Spiritual Heritage

I finally got around to finishing a digital scrapbook layout I did a few months ago when I was still a member of PaperCraft Planet social networking site and moderating a group focused on Christian crafting. I had a faithbooking project going there, and this is the last page I made for it. I didn't have as many family heritage photos scanned in then, and really didn't like the one I had to use for my dad's dad, so last night I decided to go in and change the photo. It took me 1-1/2 hours to do that simple little thing (I had altered the original color of the oval frame that I used on all the pictures, and hadn't saved it, so I had to try to match the color, then scale it, then figure out how to cut the right size oval out of the photo and get it behind the frame -- it all sounds so simple, but clearly, it wasn't!). I posted it on GenealogyWise, which is a new social network for family historians and genealogists, in the Scrapping Your Family History (or whatever it's called) group. So here it is:


If you'd like to see it larger, just click on it.

I have no recollection of the designers or whatever of any of the elements. (I always like to post the brands, etc. of the things I use in scrapping and card making, because I figure they made the stuff, they deserve the credit.)

ANYway.

I joined Footnote.com the other day. It's a website with tons of digitized original documents (like Civil War Service Records, census images from 1880 and 1930, etc.). It was $60 for a year (they had a special). I don't know yet if it will be worth the money. For some reason my ancestors are always undocumented or it's hard to find their info. Census images aren't a problem, but I already have most of those off Ancestry. I did find the actual images of one of my ancestors' Civil War records. Before joining Footnote I only had the index information on that. So that was cool. But the Civil War era is so frustrating because they often just put the soldier's first and middle initials with their last name. So instead of finding Elijah William Smith, I have to look through all the other E. W. Smiths in Mississippi (and they are legion, or so it seems) and try to decide if the info is for MY E. W. Smith. Fortunately, for most of my Civil War soldier ancestors I know the regiments they were in. This helps tremendously.

Oddly, I'm having trouble finding military documentation for my 5-greats-grandfather who served in the Revolutionary War and then was one of the original Old Three Hundred colonists who came to Texas. He's been celebrated by the DAR, has DAR medallions on his headstone, etc. But I can't find the documentation on his service with the South Carolina militia that was under Gen'l Francis Marion. I found several Alexander Hodge papers for North Carolina ... wondering if there was a mistake or if he served somehow for NC. Or if that's a different Alexander Hodge entirely. I wouldn't think that was an incredibly common name, but what do I know about common names back then?

Well, the morning is almost over, I need to go take a shower and get dressed, and then take the kid to the orthodontist. So, until next time ...