Donald Allen Jones's Blog: A Genealogist's Journey, page 2

Research Tips

In the beginning, my research into the Thomas Oliver Jones family relied heavily on the sources at Ancestry.com. Through that site I was able to discover his approximate birth year of 1851 and his place of birth in Beaufort County, South Carolina by searching United States Federal Census records dating from 1860 to 1910. These records also helped to date his year of marriage, his family members and also his various residences in Beaufort, Charleston, and Hampton Counties, South Carolina and then to Tattnall County, Georgia.

While that information helped with the broad strokes it did little to add in the details that make for a much richer story. For that, I had to broaden my search to court records gleaned from a friend and online newspaper articles. The court documents were interesting as they helped to describe the way in which Thomas and his sons were involved in the local community, both positively and negatively.

But, it’s the local newspaper archives which really helped to put a large crack in this family’s brick wall. For, in the paper I found a single obituary for Thomas and his wife Isadora, who died one day apart from each other in 1917. This one document, aside from giving me a death date I’d been looking for for years, also gave an approximate time frame for their being in Tattnall County. I now know that they were around in 1887, thirty years prior to their deaths.

The point of this all is that while Ancestry, and other genealogical sites, have a great many wonderful records, there is sometimes nothing better than local sources. Those sources could be online newspaper archives or your local library’s genealogy section. They could be historical societies or genealogical societies. Don’t be afraid to branch out to find the information you need. It could be anywhere. #familyhistory #project #writing #genealogy

Keeping Up with the Joneses

History remembers only the celebrated, genealogy remembers them all. - Laurence Overmire.



I mentioned in my first post Monday that, since publishing my first family history book, I’ve begun working on the second about my Jones family. As I sat at my desk, eager to get started, I realized my first problem: What’s the scope of the story I want to write? With A Brave Man’s Country I knew the answer - I wanted to write about two of my uncles who’d served in the Confederate Army during the War. With that in mind it was easy to get to work.

The same wasn’t true with this new book. I had to decide if I wanted to write biographical accounts of certain individuals or if I wanted to be more broad in scope. The difficulty with the former approach is a lack of enough records to feel comfortable writing about someone. Thankfully, the issue with the latter was much simpler; I have enough data to write something more broad about the Joneses, I just needed to decide if I should start in South Carolina or wait until my ancestors moved into Georgia. I’ve opted to write about their lives in Georgia.

I’ve begun with my great-uncle Thomas O. Jones’s family, who arrived in Georgia around 1887. By gathering all the data I currently have gleaned from Ancestry.com and other genealogical and historical sites I’ve been able to really get a handle on their lives, their successes and their struggles. It’s been extremely enlightening and I can’t wait to discover more as I continue with this project. #familyhistory #project #writing #genealogy

Life-Changing Events

Isn’t it funny how sometimes the things that seem the most boring can turn out to be life-changing? For instance, going to family reunions used to make my teeth ache they were so dull God, it was boring. My family and I would rush to get there only to eat, chat for maybe an hour, and then high tail it out of there.


But, everything changed one year when I was in college. Initially, I’d thought to major in journalism while at Georgia Southern University. However, that went out the door about two quarters in when I took a History of Western Civilization class and changed my major to a B.A. in history. Then, about a year after that I went to one of those teeth-achingly boring family reunions and my life’s path was forever altered.


It was at this reunion that one of my mother’s cousins brought several papers with information about my Lewis family line. In those papers was a brief biography of a great-uncle of mine, one Jeremiah General Lewis. It turns out that Jeremiah had served as a private in Co. K., 47th Georgia Volunteer Infantry during the War Between the States from February of 1863 to October of 1864. That information lit a fire under me and I went from studying Classical Greek and Roman history to delving int genealogy, local, State, and U.S. history with an emphasis on the War. Doing so helped me learn about all of my family lines, and specifically about General Lewis’s elder brother, Elbert Lewis (Pvt, Co. D., 61st Georgia Infantry).

Fast forward about seventeen years. In 2015, the phrase “A Brave Man’s Country” flashed into my brain as I was getting ready for bed; the phrase comes from my Lewis family’s alleged motto, “Omne Solum Forti Patria Est” - in English, “Every Land is a Brave Man’s Country”. I immediately knew I wanted to do something with the motto, but it took me until 2018 to realize what I needed to do. That April my book, A Brave Man’s Country: Two Lewis Uncles Who Served in the Confederate States Army” was conceived and then published a little over a month ago, on April 16, 2021. I launched it on April 26, Confederate Memorial Day.


To date I have sold over 80 copies of my book and have had two speaking engagements, with more to come on the way. I have also started work on my second book concerning my Jones family here in Georgia and have several other ideas banging around in my head. I hope you’ll journey with me as I post here about my work.