(Originally posted 9 July 2012)
Hope the world is treating you all well and that you are keeping cool. As in the rest of the country, it is HOT in the SC Lowcountry. My computer says it is now 99 outside, and if you mix that in with the high humidity, it is like swimming in mosquito soup out there.
Susan is off to Tampa for a few days for meetings, so I’m doing the bachelor thing until then. Still have the mother-in-law, the daughter, and the two dogs to deal with though, so of course I’m not totally on my own.
I continue to work through the National Genealogical Society Home Study Course. This weekend I wrote a report on the Walls Baptist Church (Rutherford County, NC) records, a copy of which I got many many years ago and still have not gone all the way through. The last time I went through the film, I got up to the time of the late Civil War and Reconstruction which followed it. And it was really sad… In the period of about 1865 to 1868, the records are nearly unreadable, because the ink faded. It is just one indication of the state of affairs in former Confederacy after the war. The church was either unable to afford quality ink with which to keep records, or there was no quality ink to be had. The writing is there… it is just too faint and faded to be able to read. And of course this is the time period where the estate of my ancestor Benjamin went into administration. It is my belief that he died sometime between the founding of the church in 1844 and the census of 1850, and that his widow Nancy died in the fall of 1868, allowing his estate to finally be turned over to the courts for administration. I was hoping to find some mention of Nancy’s death or burial in these records, but I am unable to read the appropriate entries. Sad…
My next task in this lesson on church and cemetery records is to try to map out several of the sections of the Walls Baptist Church cemetery where Lovelaces and their allieds are buried. I’ve unsuccessfully tried to find records online which would help me in this task, and I’ve written to the church to see if any burial records exist for the cemetery. I haven’t heard back from them yet, but I’m not hopeful that any records have been kept which will help me. That means I need to plan another trip to Rutherford County to undertake this task. Not a bad thing…
Time to grab an afternoon cuppa coffee [_]7
Y’all have a good one!