Family History and My DNA

A couple years ago I dove head first into the DNA pool.  I had no idea what I was doing and can honestly still say the whole thing confuses me, but I am slowly learning.  How did I think DNA would help me in my family history search?  I envisioned all these people matching up with my family genes and answering many of my questions.  Well, that has not happened but lots of other fun things have.  I have had two cool connections that recently came from my DNA results.

One was a young lady who was adopted.  She is trying to find out some of her family background.  Our match was one of the first hints about her ancestry.  Now, mind you, it is pretty far back in the line, but it was my MTDNA so we know it came from one of the women on my mother's side of the family.

Another connection was a young man who was looking for information on his mother's side of the family and we had a close match.  I was able to send him some information on my 3rd Great Grandmother. He was so appreciative for the information.  Little pieces of the proverbial jigsaw puzzle I talked about in a previous blog, Jigsaw Puzzles and Genealogy.  A piece here, a piece there and a picture starts to form.  It may not be clear right away, but another piece appears and you get a little closer look as to what it really looks like.

For Father's Day, a couple years ago, my brother's and I gave my dad a DNA test kit.  He has been one of my greatest cheerleaders when it comes to finding out more about our family history, so we thought this might be another way to help move the process along.  After getting his results, I signed him up in the Hatch DNA Project website.  Not much has come from that, in the way of finding a direct line, yet. More and more people are getting tested every day, so that could change.

This week, I stumbled upon a Moore County, North Carolina, family website, which also had a DNA project.  Knowing that some of my dad's family had lived in Moore County, I decided to join that project.  The administrator sent a link to his family history site and I was so surprised.  I had been on that very site, the day before, looking for family members.  As it turns out, we have common ancestors.  My dad's 2nd Great Grandfather, Nathaniel Green Smith Marley, was married to one of his relatives.  I only found this out because of the DNA test.  This website is really well done and you can tell a lot of research has gone into it.  Check it out here.  Catherine Hunsucker is the family name that connects us.  She was married to Nathaniel Marley.

After getting dad to do his test, I sent in mine and talked my brother into doing his too.  We are still looking for our elusive 3rd Great Grandfather on our mother's side.  We have joined the Garrison DNA project, in hopes that as time goes by, we will get some information on who he was.

DNA testing for genealogy is still catching on but as I mentioned earlier, more and more people are getting tested which will increase the odds of finding other family members.  If you are thinking of testing, I would check into Ancestry.com first.  Test with them and then you can transfer your results to other sites, such as Family Tree DNA, which will increase your possible matches.  I did not do that but wish I had.  I did encourage my brother to submit his through Ancestry first, which he did.

Every day I get emails about possible matches.  Most are so far out that they are hard to identify who the connection is, but every once in awhile, one will come in that is super close.  Those are the ones that will get your heart pumping.  If you have had your DNA tested, let me know what results you have found.  Who knows, we might find out we are related somehow!

Want a little better understanding of how DNA works?  Diahan Southard is the DNA Guide for Lisa Louise Cooke's website, Genealogy Gems.  She has many articles on DNA that you can find here.

Goldston, Chatham County, North Carolina

My Grandmother Hatch (Ola Mae Marley Hatch) graduated from Goldston High School in 1925. While on our trip through North Carolina, we decided to try to find where the high school was located. We had no idea where it was, just that it was in Goldston. So when we arrived we decided we should probably ask someone for help directions. Goldston is not very big. Population, according to Wikipedia is only 268. The downtown area is quaint but small. We were limited on where to go to seek someone's help.  


We saw a little local diner and figured there might be people there that could help us. We went in and scoped out someone that looked like they might be a local who would know the area. There was a very nice lady sitting there, who looked like she was quite comfortable in the setting, so we walked up to her and asked if she knew the location of the high school. She was so nice and proceeded to tell us that she could give us directions to where the school used to be! What? It wasn't there anymore? Another one of those disappointing moments along the trek we have embarked upon.  The sad thing was, she seemed very disappointed that the school had been torn down.  She said the community was not happy about the teardown, but it was not in good enough shape to leave standing.  

Some of the old buildings in Goldston, NC.

When we arrived at the location she had given us, there was not a trace of the main building.  We had a picture which kind of gave us an idea of the setting and there was a big smokestack in the background that could serve as a landmark, but that was gone too.  

Goldston High School.
Picture from the 1948 Gold-Stone Yearbook. (1)

We drove around the block a couple times before we found the actual site and the way we found it was the rock retaining wall that ran along the road in front of the building, as seen in the picture to the right. We got out and walked around the property.   All we could find was where the cafeteria had been (next to the current fire station) and a path that led to it.  The skeleton of the awning that ran between the school and the cafeteria was still standing, giving us an idea of how it was laid out.  

Original retaining wall in front of
what was the old Goldson High School.

The sidewalk that led to the front of the building was still visible, which is sort of visible in the middle of this picture, above the road, behind the wall.    

At the time of the picture of the school, there were very few trees in the front but the area had grown up a lot.  The location was just outside the downtown area and sat at the crossroads of several towns.  It is a beautiful area.  There wasn't a lot out there either, which made it a great location for a school  

Before the high school was torn down, they converted it from a high school to an elementary school.  

The High School was changed into an elementary school
before being torn down.  You can see the
smokestack is still in the background.

We left Goldston with a slight sadness that the school was no longer there.  We were finding that many things are not as they were in the time our family lived in these small little towns.  But we weren't going to let that deter us. We headed off to find our next landmark, which was Bear Creek Primitive Baptist Cemetery and Harpers Crossroads, home of my Great Grandparents.  What would we find there?

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(1) From the Gold-Stone High School Yearbook of 1948, The Graphic Press, Inc., Raleigh, NC. From the Classmates.com website.

Tombstones and Graveyards and Churches, Oh My! Pt. 2

If you have not been to North Carolina, or if you have, but not to the High Point, Lexington area, treat yourself and go! All of North Carolina is beautiful and I have been fortunate enough to see a lot of it but had never been to this region. It is beautiful! And we were there when it was raining! I can't imagine what it would have been like on a bright, sunny day!

Where better to spend a rainy day than the State Archives. This building is full of treasures for anyone wanting to do their family history. There are several floors, full of books, microfiche, and computers with access to all the major genealogy sites. I could have spent days perusing the Newspapers.com site. I found so many fun articles on several members of my family and know there was much more there to be discovered. I think the Newspapers.com website might be a very worthwhile investment for my research.

The family history book collection, books that were written or contributed by families, containing information on their lineage, had some verbiage on my surnames. Unfortunately, some of it was not what I was hoping to find.

One of my fact finding missions was to find my Great, Great Grandfather's father. Everywhere I have searched, I have come up empty. I found a publication in the Archives that, although fun to find, didn't give me the results I was hoping for. As I mentioned in my previous blog, there is speculation that a Jesse Garrison is the father of my Great Great Grandfather John W. Garrison. However, that has not been proven. One of the books I found, "The Family of Isaac Garrison, 1732-1836, Frontiersman and Soldier of the American Revolution"(1), states that a James Garrison had brothers by the name of Jesse (who was married to Mary Bodenhamer) and possibly an Edmund Garrison. Unfortunately, there is no record of their parentage and it does not indicate the families of either brother. Drats!!!

I was also looking for a paternal Great, Great, Great Grandfather's parentage and came up disappointed there too. In a book by James M. Coffee, Jr., "Marley Families of North Carolina", I was looking for the parents of Nathaniel Green Smith Marley. Mr. Coffee states that "N.G.S. Marley was born about 1818 and his parent have not been identified."(2) Double Drats!!!

But also in that same book, it speculates that a Joab or James Marley could be the possible parents, so at least those are a couple clues to look into. So, all is not lost. We'll see what we found down that rabbit hole. More to come on that at a later time.

Abbott's Creek, Davidson County, NC

As I mentioned earlier, while at the Archives, I did some newspaper research too.  I had family members that lived in a little town called Orinoco, North Carolina.  I had never heard of it before finding a small blurb on Ancestry about one of my relatives and it listed Orinoco in the article.  So I did a little more research and found that my Great, Great Grandfather on my mother's side lived there. Daniel Martine Hayworth and his wife Dora (Vandora Jane Green Hayworth), along with Dora's parents, Robert and Margaret Green, all lived there.  
So where is Orinoco?  Good question!  Well, it is thought to have been in Davidson County, NC, and possibly in Abbott's Creek Township but I can't find it on any maps.  The articles I found were from 1904, so it was alive and well then.  It was fun to read some of these articles because they listed everything about everyone.  One stated that my Great, Great, Great Grandmother Margaret was sick with typhoid fever and that my Great, Great Grandfather DM Hayworth went to Lexington with a friend.   His wife, Dora, had been sick for two weeks and they wished her a speedy recovery.  The next week it said she was recovering.  I love newspaper articles like these.  There were many others like them too.  They give you a true picture as to what life was really like back in the early 1900's.  Fun stuff!

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(1) "The Family of Isaac Garrison, 1732-1836, Frontiersman and Soldier of the American Revolution", Issac Garrison Family Association, Schoonmakers Publishers, 1980.

(2) "Marley Families of North Carolina", James M. Coffee, Jr., Genealogy Publishing Service, 2001

Ola Mae, "The Hello Girl"

James Vernon Hatch, my father, was best friends with Jimmy Barber, my mom’s boyfriend, who died on her sixteenth birthday. Dad knew mom before this happened, not only through Jimmy but also through a mutual friend. Dad had dated one of mom’s good friends, Martha, for three years. So it was only natural that he would stop by to give his condolences to my mom, after Jimmy passed away.

Dad was grieving. When the accident happened, Jimmy was away at school and dad was in basic training for the Air Force, in San Antonio. No one wanted to tell him about the accident because they knew how upset he would be. When he got home, he went to see my mom. She knew the pain he was experiencing.

After that, my dad was off to Wyoming for Tech School and they talked on the phone several times. He told me that she wrote him everyday and signed the letters, “Your little sister”. He returned to North Carolina later in 1955 with orders to go to Saudi Arabia and they started dating. They dated almost every night before he left. He got to Saudi and decided he wanted to spend the rest of his life with mom. So he bought a ring, sent it to his parent’s house with a note asking her to marry him. His mom and dad, Ola Mae and Plinny Hatch, had mom over for dinner and during the evening, gave her the note and the ring. They got married in September 1956.

Until two weeks ago, I had no idea that this is how my dad proposed. I never thought to ask. I am very blessed to still have dad around and am now taking time to ask him questions about his growing up years. Something I should have done with my mom. He was more than willing to help me out in my quest to find out more about our family. Here are some of the things I learned.

Little Jimmy Hatch was a personable kid. He was an only child and grew up in several different places. He was born in Charlotte, NC on November 13, 1935. The family didn’t live there long before they moved to the town of Wilson, Wilson County, NC, and lived there for about 4 years. They may have lived in Whiteville for a period of time but they eventually moved to Southern Pines and remained there. 

My Dad and his mom, Ola Mae

His mother, Ola Mae Marley was born in Lee County, North Carolina on May 10, 1907 to James Rupert and Bessie Frieda Thomas Marley. She graduated from Goldston High School in 1925. Two years prior to that, her and her sister went to work for a small independent telephone office. Her sister, the only other operator, worked the day shift from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. and Ola Mae worked the 4 to 9:00 p.m. In an interview for the Sandhill Citizen Newspaper on May 13, 1971, she said, “Our equipment consisted of a one-position switchboard. When you received a call (which wasn’t often) there was a little buzz, and a little lid affair opened and when you answered, this would close. To ring a number, you had to turn a crank.” [1] When I was in college, I worked the switchboard at the dorm I lived in.  When I first started working there, they still had the old PBX system where you plugged in to the different switches and manually rang the phones.  I loved that job and could see why my grandma enjoyed it for so many years.  Thank goodness, though, we have come a long way with our telephones.

In 1927 her parents moved to Sanford so she boarded with a local Goldston family, continuing to work. Later that year, Central Carolina Company bought their office. Ola said, “I was bought along with it and moved to Siler City.” [2]

Her sister moved to Southern Pines, NC and liked it, so she convinced Ola to move there too, in 1930. They were putting the phone systems into Pinehurst and it kept her busy, which she liked. She stayed there until her marriage to Plinny Vernon Hatch on April 23, 1933. They moved several places with Plinny’s job but were in Charlotte in November of 1935, when my dad was born.

They moved back to Southern Pines in 1939 and one of the employees at the telephone company went to Plinny’s job to sound him out as to whether he thought Ola might return to work. She thought about it and decided she could do the job and still not be away from her son too much. In 1945, just six years after starting in that office, she became a supervisor.

She loved her job. She continued to be a Supervisor up until the day she retired in 1971. United Telephone Company of the Carolinas had bought the company, at that point.

The company gave her a great retirement party. She received a beautiful watch, set with diamonds, and lots of gifts from those she worked with. One of the gifts required some of her coworkers to sneak into her home and take measurements over her mantel to make sure they got the right size, gold-framed mirror, with matching candle holders. Many of her family were able to come in for the festivities, which was an added treat.

Grandpa and Grandma Hatch at her retirement party.

She had many plans for her retirement. Her and my grandpa had bought a house three years before and she was looking forward to working in the garden and spending time with friends.

Her memories of working for the telephone company inspired her to write a little poem. Here is what she wrote:

The telephone girls in the days of old

Had the number to crank and the mouthpiece to hold.

They’d wade through ice or sleet or snow –

Their job was important, as we all should know.

She worked through tears, she worked through smiles,

She connected voices for many miles.

My Grandma, Ola Mae, was known for her smile. And if you really wanted to see her light up, just be around when her son would walk into the room. The Air Force had kept my family a long way from North Carolina, so every moment that she was able to spend with him was precious to her. She loved her son and said numerous times (even in the newspapers) how proud she was of his service in the military. She always looked forward to having him home.

Today's Terri's Tidbit:  If you shop at Walmart, you need to download their Savings Catcher app.  It has the ability to scan your shopping receipt, check local prices to see if something was cheaper elsewhere and if so, they credit you the amount.  Instead of running from store to store to get the best price, it does the work for you and you get money back, if their competitor has a better price.  

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[1][2] Nicholson, V. (1971, May 13).  Mrs. Ola Hatch Retires From Telephone Work After Many Years. The Sandhill Citizen, p. 3

The Day I Discovered the Family Bible

I'm on a search...actually I think I have been on this search for more than 40 years.  A search for family members that I never had the opportunity to meet or only knew for a short time.  A search for my ancestors in the Hatch, Marley, Garrison and Hayworth lines.

I can remember the day the "genealogy bug" bit me.  I was sitting on my maternal grandmother's couch, when I was around 10 or 11, carefully holding a big family bible in which Grandma had written her children's names, all 12 of them, along with their birth dates, and in some cases their deaths too.  I was fascinated! Our family of five was small in comparison.  I am the oldest with two younger brothers.  Of the 12 children of Albert Hamilton and Mittie Ethel Hayworth Garrison, my mother was the youngest and one of only four girls.

I instinctively knew that what was written in that bible was very important information.  So much so that I copied all the names down that day, along with the dates that had been listed.  I kept that list all these years.  Part of it is shown to the right.  That was the beginning of my love for family history!

Grandma and Grandpa Garrison moved from High Point to West End, North Carolina  in the early 1920's.  My grandfather was a tobacco farmer and my grandmother, with the help of the older children, took care of the house, the little ones, helped keep all her family and the farm workers fed and helped on the farm when needed.  In 1925, William, the fifth born child and the fourth son, died at the age of three.  That had to be a very difficult time for all.  By the time my mother was born in 1939, my grandmother was just a few months shy of 45. My mother's oldest brothers were already married with children, making her an aunt from the time of birth.

Albert and Mittie Garrison's first house in West End, NC

Several of the Garrison children were born in High Point but many were born in the family home in West End,  just about five minutes down the road from Pinehurst.  Their home, shown above, was not much bigger than many people's living rooms, maybe smaller.  In 1935, a new house, shown below, was built across the street, which was two stories and had lots of bedrooms.  It must have seemed huge after living in the previous house.

Second home of the Garrison family.

There was a bathroom on the back porch which I always thought was a little strange but that was a relatively new addition to the house.  When the house was first built there had been an outhouse just down the path from the back door.  The bathroom on the porch would get so cold in the winter. It was not unusual to find a little portable heater in there to help keep the room warm.  I can't imagine having to trek down to the outhouse.  That must have been miserable.  I wish I could have been there the day they got the new bathroom.  I can just see everyone standing around in that tiny room, checking it out, flushing it over and over just to hear the sound.  It must have been a thrill!

I remember when I was growing up with my two brothers, we were always fighting to get into the bathroom.  Can you imagine how it must have been with so many family members and one bathroom?  An adventure, no doubt!  So many wonderful memories and stories!  I'll share some more  in the next blog.

Today's Terri's Tidbit:  I have learned so much about genealogical research by watching webinars that are available online.  There are so many websites that provide these for absolutely free. There is a huge genealogy based conference held in Salt Lake City each year called rootstech.  It just finished up this last week and they have a lot of the speaker's talks available to watch.  Click here to go to the webinar page.  I have watched several and found them helpful but was blown away by the tips I picked up in Thomas MacEntee's "Building a Genealogy Research Toolbox".   Check it out!

Welcome to Unearthing My Family Roots!

Welcome to my new blog, Unearthing My Family Roots!  I am excited that I will have the opportunity to share with you fun facts about my Hatch, Marley, Garrison, and Hayworth families, as well as some interesting little "Tidbits" that I find helpful, intriguing, money saving, ridiculous or just plain mind boggling!  

I begin this blog in memory of my mom, who was born 76 years ago today!  She has been gone over 23 years but she is never far from our thoughts.  Oh how she loved her family!  She was the youngest of twelve, the daughter of a tobacco farmer, wife for 35 years and mother of three.  I'll share more about her in later blogs.

Also, two years ago today my family and I became stranded on the "Infamous Carnival Triumph Disaster Cruise".  Our four day cruise turned into a nine day float.  We were on the cruise for my brother's wedding, so there were over 20 of us on board.  It was not a cruise you would want to repeat but the time spent with family was priceless!  My husband wrote "Guido's Log" about the trip and I will be sharing parts of that with you in the next couple blogs.  It's a funny look back at what we were experiencing at the time! 

As mentioned above, here is my first "Terri's Tidbit":  

If you haven't already discovered Lisa Louise Cooke's Genealogy Gems Website and Podcasts, don't delay another minute!  I have learned so much more about genealogy from reading her newsletters, watching her videos and listening to her podcasts.  Click here and start learning new ways you can make your genealogy research experience even better!

So, let's begin this adventure together!  Until next time...