Correcting my misinformation

The things I've learned since I posted about my great Aunt Annie Lou Rogers Wilson...
HERE ARE OLD damaged PICTURES.

But my 2013 post showed things I had yet to learn.



Though my grandfather didn't tell me about her...nor about his own upbringing, I believed what someone in the family told me, or wrote somewhere.  That the Rogers children (Auntie Annie Lou as well as my dad's father, had been orphaned and raised by cousins.  Not true.

Their mother was still alive and they were even living with her by census data in Galveston, Texas. She lived until 1924.  I just noticed on her death certificate that she wasn't buried in Galveston, but in Huntsville, where her husband's family had lived.  Now I can see if I can find her grave there.

However, there is a letter stating that the cousin did have guardianship of the youngsters, written many years later by my grandfather.

And he and my father were indeed given the middle name of Elmore, but I was able to chase down the Revolutionary War hero of that name, Elmore Ross, who was an ancestor of their cousin with whom they had guardianship.  I never found any census data showing they lived with the cousin.  He even lived in another town in Texas.  I think he had been a mentor to my grandfather, at least.

My grandfather's own father did die when he and his sister were ages 1 and 2.  And their mother did move from her own town of Waverly to Galveston.  I have no information on how she lived, but it might have been pretty tough in a big port town at the end of the 19th century.  Remember Galveston was the big shipping port before Houston ever became one.  So perhaps the children were living with that cousin some of their lives, just not in records that I've found yet.

In the last two years I've spent several hundred hours learning about my ancestors, and how many of us make mistakes over on Ancestry DOT com.  That's why my own genealogy is private at this point.  My cousin, Patricia Rogers (also a descendent of George Elmore Rogers, Sr.) has made her genealogy public however, so there are records on it which are available for other searchers.  My records in my blog do contain my own mistakes.


I'm posting these for the theme at Sepia Saturday this week...HERE.

Quote for today:

There is an endless net of threads throughout the universe. The horizontal threads are in space. The vertical threads are in time. At every crossing of the threads, there is an individual, and every individual is a crystal bead. And every crystal bead reflects not only the light from every other crystal in the net, but also every other reflection throughout the entire universe.

Rig Veda