Ugh. Slave owners. Dammit.

Cramming in as much research as I can in the last hours before my trial Ancestry membership runs out. Researching the Littlejohn arm this morning (Estell : Obert : Van Horn and Mary Littlejohn Maurice.

Discovered that Mary's grandparents and great-grandparents were slave owners in Virginia in the early 1800s. This is the first arm of all of my ancestors and all of David's ancestors that I've found who were slave owners. And I'm SOOOOO disappointed. I'm sitting here literally on the verge of tears, knowing that my ancestors 'owned' other human beings. I'm disgusted, humbled, and sad.

Intro

Started a blog yesterday for research on one grandmother's family ancestry. And decided that it wasn't fair to the other grandparents. So this blog is dedicated to the family history of my other grandmother's parents (who are pictured in the 1943 photo in the blog header): Estell Deaton Maurice and Beulah Rebecca Stone.

I feel like I got most of my genes from these guys. They were smart and artistic, but Estell was quite goofy (though his goofiness might have been accidental, like mine). This apple hasn't fallen far from the ancestral tree.

This blog is intended to be a repository of information, where cousins, aunts, uncles, etc., can find/share/and contribute. I will share what I've found, along with snippets of the documents that support the link.

Please know that I am definitely a paper trail person. Hearsay and family stories are good as starting points, but I'm interested in the evidence, the documents, the photos. I have a huge folder on my hard drive full of census images, obituary clips, headstone photos, death certificates, etc. I have an equally large folder of incorrect information that I found in LDS files and in other pedigree charts.

More to come!!