52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks (Week 2) – John Brooks Binns

I just realized that I haven’t written anything about my BINNS family. And I have a LOT of information. I need to get writing! What am I waiting for? – I know! A challenge! I have pledged to join the “52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks” Challenge for 2014 which was started by Amy Crow of the No Story Too Small blog. Each week Amy will showcase all of that week’s ancestor posts and I hope to be included. I missed Week 1, but here is a post for week 2.

JOHN BROOKS BINNS

B. 20 MARCH 1910, MONTICELLO, ARKANSAS

D. 10 DECEMBER 1989, FORT SMITH, ARKANSAS

John Brooks Binns was my great-grandfather

Photo of John B. Binns, Arkansas, 1950s

John Brooks Binns was born March 20^th, 1910 in Monticello (Drew County) Arkansas to John Milton Binns and Perthinia “Pert” Brooks. He was the 2^nd to youngest child of 8 born to this couple. His siblings were John Lavert Binns, Milton “Roy” Binns, James Howard Binns, Rubye Estelle Binns, Van Carl Binns, Lurah Marcelle Binns, and Byron Zach Binns.  His father, John Milton Binns, was a farmer from Georgia who became a salesman in Monticello and eventually became a meat cutter / butcher.

John followed in his father’s footsteps by working in a department store in Longview, Texas and in Kroger’s as a meat cutter; but he also went to college and earned his teaching degree. He and his wife, Blanche Hill taught school in Alma, Arkansas.

When John and Blanche met, John was studying and playing football at Monticello A&M College. He was there from 1930 – 1932. He was a member of the “Little Big Three” Press Association. Blanche was attending Magnolia A&M College from 1930 – 1931 and then transferred to Monticello A&M for the 1931 – 1932 school year to be with John. On August 19^th 1934 John and Blanche were married at the First Christian Church in Longview, Texas where John was working in advertising for a department store.

John and Blanche Binns had three blonde haired, blued eyed little girls, including my grandmother, born between 1936 and 1940 in Fort Smith, Arkansas. In 1943, they bought their house on 1401 N. 19^th street where they lived until they died. He also bought the house behind him and the grocery store next door to his house. He rented the store out to a lady named Alice Shields who ran the store. He eventually tore the store down and had a house built there. This is the house that my mom, dad, and I lived in when I was first born. John worked at Kroger’s on Grand Avenue in Fort Smith, Arkansas as a meat cutter for ten years and then later he owned and operated the Cash and Carry in Fort Smith on N. 2^nd street.

After the girls were old enough to go to high school, John and Blanche went back to school to get their teaching degrees. Blanche went to school the first two summers of 1952 and 1953 and John the next two in 1954 and 1955. They went to Russellville Tech in Northwest Arkansas. Their first teaching jobs were in Alma, Arkansas. Blanche taught the 2^nd grade and John taught 7^th grade Science. Then he switched to 5^th grade after realizing he couldn’t handle the junior high kids.

In 1963, Blanche had a stroke and had to stop teaching. John took care of her and continued teaching until he retired in 1975. John must have taken really good care of her because she survived him by 3 years. John died December 10^th, 1989 in Fort Smith, Arkansas. Blanche died December 27^th, 1992 in a nursing home in Fort Smith.

I was lucky to have grown up with 6 of my 8 great-grandparents, including John and Blanche. Blanche never really liked us kids much, but John, or “great-granddad” to me, loved us to death. He was a big hugger and he would squeeze you so tight you couldn’t breathe. And he was always around. He got sick pretty fast, so I didn’t really have to see him bad off in a nursing home like I saw Blanche. He got a bunch of fluid in his lungs probably due to the emphysema and that is eventually what stopped his breathing. There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t think of him.

Here are some photos to remind me of our time together: 

Ginger Smith and great-grandfather, John Brooks Binns, Fort Smith, Arkansas, 1977

Ginger Smith and great-grandfather, John Brooks Binns, Fort Smith, Arkansas, 1982

Ginger Smith and great-grandfather, John Brooks Binns, Fort Smith, Arkansas, 1984

All photos are from the private collection of Barbara Binns, Fort Smith, Arkansas and were scanned by Ginger Smith, 14 November 2008. 

Tombstone Tuesday - Joseph Hill - Newberry Co., South Carolina

Headstone of Joseph Hill in Lower Duncan Creek Cemetery in Whitmore, Newberry Co., SC. [1]

Transcription:

HERE

Lies the Body of

JOSEPH HILL

Husband of Ruth Hill

who died 

Oct 5th 1839

in the 68th year

of his age.

According to his headstone, Joseph Hill would have been born about 1771. He was my 5th great-grandfather. He was married to Ruth Fowler, daughter of Richard and Ruth Fowler. Ruth is also buried in this cemetery. 

• His son Elijah Hill [2] married Rachel Watson, daughter of Nancy Jeans and John Watson. 
• Their son Joseph Watson Hill married Josephine F Cox [3], daughter of Robert Cox and Basheba McCoy [4].
• Their son Nathaniel "Gus" Hill [5] married Jessie Inez Barton, daughter of James Silas Barton and Sarah Alice Tinsley. 
• Their daughter Blanche Kathryne Hill was my great-grandmother. She married John Brooks Binns, son of John Milton Binns and Perthinia Eula Brooks. I was fortunate to have grown up with most of my great-grandparents. 
• Their daughter Barbara Binns is my grandmother. She has taken the Family Finder autosomal DNA test. 

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SOURCES: 

   [1] Photograph taken by Donna Brummett and added to Joseph Hill's Find-A-Grave memorial on 4 December 2008. Photo used with permission by owner. 

   [2] Newberry County, South Carolina, Wills Book, 1825-1840, Vol N, p. 170-171, Joseph Hill, 9 October 1939 (probated); Office of Probate Judge, Newberry; digital images, "South Carolina Probate Records, Bound Volumes 1671-1977," FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org : accessed 3 December 2013).  Mentioned as Elijah Hill in his father Joseph Hill's will (w. 30 Sept 1839, Newberry District, SC); and also named as Executor and granted letters testamentary.

   [3] Sharon J Doliante, Maryland and Virginia Colonials: Genealogies of Some Colonial Families, Volume I (1991; reprint, Baltimore, MD: Genealogical Publishing Co., Inc, 1998), p. 560, Odell Family; digial images, Ancestry.com, Ancestry.com (http://search.ancestry.com/search/db.aspx?dbid=48206 : downloaded 26 November 2013).

   [4] Greenville County, South Carolina, Wills Book, 1840-1852, Vol. C, p. 429-430, Bersheba Cox, 15 July 1852 (proved);  digital images, "South Carolina Probate Records, Bound Volumes 1671-1977," FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org : accessed 28 July 2011).

   [5] I have not found the will of Gus' father, John Watson Hill. I do intend to order the death certificate of Gus Hill, though, which should have the name of his parents listed. 

Keeping Track of My 2nd Great-Grandparents

I have 8 sets of 2^nd great-grandparents with a total of 16 individuals.

Paternal Line:

Set # 1: Claude Rual Smith (1896 - 1975) and Willie Harriet Riddle (1899 – 1985)

Set # 2: Fred Fox (1884 – 1974) and Melvina West (1882 – 1978)

Set # 3: John Milton Binns (1868 – 1961) and Perthinia “Pert” Eula Brooks (1873 – 1942)

Set # 4: Nathaniel Gustaves Hill (1873 – 1944) and Jessie Inez Barton (1875 – 1950)

Maternal Line:

Set # 1: Alvin Theodore Godwin (1879 – 1950) and Louella Davis (1882 – 1947)

Set # 2: William Edward Peters (1874 – 1948) and Dora King (1875 – 1912)

Set # 3: James Franklin Lasiter (1876 – 1968) and Rosalie Putman (1875 – 1961)

Set # 4: Barney Sheron Benson (1884 – 1952) and Eva Mae Dennis (1889 – 1983)

I was born in 1976. As you can see, two of my paternal 2^nd great-grandfathers died 1 or 2 years before I was born and 2 of my paternal 2^nd great-grandmothers lived to hold me in their arms (The obituary of one of my 2^nd great-grandmothers, Willie Harriet Riddle Smith, mentioned that she had 18 2^nd great-grandchildren!)

One of my maternal 2^nd great-grandmothers lived to hold me. I wasn’t the only one though. She had several other 2^nd great-grandchildren that she travelled around to visit with. Check out my 5-generation photos:

 Back Row: Sue Lasiter (my grandmother), Marilyn Godwin (my mother), Louise Benson Lasiter (my great-grandmother); Front: Eva Dennis Benson (my 2nd great-grandmother), Ginger R. Smith (me!). Taken March 1976, Fort Smith, Arkansas. From personal collection of Ginger R. Smith, inherited from Louise Lasiter. Copyright 2012. 

Back Row: Claude Rual Smith, Jr (my great-grandfather) and Willie Harriet Riddle Smith (my 2nd great-grandmother); Front: Tim D. Smith (my father), Ginger R. Smith (me), Darrel E. Smith (my grandfather). Taken 1976, Fort Smith, Arkansas. From personal collection of Ginger R. Smith, scanned from photo album of Barbara J. Smith, Copyright 2012. 

L to R: Reba Fox Smith (my great-grandmother), Ginger R. Smith (me),  Melvina West Fox (my 2nd great-grandmother), Tim D. Smith (my father), Darrel E. Smith. Taken March 1976, Fort Smith, Arkansas. From personal collection of Ginger R. Smith, scanned from photo album of Barbara J. Smith, Copyright 2012. 

Most all of my sets of 2^nd great-grandparents lived in Arkansas with the exception of the Bensons. I’m pretty lucky because the Arkansas death certificates started about 1914. I can actually probably take my ancestry back another generation to 3^rd or even 4^th great-grandparents just by using death certificate research!

As I said in my last post about requesting death certificates from the Arkansas Department of Health, it can become quite addicting and difficult to keep up with all of the requests and processing of incoming certificates. I try to space them out. I have employed the following two tables to help me with my research. They track my progress in securing and processing death certificates and obituaries. From looking at these tables I can see from a glance what I am missing.

From the tables I have filled out below, I can see that I have the obituaries and death certificates of 8 of my 16 great-grandparents. I am half way there! The obituaries I obtained either from family members or from various newspapers. My cousin, Doris Hamblin Smith, sent me copies of a bunch of Smith family obituaries in 2010 before she passed away.

In order to understand what the headers Scanned?, Transcribed?, FTF Notes?, and FTF Source? refer to, you must first know my genealogy work flow:

1.       Scan and save obituary and death certificate as a PDF, TIF, and JPG file

2.       Transcribe and save to Word document or Notepad File

3.       Copy the Transcript to the notes file for that person in my genealogy software

4.       Enter the Birth, Death, Burial, Occupation, Marital, etc facts into my genealogy software, including the parents' names

5.       Create a source and attach to the Facts (some call these "Events")

Nos. 3 and 4 are included under the FTF Notes heading in the table. FTF stands for “Family Tree File.”

As I collect more obituaries and death certificates, I can  update this table. I already know which death certificate I plan to order next – that of Rosalie Putman. However, since 6 of the remaining 8 died in Arkansas, I can go ahead and order them all at once.

Dora King died in 1912 in Missouri. I have not found a death record for her yet, probably because she died before deaths were required to be recorded. Family stories say she died of a snake bite. I might be able to find a death notice for her in a local newspaper. But I've found this to be difficult; or at least time consuming when you don't know the month and day. 

Barney Benson died while visiting his son in California. I have not yet ordered a death certificate from California, so this will be my first experience.

Obituary Resources
Name	Scanned?	Transcribed?	FTF Notes?	FTF Source?
Claude Smith Sr	yes	yes	yes	yes
Willie Riddle	yes	yes	yes	yes
Fred Fox	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Melvina West	No	No	No	No
John M Binns	No	No	No	No
Eula Brooks	No	No	No	No
Gus Hill	No	No	No	No
Jessie Barton	No	No	No	No
Alvin Godwin	No	No	No	No
Louella Davis	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
William E Peters	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Dora King	No	No	No	No
James F Lasiter	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Rosalie Putman	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Barney Benson	No	No	No	No
Eva Dennis	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes

Death Certificates
Name	Scanned?	Transcribed?	FTF Notes?	FTF Source?
Claude Smith Sr	yes	yes	yes	yes
Willie Riddle	No	No	No	No
Fred Fox	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Melvina West	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
John M Binns	No	No	No	No
Eula Brooks	No	No	No	No
Gus Hill	No	No	No	No
Jessie Barton	No	No	No	No
Alvin Godwin	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Louella Davis	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
William E Peters	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Dora King	No	No	No	No
James F Lasiter	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Rosalie Putman	No	No	No	No
Barney Benson	No	No	No	No
Eva Dennis	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes

How do you stay organized? Does your genealogy work flow look like mine? If not, how does it differ? How is it similar? I’m looking forward to hearing how other people process the obituaries and death certificates they receive. 

2011: A year in Review

This time last year I set 5 goals for myself. They were really only supposed to run for the month of January, because I could never imagine setting a WHOLE YEARS WORTH of GOALS for myself like many of you diligent genealogy people out there. But of course, they ended up running for the entire year, so no harm done. Here was my list from Jan 2011 and my progress to date (along with any future goals I might add to each):

1) To scan all of the genealogy documents that my cousin Richard sent me on the Binns and Brooks sides of my family and enter the information into my genealogy database:

I scanned all 95 pages he sent me. Most of it was genealogy his Aunt Rubye (Binns) Brashears had compiled back in the 1950s and then his own additions from the 80s. These were scanned in .tif format and pages from the same group were also saved as a .pdf file for easier reading. Much of this information I already had in my database. I didn’t find any new information in what he sent me. One of the files was a type-written genealogy of the Binns surname and information about the family coming from England compiled by “The Media Research Bureau” – whatever that is. This compilation did mention my particular line. It had a very short bibliography, but no references cited in the text, so it would be hard to determine what information came from what source, but I might be able to use them as a future guide, especially for research in England. A future goal might include typing up a transcript of this text (or finding an online version of it which is searcheable; or possibly converting the scan to OCR text – something I’ve never done before).

2) To enter all of the Binns, Anthony, and Pye names references from the Wilkes County Georgia books I copied from the Library into my excel spreadsheet. Determine the major Binns family lines in Wilkes Co. GA

Ok first of all, let me say that I didn’t even know I had a spreadsheet! But alas I see that I did, in fact, start one in Jan of 2010!!! I don’t see anything with a 2011 date, so it doesn’t look like I added anything from 2011. In fact, I think most of this stuff in on my “To SCAN” list. So chances are this was not even started. Guess it will be marked as a future goal.

Oh and guess what? I bought one of the books from a genealogy conference I went to (NGS in Charleston) which mentions my Binns family in VA! Reviewing that deed book will be added to a future goal.

3) To read Christine Rose's Courthouse Research for Family Historians: Your Guide to Genealogical Treasures book

Yeah, I read this off and on throughout the first 6 months of the year and then I got bored with it. I didn’t learn anything new. So I ordered myself 3 new books – Helen Leary’s North Carolina Research book, Val Greenwoods, The Researcher’s Guide, and something else, probably Elizabeth Shown Mills’ Evidence Explained (the big one) that would probably be more interesting. Add those to goals for 2012, especially since it sounded like the bookclub in Second Life was really good this year with “The Researcher’s Guide.

4) Get back to working with some cousins on James Godwin Sr and Jr (not necessarily father and son) of North Carolina, including putting all relevant documents online on the Wiki site

This was our best accomplishment. I worked with 5 other researchers on this project throughout the year. We pulled land grants, deeds, wills, and estate files from Sampson and Johnston Counties (North Carolina) and abstracted them. I created an online abstract form using Google Docs (thanks to Thomas MacEntee’s webinar on Google Forms), which saved the information into an online, shared spreadsheet. And then I created a Word Doc which pulled the information from the online spreadsheet into an abstract Word Doc (automatically) which we then were able to save to our Godwin wiki site. As it turns out the Sampson County (North Carolina) deeds are now online at the Sampson County Register of Deeds.  Whoo hooo     !!! That was a big help. So far we have over 100 deeds transcribed.

My colleagues on this project are all descendants of this line except for me and Lori – to me it is worth it to work with excellent researchers such as Lori, Sara, Tracy, Charlie and Ashley even if I am not related to this line because by finding records and Godwins who belong to their line, we are finding ones that do NOT belong to ours!

One of them started mapping land grants and deeds with a Deed-Mapper like software. We also incorporated Google Earth to see where the land would sit in modern day. We also managed to sort out who all of the progenitor’s (James Godwin who died in 1801, Sampson Co., NC and who married to Elizabeth Dawson?) children were. I thought this was a huge accomplishment. We challenged each other in all sorts of aspects. And it was a joy to work with them and I hope it continues. Oh yeah and we’ve incorporated DNA into the mix as well. That’s how we know that Lori and I are not related to their lines.

5) Continue evaluating some Family Finder DNA test results of some Godwin relatives.

It has proven to be quite a challenge to keep up with some of my Godwin Family Finder testers. I actually took the test myself in July, thinking I would have more time to “play” with it while I was on summer break from school. Boy was I in for a big surprise! I caught on pretty quick though and figured out how to work with it. Unfortunately I wasn’t very proactive with blogging about my experiences, so that will definitely be high on the priority list for 2012!  There were also a lot of challenges because ftDNA kept making changes to its site and things “stopped working.” Fortunately as a project administrator I was only helping 1 person with their results and she caught on pretty quickly with how to deal with her brother’s results; she also caught on to when things “stopped working.”

I’m going to leave my goals for 2012 for the next post. Oh and as a side note, did you know that when I write a post and set a goal in it, I tag that post with the label of “goal?” That way I can easily find all the goals that I posted and shared with you, my readers. You can see the label on the right side of the page under the “Other Misc Items” category. Speaking of, that reminds me, one of my goals for next year is definitely going to be to create a very cool family history / genealogy related blog header!!!

What about you?

Did you set some genealogy goals for yourself in 2011?

How did you do in working towards them?

What worked well for you in achieving them?

What didn’t work well for you?

Did you work with a genea-buddy?

Please feel free to write your own blog post and link back to it in a comment below or tell me about it in a comment below.

I look forward to hearing about your goals!

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Photo - Clip art licensed from the Clip Art Gallery on DiscoverySchool.com (This is what the website told me to write. It is copyrighted, but the website says I can use it as long as I link back to their site).