I recently bought a copy of Elizabeth Shown Mills’ fabulous book Evidence Explained (e-book available for download on Footnote.com) and have spent the evening creating citations for events sourced from tombstones that I have personally photographed.

It’s a simple format and by copying, pasting, and editing, I was able to create citations for over 40 events in one evening.

The basic format is:

Cemetery (Location), Item, data collection info, date photographed.

Here are a couple of samples from my database:

• Ramsey Cemetery (Ramhurst, Murray County, Georgia), Maude W. Butler footstone, personally photographed, 20 Sep 2008.
• Spring Place Cemetery (Spring Place, Murray County, Georgia), Martin Roberts and Rosie Roberts Headstone, personally photographed, 27 Dec 2007.

Source:  Mills, Elizabeth Shown. Evidence Explained : Citing History Sources from Artifacts to Cyberspace. Boston: Genealogical Company, Incorporated, 2007. 213.

I found a great source record last week at the library. It’s a book called Revolutionary War Soldiers of Western North Carolina: Burke County, Vol. 1. The author is Emmet R. White and it was published in 1984 by Southern Historical Press, Inc. of Easley, S.C.

I reviewed all the indexed items for “Kendrick” in Murray County Heritage today. It was at times frustrating and at other times exhilarating. Many of the Kendrick references had only initials instead of first names. That’s great if you already know who the people are, but if you don’t, it’s not helpful at all. Many of the male Kendricks had similar initials (i.e. lots of first names that started with F), so I couldn’t tell if the person referenced was one of my ancestors or not. As a case in point, there is reference to a store owned by F. T Kendrick in Cisco. This may be my great-grandfather. I know that my grandfather owned a store in Ramhurst when my dad was little, but I’ve never heard anything about his father having a store. My mother may be able to help with these questions.

I did find one really good section. (Isn’t that always the way? You search and search and find nothing; just when you are ready to give up, you hit the mother lode. That’s part of what makes genealogy fun.) This section confirmed that my 3x great-grandparents, Thomas Kendrick and Mahala Lawson were married in Polk County, Tennessee and identified a burial place of Hopewell Cemetery. I don’t know where this cemetery is, but when I locate it, I’ll add it to my list of places to visit when the weather warms back up. It also confirmed the names of their children for me.

The Kendrick’s are a big brick wall for me, so I would say that is not a bad day’s work.