out Mortimer Mitchell's neighborhood. Let me show you.  Small family cemeteries are located on private property. Who's property? Well right now I couldn't give you the specifics of who ow...

You have to love those light bulb moments that happen while your researching. You'll come across something that seems familiar. At first, you can't place where you've seen something before. Then...Bing! A bulb goes off in your head and you say to yourself, "I got it!" Well, that's what happened recently when I was reviewing through the deeds of some of my 3rd great grandfather's neighbors. I wrote about one of these neighbors in particular, Vine Allen Tolson, in a few different posts. Here are the links if you missed those posts: Mortimer Mitchell's Neighbor Vine Allen Tolson --Part One Mortimer Mitchell's Neighbor Vine Allen Tolson --Part Two  Mortimer Mitchell's Neighbor Vine Allen Tolson --Part Three  My 3rd great grandfather Mortimer Mitchell purchased land from the Vine Allen Tolson's half sister, Elizabeth Hardison Williams, in 1878. In that deed, a description of the land was provided. Deed information courtesy...

Back in 2012, I visited Mt Olive Cemetery in Riverdale, NC. It's the final resting place for many from my Mitchell and Sampson family lines. At the time of that visit, I hadn't figured out what became of my 2nd great grand aunt Margaret Mitchell. She was the sister of my 2nd great grandmother Rosa Mitchell Jones of Morehead City, NC. A couple a years after that trip I discovered that she had remarried after her first marriage to Alonzo Pelham ended in divorce. She wed William Thompson on Oct. 2, 1912 in Riverdale.  Image courtesy of Ancestry.com Source Information:  Ancestry.com. North Carolina, Marriage Records, 1741-2011 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2015. Original data: North Carolina County Registers of Deeds. Microfilm. Record Group 048. North Carolina State Archives, Raleigh, NC. This was the last record I was able to locate for Maggie for the longest time. That is until a couple of months ago, when I started to do so...

A couple of weeks ago, I was poking around on FamilySearch.org and found a labor contract that mentioned my 3rd great grandfather Mortimer Mitchell. Every so often I go back over folks on my family tree and try doing searches in databases that were previously not available. Thanks to the completion of the Freedman's Bureau Project , I was able to locate this particular record. Citing this Record "United States, Freedmen's Bureau, Land and Property Records, 1865-1872", database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:Q2Q1-GMDC : 1 September 2016), Mestrumi Mitchel, 1865-1872. Edward Mallett Plantation About 10 Miles from NewBerne near Croatan 2500 or 3000 acres, 50 or 60 suitable for cultivation of cotton or corn. 4 Log houses occupied by old negroes. On Peter G Evans plantation nearby is a good two story house suitable to be used by persons who occupy this Mallett plantation.       Turpentine Lease for 60 bbls a seas...

Amy Johnson Crow, the author of the blog No Story Too Small, is the host of the 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks Blog Prompt series. If you are not familiar with the project please click on the following link:    Announcing 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks: 2015 Edition. Week 38 (September 17-23) – Favorite Place: What has been your favorite place to research? Which ancestor came from there? Riverdale, NC has turned out to be my favorite ancestral place to research, thus far. The town is located approximately 9 miles southeast of New Bern. Image courtesy of Google Maps It's a small rural community. It always has been. I would have never known about it if I hadn't begun researching my great grandmother Ophelia Jones Bryant of Morehead City. Ophelia's mother Rosa Mitchell Jones came from this small town and so that's how my journey to learn more about Riverdale began. I believe my 2nd great grandmother Rosa wanted a life that was different from the one her parents had. ...