Follow Friday: Army-Style Supper, Questions of Race & Gingers

Once again I have let my feed reader get dangerously behind as I had a busy week of “real life.” I joined the YMCA and began taking exercise classes (my whole body protests) and had the new-homeowner pleasure of my very first appliance dying on me. And it was my refrigerator. In other words, this week I’ve been hurting

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Tuesday’s Tip: Couchsurfing to Your Past

I’m planning a genealogy trip to upper South Carolina this summer and when I go, I have to admit that I will Couchsurf if I possibly can. When you first tell people about Couchsurfing they generally have one of two reactions: 1.) They’re intrigued 2.) They think it’s insane and dangerous (I’m looking at you,

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Friday Funny: Bonnie & Clyde in 1969 Cherokee County, Georgia

So this little known footage from c. 1969 actually stars some very special child stars – my mother, Luanne West, her brothers, Jeff, Jason and Joby West and their cousins, Danny and Ray West. There’s even a very special guest appearance by my every-day-very-much-missed Granna, Ellabel Duncan West. If there were DVD extras on this,

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Where Was Moses When the Lights Went Out?

This has nothing to do with my own family history, but this old drinking song was supposedly played by the Tombstone Brass Band at the funeral of Frank and Tom McLaury, and Billy Clanton after the shootout at the O.K. Corral. Listen here (Note the warning about old-timey language.) Catchy, right? I vote we make it

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Follow Friday: Scalping, Slaveholder Fraud and Roy Acuff’s Accent

It’s Friday again! And that means my only job today is to point out all of the other awesome blogs, posts and sites I’ve encountered during the week. Without further ado… Blogs & Sites Yesterday I became enamored with Many Branches, One Tree. Maybe this is because I’m very interested in Mexico and Mexican history

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Thrifty Thursday: Try TurboScan instead of Copying

I’ve been slack on blogging because I’ve been doing lots of actual work – genealogical and otherwise. Yesterday, I finally made the hour drive to to poke around in Forsyth County’s land records. Though I haven’t yet found where my ancestor George W. West actually bought his land, I did find where he was selling it off

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