Follow Up

When I posted the card this morning from Ulys to Annie, I got to wondering about who Will Anderson was. (The man in the picture on the postcard with my great-grandfather Ulys Hicks.) The other Anderson in our family history that I'm aware of was a Civil War soldier. I've had his picture for many years, but I only knew that he was somehow related to my great-grandmother, Annie Hicks. So I got online and -- not only did I find him, but I also found his wife!!

Photo: John Anderson 

Looking through the writings of various family members I found a few tidbits of information to take with me to the internet: John Anderson was the husband of my great-great-great-grandmother's (Nancy Jane Evans Carter) sister, Elizabeth Evans. Basically, that's all I knew. The names John Anderson and Elizabeth Evans are fairly common, so I didn't really expect to be able to locate the right ones with no more information than that. I use two websites for the research I do on family history -- Family Search, and Find A Grave. Both sites are filled with information supplied by various folks tracing their family histories. Not all of the information found there is reliable. Sometimes there will be legal documents such as birth/death certificates, marriage licenses, the US Census, etc., to support the information. But not always. So I really didn't feel very hopeful about finding 'our' John Anderson and Elizabeth Evans.

Well sir, of the long long list of Elizabeth Andersons on Find A Grave, I scrolled down the page and found one specifically Elizabeth Evans Anderson. And she was in the right timeframe. And she was born in Tennessee and died in Missouri -- just like my great-great-great-grandmother, her sister. Wow! When I opened the memorial, I was very lucky that the person who created the memorial had actually written that she married... John Anderson!! And that he was a Civil War soldier. When I clicked the link to that John Anderson and found his Find A Grave memorial, lo and behold!, there was the very same photograph of him as the one I've had in my possession for all these years!

Sometimes you can spend hours searching and searching and searching, and never find what you're looking for -- or think you found it, only to discover it was a false lead. (For instance, one family tree I looked at had the parents and siblings listed for Elizabeth and Nancy Jane Evans -- but it said they were born in Wales!) But sometimes, like today, the fates smile on you and your ancestor just pops right up and says hello! That's what happened today. And there was a BONUS. Elizabeth Evans Anderson's memorial on the Find A Grave website also included a PICTURE of her!

I can't tell if it's a photograph or a painting. 

The photo of my great-great-great-grandmother on her Find A Grave memorial looks very similar.

It was put on the website by our Arkansas cousin Glynda Carter Tucker, so I'm pretty sure it's actually her. Glynda has a wealth of well-documented information on the Carter branch of the family tree.

P. S. Remind me to tell you about the time (today) that I found John Henry Arnold's long-lost mother, along with her 2nd husband and at least one of her other children!