Research tip

I discovered an important tip from Taneya Koonce (no relations?).http://tngenweb.org/blog/research-tip-check-original-records/

I have been loving that I can view death certificates, mostly for free, on familysearch.org. I finally found the death certificate of my great grandmother Katie Warren there on the anniversary of her death this past December. She died December 30, 1930. And according to the death certificate, she didn't remarry after my great grandfather died, as legend had it.

Another death certificate has puzzled me. Or should I say two? My great uncle Howell Brasfield has two death certificates. After looking at them again, I'm not sure they are for the same person. It's just hard to believe that there were two black men named Howell Brasfield was born in Tennessee and died within miles and a month of each other in the same year.  But then the certificates has different birth dates, marital status and dates of death. They had different burial dates but was both buried in the small city of Maury City, Tennesee.

While I was there last year, I mentioned it to the archivists on staff. One was amazed at the possibility of two death certificates for one man, while another said it happened all the time. Since reading the article from Taneya, I know I now must go back to the Tennessee Archives and look at the originals. It is still wonderful to be able to access the certificates online, but "ain't nothing like the real thing, baby."

Discovery

One of the reasons I chose the caption of this blog is because genealogy is about finding lost relatives. Then I think about the old Flip Wilson joke about Christopher Columbus discovering America. He may have discovered it for himself but there were people living in America that didn't think they needed discovering. They weren't lost.

While surfing the web for information on African-American genealogy, one name kept popping up. When I started searching for information on the Koonce family, this name popped up again. I had to check it out then.

Taneya's Genealogy Blog is full of useful information. She's a librarian so that explains her thoroughness. I don't know if we're actually related. Her father was William Koonce and there is a connection to the Koonces from North Carolina. I'm just glad to find a fellow genealogy hobbyist. We made actual contact and I hope it is the beginning of more communication and discoveries.