Where To Now?

Yesterday and today, we spent our time wandering Newberry and Spartanburg Counties in order to try to see where our folks lived. During a visit to the Newberry Library local history room, we came across a description of the Cappleman land in an equity filing that said it was along Cannon Creek. The 1810 and 1825 maps of the area each had a pinpoint that said Cappleman's Hill and Cappleman respectively. With those tidbits of information, we were able to deduce the present-day location of this land... which is currently under development to be the future home of First Baptist Church Newberry! We also visited the Newberry Museum, where we learned about the history of the area and looked through the exhibits to try to find names we recognized. The only one that caught my eye was Senn, the family who donated a large cupboard that was right beside the elevator. Elizabeth Senn was my 5th great grandmother, wife of Heinrich Boozer (their daughter married a Cappleman, and the lineage goes d...

How is it that a map can show a populated place called Cappleman in the vicinity of where you expect your Capplemans to be living, but there are no records of deeds in their name? Ah, a mystery. But I'm getting ahead of myself. A followup on yesterday's task: finding the current location of what was once Ulrich Boozer's land. Sadly, there are multiple industrial complexes currently on that land, including a power station. Soooo... we won't be able to stand on that little piece of ancestral land. Today's search took us to the South Carolina Department of Archives and History , where we dove into deed and will abstracts, then culled microfilms for scans of the original documents in their fullness. My goal was to locate the land of Francis Mason (my 4th great grandfather), and therefore that of his son James Mason as well. They moved to Spartanburg from Virginia after the Revolution, so they didn't have original land grants but rather purchased from those who did. ...

We slept in a little bit this morning and had brunch at the appropriately named Curiosity Coffee Bar, a highly-rated little place just a couple of blocks from the White Rabbit (our Alice-in-Wonderland-themed bnb). Curiouser and curiouser, we spent the rest of the day at the South Carolina State Library.  The library staff were quite accommodating of our multiple requests from the stacks (I don't have a pic of the big pile of books we left behind at the end of the day).  The things we're curious about make some people (Kef and Dad specifically) shake their heads. Today's finds included a listing of early settlers to South Carolina, among which was my 5 greats grandfather Samuel McGill, described among the "poor protestants lately arrived from Ireland on the encouragement of the Bounty given by this Province." His age was listed as 23, and he was granted that bounty of 100 acres. Although we knew he was born in Ireland, we didn't know what year. So this 1766 lis...

Well clearly I fell down on the job regarding blogging the Maui trip. My only excuse is I didn't take my laptop and it's really annoying to blog on a tablet.  But on to the next thing. This week is my trip with mom to South Carolina to stalk dead people. We moved it up to spring this year instead of fall for myriad reasons. So far, we're off to a bit of a slow start, as mom's flights were delayed and I'm just killing time in a Starbuck's outside Charlotte waiting for her to land. Not all bad, though, as it gave me some time to wander a bit. Primarily, I looked for scenic views, and was rewarded with a brief section of the Blue Ridge Parkway. I have to say that the drive through Virginia, in particular the Shenandoah Valley, is one of my absolute favorites. I suppose it's fitting that I would choose this particular lookout as my destination as the sign explains how our folks ended up coming through here...they were among the Scotch-Irish pioneers referenced h...