Family History

Steve and I are taking the Family History Sunday School Class this year. Rachel Martin is the best teacher ever! Anywho, she gives out homework (homework for church, weird I know) for us to do during the week. Now, we have never been really into our genealogy, for both of us we have parents and brothers that do it so we never really got into it. And more so for me. I'm a Higley. Now that might not mean much, but I have 4 volumes of what's called "The Higley Books." It has a lot of information about the Higley line that started with Captain John Higley. I can trace my line all the way to him from my dad without any gaps. So, I always thought what's the point. So taking this class has really gotten me, at least, into genealogy. I have been looking up people and finding out new things. Correcting dates that were in the Higley Books, and filling in the gaps. The one cool thing I've found is about George W. Higley. Now, my dad told me when I was in high school, was that we had family fighting on both sides of the Civil War. George W fought for the Union and was a POW (Prisoner of War) in Andersonville Prison at Fort Sumter, Georgia. In the Higley books has his death at April 1864 at Andersonville Prison North Carolina. That was so wrong. After researching George W I found his true death, July 27, 1864, and found out where Andersonville Prison really was. Steve did some more digging and found out that one of the Generals or a high ranking Officer of the Confederate army kept a log of most of those that died at Andersonville. He had where names, where they were from, date of death, and cause of death. So I have a picture of George W's, if you will, death certificate. It's really cool. He's the guy highlighted in yellow.

So now I'm really into finding people and adding them to our family line. Last night I found so much information on the mother of George W and her family. There is much more, but I just had to stop. Although using FamilySearch.org is great, there is a lot of multiple information on just one person. It got overwhelming, so I had to stop for today. I just wanted to share my cool find and just let everyone know that doing your family history can be fun, and you never know what you might find. Like a real death date and cause of death (diarrhea has to be a bad way to die) or that someones name is John "The Fugitive" Greene (George W's really really far back great grandpa)!