No, There Were No Indians

Submitted by: RefiningRuth@aol.com

 

I've been doing genealogy since high school when my great grandmother lost her eyesight and recruited me to read through the census reports for her. It didn't take long and I was hooked.

The story I want to share with you, and the most frustrating experience I've had in doing genealogy, takes place on my fathers side. His mother was still alive when I began researching this side of the family, and she and I wrote back and forth for years. I always saved her letters and still treasure them to this day. I would ask her general questions and get very vague answers. Finally I started sending her questionnaires. Specific questions with blank spaces left for her to answer in. That helped, but still she had been giving me some information that I just couldn't prove. She insisted that her grandmother was 1/2 American Indian, born on an Indian Reservation in OK. I searched and searched and searched again, all the Indian records I could find. I even contacted Fort Smith Ark who supposedly had the records of Native American and White births that took place on the Reservations. I went on this way for 20 years without finding a clue anywhere. Finally, at wits end, I sent a letter to a man who wrote a column for the Times Picayune down in Louisiana. I had been told he was an avid genealogist, and since my family had settled in Louisiana I thought he may be able to help point me in the right direction. Well, much to my surprise, he published my letter in his column and it wasn't long before I got a letter from a dear lady who was willing to go to the Hall of Records and research some recently released death certificates. With just a name, an approximate death date (the approximate year) and the only thing I knew about the death (died from being kicked in the head by a horse), she was able to locate a registered death certificate for Alexander Wright, my great-great-grandfather. As it happened, there were 5 Alexander Wrights who died about the same time, but *my* Alexander was the only one who died from a kick to the head by a mule (bless my grandmother for telling me that, and myself for keeping the letter she wrote it in). Armed with his death certificate and the little information it provided, I began searching again. What I found was wonderful. No, there were no Indians, but I was able to track his family back through census reports all the way to 1810 VA. Also, the line went through Fulton County, ILL where they have excellent marriage records and I was able to not only find these families on census reports, but I was able to get their marriage records, which often listed parents, and so on and so on.

Never ever give up. Save every bit of information you can find. Someday it WILL pay off!

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