Spring brings inspiration

The first Madison County potter for today is...

Amelia Stamps. She also isn't from around here, but instead hails from Kentucky.  Her web site is http://www.ameliastamps.com/

I was curious where she got some plastic cup covers or lids, which turn a ceramic mug into a portable coffee cup, much as is given out from every coffee shop ready to go in a car.  She said I could find them on line, as well as a little stretching plastic sleeve which makes the mug more easy to grip.  What a great way to save some paper, for all those "green conscious people." Just carry your own mug into the coffee shop, and you can sip out of it at your pleasure.

East Fork Pottery

The next booth was East Fork Pottery...which was pretty crowded.  John K. Vigeland was one of the potters, and Alex Mattise is another member of the guild.  The East Fork Pottery can be accessed by www.eastforkpottery.com. And it is in the Marshall area of NC also.  Don't miss the very sweet video on their site which has some incredible footage of inside the wood firing of their kiln.

Which ancestor shall I share today?

The Conn family crest.

John Thomas Conn was born on 9 Apr 1790 in Plum Creek, Jefferson County, Kentucky, where his father had moved from Virginia.  John Conn and his father moved to Missouri, where his father settled and died.  John then moved with his second wife and whildren to Gonzales, Gonzales County, Texas, by 1837  His daughter was Hannah Conn Booth, my great great great grandmother on my mother's side of the family.  So John Thomas Conn would have been a 4 times great grandfather.

This man moved a whole lot of family each time they took off for new horizons.  But as far as I know, his daughter Hannah Conn Booth didn't go to Texas until after she married William Booth in Indiana, which is where her uncle may have been living.

Conestoga wagon

Considering how far these places were from each other, they must have been set up well to travel those distances...by wagon loads.  I shared a bit of research about the wagons HERE. And I included a lot more history of Hannah Conn Booth on that post as well.

But back to today's life and some more pottery!

Joey Sheehan had the free raffle pot...and of course I signed up for it. They haven't contacted me yet.

Joey's studio is in Asheville, NC - very close to Marshall.  Here's his web page into. http://www.meltingmountainpottery.com/about.html

A Conn by another name

When your genealogy seems to have a glitch, what do you do?

I've been over on Ancestry looking seriously to see how my great X5 grandmother might just have different parents entirely.

One of my gurus on Ancestry, a half cousin about 5 times removed who has much more experience in genealogy, had the same great X5 grandfather (but with a different mother) has posted that according to someone I've never heard of, had parents related to this new someone.

I tried to find if those parents were brothers of my granddad...but there weren't any members of his, his fathers, or his grandfather's families with the name of James or Joseph.  My tree with the Conn brothers included John Thomas, Thomas, Tramell, Jesse and so on.  No Williams either.

So now I wonder if the grave I visited last year is even one of my ancestors.

Well, does it really matter?  Not to the bones there in that cemetery in Kentucky.

And I think I'll keep my private family tree going the way it has for several years.  Nobody knows but me, and nobody will probably say to me, HEY those are the wrong parents for your Hannah Leak Conn Booth.  At least the Conn family somehow was hers.  If her mom wasn't Mary (Polly) Norman Conn, then Isaac Norman (see cemetery marker above) would not be my ancestor.  But the information coming from a will which I haven't been able to see, well,  I won't believe it till I see it. Follow the source!

My information comes through my 5th removed cousin, and she's pretty reliable, but she says that this new cousin says that Hannah's (not on my chart) grandfather, William Conn, was in the Revolutionary War.  My information has her grandfather (Thomas Conn) only being born in 1765...which would have meant he would not have been old enough to fight in that conflict, but his father could have.   But here's the new information...and I now need to figure out the relationships.  If possble!

William Conn died in Henry county, Kentucky in 1836. He was a Revolution War soldier and he has pension records. His pension records and Will identify James Conn, who married Nancy Erwin as a son.  James Conn died about 1830. Nancy Erwin Conn moved her family to Jackson county, Indiana about 1838., where she died about 1846 and Deed Book J, Page 387 identifies  Hannah Conn Booth as a child. Female descendants of Hannah Conn Booth can join the DAR through William Conn. 

I'm not interested one bit in being a DAR (Daughters of the American Revolution) member.  Those ladies can have their research and their tea parties.  I do wish I knew which of the many Conn families really were my link back to Ireland, but if I don't find out, I won't cry.

They have some information about those Conns that speaks about a ferry crossing in VA, so I will probably go read about it because it does sound historically interesting. And perhaps we were related.

Today's quote:

...there are no wrong turns, only unexpected paths.

Mark Nepo