My mother’s
side of the family hails from rural South Carolina. She told me she was born in Fork, SC, and
that it no longer existed. It appears to
have been incorporated into what is now the city of Marion. I do still find records that list Fork as a
modern location. My family that lives in
SC say it’s not there any longer. I do
know that there is a Fork Baptist Cemetery, and many of my family are buried there.
Mom claimed it got its name because it
was located at a fork in the road.
According to
my genealogy software (Family Tree Maker), Fork is at the intersection of
Highway 41 and Colon Drive, just a bit northeast of where Highways 57 and 41
meet.
Her dad,
Talmadge Whitaker Hicks was a tobacco farmer.As far as I can tell, the entire Hicks line were farmers.They spent so much time outdoors in the
fields that many census records list them as mulatto.But I’m open to the possibility that there
may be some mixed marriages.That doesn’t
bother me at all.
I don’t have
as many stories for my mom’s family.I
only saw them when we went to SC for summer vacations.I remember one visit; I was maybe 7 or
8.It’s my only memory of my maternal
grandmother, Dora Hicks nee Calder.On
that trip I had to sleep on a foldup cot, in the kitchen.And it was hot.So very, very hot.
But my
fondest memory of that trip was playing with my cousins Mike and Dianne outside
after it rained.There was no grass in what
would have been the yard, just red clay. After splashing around in the puddles our
lower bodies were covered in mud.My mom
was furious!She made the three of us
sit in separate chairs and not talk to each other.My skin on my bare legs was stiff with the
coating and my cousins and I couldn’t stop laughing about it.Mom would come back into the room and tell us
to hush, but Grandma Hicks just laughed and told her to leave us alone.
I guess if
that’s my only memory of Grandma Hicks, it’s a good one to have.I do have a few more stories about my family
in SC.But they will have to wait for
another post.
First, a thank you for joining me on this new blog.I hope to provide family stories and some
family history of ancestors I’ve never met.While I haven’t found anyone truly famous, yet, I have found a few folks
with a small modicum of notoriety.But
first, let me tell you the story of my humble beginning.
For a bit of background let me ‘splain.I have learned just this week of a somewhat
troublesome time my siblings went through before I was born.It would seem that my family spent about two
years without our dad being with them.Honestly, the stories my older siblings are giving me are somewhat
contradicting.But it was an awfully
long time ago and they were young kids, the eldest around 10 years old.So, it’s understandable that some fact may
have become blurred over time.
After the dust settled on the issue and everyone was back
together my family was living in Coconut Grove, just outside of Miami, Florida.It would seem that about 8 months before my
birth my parents took a vacation down to the Keys.I’m sure you see where this is heading.Yes, they brought me home.A little souvenir to remember the trip.Naturally this was a surprise as my mom was
just shy of her 37th birthday when I was conceived.In the late 1950’s maternity care was not
even near what we have now, and for an almost 40-year-old, smoker and drinker,
I was a danger to both she and I.
And that’s pretty much exactly what happened.One night my mother starting hemorrhaging
badly.The condition is called Placenta
Previa.The placenta, and me along with
it, started to detach from the uterine wall.
My eldest sister tells me she was asleep in her bedroom when
this started.Her room was in the front
of the house (I don’t remember this house at all, so I’ll take her word for
it), and she never heard the sirens, the ambulance, or the medics wheeling my
mother out of the house.She woke up a
little later and found our grandmother, Nanny we called her, cleaning the
bathroom from the blood my mom lost.
My mother used to rub it in my face that she had to have an
emergency cesarean section with just a local anesthetic.Seems the doctors gave her a 50/50 chance
that one or the other of us, or even both of us wouldn’t survive the
procedure.Luckily, we both
survived.My mother was a very strong
woman with a very high pain tolerance.She also told me many times that I never stopped being a pain in her
side.I know for a fact that it was not
always said in jest.That’s probably why
my dad gave me Skeeter as a nickname.I
was a pest.I interrupted their plans
for a quiet retirement.
I have more stories to share about my parents.Like how they lied to everyone about their
wedding date.How my mother was a bit of
a party animal in her younger days. My
siblings are giving me stories about our Uncles and Aunts to relate.And some of them were real characters.But most were amazing people.I have several veterans, of both genders as
well.And Nanny’s stories are some of my
favorite.There’s the one about the
Playboy magazines, her restaurant in Pennsylvania.But the one about her wake is the best!
I also have even more black holes in my tree.I really hope to be able to tell you about
some “great-great” grandparents one day.If you have read my Random Ramblin’s blog, some of those stories are there.I will take those posts and expand on them as
I can.As soon as I can find a good way
to post the family tree diagrams those will be here as well.
Thanks again for finding this new blog. Please pass it on to other folks that have a
genealogy bent like I do. Please leave
comments below. I *think* I turned off
the registration requirement, but let me know if there are issues.
Well, I do believe that I have figured out how to post the parts of my
family tree.I found a
wonderful FREE (as in beer!) program, The
SVG Family-Tree Generator.I will admit that I’m still
learning the program, and still have some refinements to figure out.Such as getting linked images to work.So right now, I don’t have any images for the folks in this tree, so if you
get an error message when you click on one of the cards please leave me a
comment so I can fix it.
This tree is for my Campbell – Bodle, or my paternal side.As you can see, the Campbell line is very short.I only have records up to my 2nd great grandfather, James
Campbell.I do have DNA
matches with some cousins that claim to have documentation for 3 more
generations in this line.But
despite my repeated asking, they will not show me anything.What they have shared is anything but definitive.James Campbell was a very popular name in central and western
Pennsylvania.Having a tax
record from the 1850’s that lists a James Campbell, with no other
identifying facts is not proof enough to say this is the correct
individual.
This is just one example of the problems with the amateur genealogist, and
I count myself among those.Not everything is verified before being added to a family tree.I understand that family stories say that some distant family members were
of some high-born status.But
when I found a tree that tried to link mine to Anne Boleyn or the one that
went all the way back to King Arthur, I was dumbfounded.
In the case the late queen, there is documentation for her extended
family.One does not become
queen of England without your family being well known.And given the fact that she had only one child, Elizabeth I – who never
married and had no children, I fail to see how a person on the 21st
century can be related.This
tree may have linked to a sibling of Anne’s, I didn’t read that far.I really have issues with trees that link to royalty.It seems that we Americans may have revolted over a king, but we all want
to be related to one.
Way back when, I asked my dad what part of Scotland our family came
from.Campbell is either the
largest or second largest clan name in Scotland, depending on what source
you read.There are many cadet
branches of the clan.As the
first Campbell male to be raised to a “lordship” (that may not be the
correct term), had several sons.Each son then was similarly raised and was given an area of land to rule
over.My dad’s answer was
“Argyll”.
Tradition holds that the first of the Campbell ancestors (still not yet
called Campbell) who came into Argyll married Eva, daughter of Paul an
Sporran and the heiress of the O'Duine tribe on northwestern
Lochawe.
This ancestor may well have first been established in Argyll as a
follower of the Earl of the neighboring Lennox when Alexander II, king
of Scots, marched into Argyll to ensure the loyalty of its people.
Alexander is said by Fordun, a Medieval writer, to have visited Argyll
in 1222, and this period for a Campbell ancestral arrival on Lochawe is
supported by the Gaelic genealogies and later charters.
The first of the name Cambel (the original spelling) who can be found
in the surviving records was one who owned lands near Stirling in 1263.
The earliest written date for a Cambel in Argyll is that for Duncan
Dubh, landowner in Kintyre in 1293. The first date which survives for
the Cambels on Lochawe is that for the killing of Sir Cailean Mòr (Great
Colin) of Lochawe in 1296 when he was attacked by men of the Clan
Dougall on the Stringe of Lorne. His family had been long established on
Lochawe and at that time at least two other Cambels owned land in
Argyll; Sir Duncan Dubh and Sir Thomas in Kintyre. (https://www.ccsna.org/clan-campbell-history)
So ALL Campbell’s come from the region of Argyll. But is my Campbell
line related to the actual clan or were we “assimilated” (resistance is
futile!) into the clan. According to my Y-DNA, we joined the clan is
some manner, we were not born into the clan. So somewhere back
in time some male ancestor of mine did one of three things; he was in a clan
that the Campbells defeated in battle and became a member by swearing an
oath to the clan chief, he married into a branch of the family and took his
wife’s surname, or he just simply moved onto Campbell land swore an
oath and took the name. It really doesn’t matter to me. I was
born a Campbell, and that’s the good enough.
Kilchurn Castle of Loch Awe, Scotland.
Now back to the tree.You can
see that my paternal grandmother’s side (Bodle/Chapman/Gunsalus/Shuler) is
quite better populated.This
was and still is a very large family.One of my grandmother’s sisters had something like 108 descendants when she
died!So there is a very large
pool of cousins to draw from.My father was an only child so I have no first cousins on that side to ask
to test.I also think that
other male cousins on the Campbell line are afraid of DNA testing.They are worried they will be tied back to a 16th century cattle
raid or something.
