Hunting the ancestors.

[angledge]

Great, just what I need: another online obsession. With the help of my friend Kim (from Cornell days), I have really started digging into the records available at ancestry.com. And there is so much to find! I was up until 1:30 AM this morning, tracing family connections from Oregon, back across the pioneer trails. I didn't make it as far as crossing the Atlantic, but even making it this far turned up some fascinating stuff.

For instance, on my dad's side, I knew that my great-great-grandfather William Ledgerwood had fought for the Confederacy. My dad has done some research on him - he fought with the First Missouri Cavalry, was captured at Vicksburg, eventually released. But Kim found William's Oath of Allegiance, which he signed on July 8, 1865:


Click for a zoomable version.

He married Talitha Alice Heard in Alabama in 1873, & then they show up in the 1880 Census in Myrtle Creek, Oregon.

On my mom's side, I also traced one of the Oregon pioneer families, the Kime-Rickards. Casper Rickard & his wife Catherine Maloy Kime were both born back East - he in Davidson, NC in 1822 & she in Pike County, IN in 1820. In the early 1850s, they decided to head to Oregon, & the 1860 Census finds them in Butte, Oregon with five children: Samuel (11) & Jasper (9), both born in Indiana; Susana (3) & Amanda (2), both born in Oregon; & the middle child Andrew (6), recorded as being born "on the Plains":


Can you even imagine?

Comments

[love2loveher.livejournal.com]

I was about to note that you had more Confederate and North Carolina roots than I do, then I remembered that my maternal great-grandfather was Jefferson Davis Monroe, buried on what is now Fort Bragg Army Base.

Surviving the Oregon Trail, though. That's impressive. Surviving the Oregon Trail pregnant, and with an infant - you come from some badass dysentary-resistant peoples.