The Texas in the Civil War Message Board

Re: Williams, Jones, Smith & Johnson families

Patricia:

Thanks for the compliment and your contribution of the web page for Thomas Davis Williams of Bourlands Regiment. Seems I was cursed with the Welsh surnames of Williams, Smith, and Jones....ha ha....some being Indian. What choice did I have but to become a good Genealogist. As I tell my students, "If I can find records to document my common surnames, you students with uncommon names have no excuse because your research will be a lot easier. The records are always somewhere to document an ancestor so never give up."

And, Patricia, as a novice writer myself, I am in awe of your 1,000+ page book on the very difficult period and location you researched - The Civil War in Northern Texas. Thank you for your courage to see it through. I am sure it will be of help to many today and in future generations. The other slant you brought out that I realized, quite by surprise early in my research. was that there's more ways to kill your enemy than with a bullet. A lot of starvation occurred in my families on both sides of the Red River. Personally, I'd rather take the bullet. My Germans, who had uncommon surnames, lived in the Choctaw Nation before and during the War. Their children married Cherokees in the Choctaw Nation during the Civil War and this puzzled me. After much research, I discovered that the Cherokees fled down into the Choctaw Nation during the War because of the strife on the KS, MO & AR border. The Choctaws welcomed them according to my Choctaw cousins even though they had no food themselves. They said that there were hundreds of people always walking on the roads trying to find food with some falling to never wake again. "War is Hell"

Messages In This Thread

Oak Hill Home Guard
Re: Oak Hill Home Guard
Re: Oak Hill Home Guard
North Texas:McFarland, Williams, White, Sebastian
Re: Oak Hill Home Guard
Williams, Jones, Smith & Johnson families
Re: Williams, Jones, Smith & Johnson families
Re: Oak Hill Home Guard