His Family

My fiancé wanted me to help him search for his family history. His parents separated when he was a baby and he didn’t know much about his father’s side. His mother’s side was sketchy as well. So, I searched for his father’s side, as they had an unusual last name.

The main information I had to go on was a probate case letter my fiancé had. He was supposed to go down to Alabama to contest the local gas company’s seizure of family land (per imminent domain), but he was a minor and his mother did not pursue the matter further. I searched the probate case on the county’s court website, and they had the judgment online. The judgment was in favor of the gas company; however, the real value was that I had the names of everyone who had claim to the land. This included my fiancé’s father and grandfather.

I found my fiancé’s father and grandfather on the social security death index (SSDI), and I will soon be sending out for their applications. However, finding his grandfather on the old census was a little troublesome. See, his name was E.A. on the SSDI, but the only person that I could find in the census with the same birth year was R.A., which was the same name of my fiancé’s father. Plus, R.A. was living with relatives and not with his immediate family. However, after hours of tracing, I determined that R.A. was probably E.A., and I could ascertain that W.A. was his father, since he was listed as W.A.’s son in the following census. I still have to verify this with my fiancé’s family members in Alabama, if we can ever get a hold of them.

Now, going further gets tricky. I can’t find W.A. or his parents before 1900 (he was born in the tricky 1880s). In addition, the mulatto/black A.’s that lived in the area in the early 1900s were suddenly white in the 1800s. So, although I can trace the A’s all the way to the 1820s or so, I can’t directly trace my fiancé to those early A.’s. Once again, I would need to confer with his family to see what the deal was.

My fiancé was pretty excited about the information I found. His mom’s side is a little trickier, as I said, but if I put a little more time into it later, I can probably dig up some stuff on her side.