We are excited to announce that the first families program is entirely up and running, with the first certificates received by the applicants last week.
We are happy to welcome descendants of Aaron Braswell, James Crook, Harvey Green Moser, Brice/Bryce Parsley, William Snow, and John C Warford as our first recognized first family members. With each new ancestor, we further fill out who those on the 1840 census were and how they are linked.
As this is a new program, we will continue to make changes to the application and clarify questions, and we hope to have a document for Frequently Asked Questions up sometime soon.
If you are interested in completing and submitting an application, they can be found here: Link to Application Page.
And other updates
Civil War Pension Files
Over the last few months, we have added the pension files of Stephen Bain and Tilman Joines to the collection. If you have a pension file for a DeKalb Ancestor, we would love it if you could share it so we can add it to the digital files and make it easier for others to collaborate and ensure everyone has all the information. If you require a file for an ancestor and budget is a constraint, please remember that we have the Matlock & Zilpha Roberts Grant program to help obtain the pension files for our DeKalb Ancestors.
WikiTree Project
The WikiTree project continues to go, sometimes a bit slower, but we are now nearing 5,000 individuals tagged to DeKalb. With each connection, we better understand how everyone is related and can possibly identify ways to break through the brick wall when working with clues.
If you have documents, such as church records, family bibles, and diaries from our ancestors, that you would like shared so others can find them, we are happy to help. Sometimes, it may take longer to get online, depending on the time available to work on special projects.
Work on the diaries of Rev. Wauford and David Taylor will soon be resumed to match the details in their diaries to the individuals they refer to.
We’d also like to thank Jerry Parker for allowing us to share his amazing photo in his collection; it will be added to Wikitree with the right profiles shortly. If you have photos you’d like to share, we’d love to see them and add them.
1904 photo of the Joseph Parker family: seated L to R are B. F. “Dock” Murphy, Eliza Dennis Parker, Marvin Parker, Sarah Murphy Parker, Joseph Napoleon Parker; standing L to R: Robert Sherman Parker, Eliza Parker, Frank Parker, and Fred Parker. – Permission to post by Jerry Parker
Volunteering
If you are interested in helping to verify applications and documents, have a Gmail account, and are familiar with Gmail, please let me know. It will still be a few months before I can be there in person to host a meeting, hoping that April may be possible. I am starting to shop for homes in and around DeKalb, but it will still be a few months before things are complete. However, we could look at hosting a virtual meeting through Zoom, or if someone wanted to host one there, we could set up a laptop with a camera so that those unable to attend in person can be there virtually.
We still hope to create a logo. If you have the skill to do this, we would love to see your design thoughts! We also welcome any special talents you have. Share those and your passions with us, and we can find a match for you.
There are also many projects we’d like to see come to light, such as transcription of highlights of Supreme Court Cases that involved DeKalb and building out profiles for Civil War Veterans and those here in 1840.
I have not heard back from city hall about collaborating on the First Families program, so I have now contacted the Chamber of Commerce. I hope to hear back from them, as it would provide an excellent opportunity for collaboration.
Malvina Wauford Roberts(1853-1928), with her grandson Elmer, is believed to have been taken in Fannin County, Texas.
DeKalb County, Tennessee Genealogy Association 