Feature Friday: Tiger Topics, 1898

From the 17 February 1898 issue of The Tallulah Falls Spray (Volume 2, Number 29, front page).

Tiger Topics.

Rev. George Seay is now selling Bibles. If you need a good one see him.

Miss Elsie Ramey has returned from a visit to Mrs. Bob Deneys.

Walter Taylor has returned from a trip to Toccoa.

Rev. Mr. Ella will preach at Tiger’s Baptist church Friday night before the fourth Sunday.

Mr. Sport Ramie of Tiger is teaching school in “Germany.”

Col. Robt. Hamby made an appreciated speech to our school last Friday, and here we will state that we are having a good school, and in the person of Prof. H. C. McCrackin we have a good teacher.

Mr. J. H. Hunnicutt has returned from a visit to North Carolina.

We are glad to see Mr. Bell McCrackin, of South Carolina, in old Rabun once more.

William Hamby’s Estate in Rabun County’s Writs

While compiling Rabun County’s earliest writs and petitions for publication (available soon), I came across an 1843 court case between the heirs of the estate of William Hamby and the administrator of the estate, James Hamby. Naturally, the petition named all the heirs “to the second degree”: Ezekiel Hamby; Jonothan Roach and his wife, Huldah (Hamby) Roach; Benjamin Shelton and his wife, Keziah (Hamby) Shelton; Daniel Inman and his wife, Rebecca (Hamby) Inman; Martha Hamby; Sophia Hamby; Martha Hamby, the mother of William Hamby, the decedent; Amos Forrister and his wife Elizabeth (Hamby) Forester; James Hamby, the estate’s administrator; and Thomas K. Forrister and his wife, Polly (Hamby) Forrister.

The initial petition provides excellent information on the dynamics of this Hamby family, but there are many other documents attached to this suit, including an inventory of the estate, the sale of personal property from the estate, and the deceased’s account books,¹ all of which were written into the record.² The latter two items should be of particular interest to area researchers, even those uninterested in the Hamby family per se, because they can be used to reconstruct William Hamby’s neighborhood.

Feature Friday: The Life and Times of C. J. Crunkleton

I keep waiting for someone to ask me why I included all the local and regional news in my book on Rabun County’s earliest newspapers, instead of only the obituaries and death notices as many compilers do.

No one’s asked, but I think it’s an important question, and my answer is this: Newspapers are, in and of themselves, an important resource outside of the fact that they can serve as a substitute for vital and court records. To demonstrate this, let’s look at excerpts from early issues of The Clayton Tribune and The Tallulah Falls Spray pertaining to a gentleman named C. J. Crunkleton.

Tombstone Tuesday: Some Teague and Hamby Markers, Hale Ridge Cemetery, Rabun Co., GA

Three grave markers for members of the Teague and Hamby families at Hale Ridge Cemetery off Warwoman Road in Rabun Co., GA.

Step by Step #8: Summarizing and Continuing Research on the Teague Family

In the last two posts of this series (Part 1 and Part 2), we identified the parents of Roy S. Teague of Rabun County, Georgia. Today, we will continue working on the Teague family by first summarizing what we know of William Stephen Teague, Roy’s father, and then trying to determine the identities of Stephen’s parents.

Step by Step #7: Roy S. Teague’s Parents, Part 2

In Roy S. Teague’s Parents, Part 1, we began to explore census records in the hopes of determining the names of Roy’s parents. Today’s post is a continuation of that discussion.

Step by Step #6: Roy S. Teague’s Parents, Part 1

After a long break to make ready for the FGS 2010 conference in Knoxville, and then to recover from the trip and catch up on other work, it’s time to resume our study of the ancestry of Roy S. Teague and Hattie (James) Teague Watkins. We’ll begin with Roy’s parents. To summarize what we know about Roy’s parents and siblings to date:

• Roy was enumerated in the 1930 US census, Clayton, Rabun Co., GA, next to Lina S. Teague (a widow, born about 1875), and four of her children, namely Faye C. Teague, Lucy Teague, Louie Teague (who was divorced), and Reba Teague.¹
• Roy was buried in the same plot as Lina H. Teague, C. C. and Faye T. Barron, Paul C. Teague (Roy’s known son), and Louie and Fannie Q. Teague.²
• Roy’s obituary does not name his parents, but it does give his brothers as Louie Teague of Clayton and Grady Teague of Pontiac, Michigan; his half-brothers as Ulyus Teague of Rabun Gap and Melvin Teague of Canton, North Carolina; and his sisters as Mrs. Faye Barron and Mrs. Lucy P. Ramey of Clayton, and Mrs. Felton Sullivan of Tallulah Falls.³