Aunt Bam's Bunch

I just found someone's online genealogy in which I have learned quite a few new things about some folks I already knew a little of ---but can't figure out whose work it is. Someone associated with Decklerbooks.com. I hope we can communicate sometime.

Anyway, I now know a little more about Aunt Bam's bunch. Mary Alabama Jackson was my Great-Great-Grandfather Samuel Parker Jackson's little sister. My Aunt Opal knew her as "Aunt Bam." I knew that Bam was married to a Mr. Ray Dean, but this new source I just came across says he was James Ray Dean from Missouri. Folks probably knew him as Ray.

Bam had a daughter named Mattie Dean, who apparently lived most of her life with my GGGreat-Grandmother Cornelia Gilbert (Coleman) Jackson. The new source says Mattie's middle name was Cornelia. Never heard of that before.

There was also apparently a brother to Mattie named George Henry Dean. I don't think Opal knew about him, or maybe I just don't recall her mentioning him.

18 July 1892: W.V. Love to Lula Louvenia Jackson

This is a page from my Great-Grandmother Lula's autograph book she kept as a girl.

Dated 18 Jul 1892 at Gabriel Mills, Williamson Co., TX, it is the autograph of her cousin, W. V. Love:

Miss Lula,

friendship is a Sacred Word/ engrave it on thy heart/ it Was in friendship that We/ met in friendship let us part.

Your Cousin, W. V. Love

This young man was very probably William Volney Love (b. 1868), who was the son of Louisa Jane (Coleman) Love, the sister of Lula's paternal grandmother, Cornelia Gilbert (Coleman) Jackson.

Setting Our Ahnentafel

In the interests of preserving the evidence of my family's past and of making its dissemination completely free, I've decided to begin a new blog devoted entirely to those purposes.

The word Ahnentafel is a German word meaning "ancestor-table." Ahnentafels are the most logical way I know to arrange the facts of one's family tree. I also choose the word itself for the title of this blog to reflect my own German ancestry. The rest of the title was chosen in my belief that genealogy is an inexhaustible and ongoing pursuit that necessarily involves the contributions of others. It is never finished, but it is what I am bringing to the table.

Although Ahnentafels are logically-organized, this blog will not be. It will probably read more like random pages from my notebooks and shoeboxes. But the idea here is to share what I have and to make it all searchable and useful to other researchers.

Setting Our Ahnentafel will develop its rules and criteria as we go along, but, for now, enjoy what I can provide and please feel free to write me back to let me know what you think.

Thanks.