Randy Seaver’s challenge this week is to:

Find a living male person in your database from your maternal grandfather’s patrilineal line who could take a Y-DNA test. Answer these questions:

1) What was your mother’s father’s name?

2) What is your mother’s father’s patrilineal line? That is, his father’s father’s father’s … back to the most distant male ancestor in that line?

3) Can you identify male sibling(s) of your mother’s father, and any living male descendants from those male sibling(s)? If so, you have a candidate to do a Y-DNA test on that patrilineal line. If not, you may have to find male siblings, and their descendants, of the next generation back, or even further.

4) Tell us about it in your own blog post, or in a comment on this post, or in a Facebook or Google Plus post.

I decided to take this back one more generation, because it’s more pertinent to my research needs.  So the questions I’ll answer are:

1) What was your maternal grandmother’s father’s name?

2) What is your maternal grandmother’s father’s patrilineal line? That is, his father’s father’s father’s … back to the most distant male ancestor in that line?

3) Can you identify male sibling(s) of your maternal grandmother’s father, and any living male descendants from those male sibling(s)? If so, you have a candidate to do a Y-DNA test on that patrilineal line. If not, you may have to find male siblings, and their descendants, of the next generation back, or even further.

Here is what I found:

Memaw and Pepaw Ward

1.  My grandmother’s father was Newton Coleman Ward.  That’s him on the right.  Newt was born 24 Oct 1890 in Newport, Georgia and died 1 Aug 1974 in Dalton, Georgia.  He and Rachel had only one son, Worth, who died as a young man, so any yDNA will have to come from a collateral line.

2.  Newt’s father was William Harvey Ward (1864-1933), born and died in Fannin County, Georgia.  His father was Harvey D. Ward, born about 1840 in North Carolina.  I can’t go back any further in this line.

3.  Fortunately, Newt had six brothers and five of them lived to adulthood and at least three had families.

3a.  Edward Clifford Ward, born April 1893, had three daughters and one son (I’m not posting the names of this generation as they may still be living).

3b.  William Dallas Ward, born 21 Jul 1897, was married, but I don’t know if he had any children, as I haven’t done much research on him.

3c.  Coles H. Ward, born about 1900, is another of my great-grandfather’s brothers that I haven’t researched.  I don’t know if he married and had children.

3d.  Charlie C. Ward, born about 1904, had three sons (one died in 1945) and a daughter.

3e.  Virgil Taft Ward, born about 1907, is another brother that I know little about.

So, there are at least 3 male descendants of my great-grandfather’s brothers, which is good, because their father was the only boy in his family (that I know of).

If you are a descendant of any of these Wards and have done DNA testing on this male line, please contact me.

My grandmother’s sisters, Thelma (Ward) Fortenberry and Bondell (Ward) Fain.

My great-grandfather made moonshine.  This is a picture of his still.

My great-grandfather and other workers from the Cohutta Talc Mine in Murray County, Georgia.  Pepaw Ward is standing at the far left.

Pearl Ward and her first husband, John Thomas.  Pearl was my grandmother’s sister.

This picture was taken when my great-grandparents were courting (according to my grandmother).  They are the young couple seated at the far left.

Memaw and Pepaw Ward

My great-grandparents, Newton Coleman Ward and Rachel Louisa Johnson.

Mary Lourania (Forrester) Ward – my 2nd great-grandmother.

This is the permit to bury my grandmother’s only brother.  I’m excited about this record for a couple of reasons.  For one thing, I’d never seen a burial permit before; I had no idea so much good genealogical information would be included.  For another, it corroborates my grandmother’s story about her brother’s death.

Analysis of the record

Person Asking for Permit:  N. C. Ward.  This is my great-grandfather – Worth’s father.

Residence:  Newport, Ga.  The date of this permit is 11 Jul 1939.  According to my great-grandfather’s Social Security Application, he lived in Chatsworth, Ga.  in December 1939, so the family moved sometime between July and December.

Full name of the deceased:  William Worth Ward.  I didn’t know Worth’s first name was William.

Date of death:  9 July 1939.  This matches the date on his headstone.

Cause of death:  bleeding.  According to my grandmother, he was stabbed to death, so yes, bleeding makes sense.

Place of death:  Morganton, Ga.  I knew he died in Fannin County, but I didn’t know the specific town.

Residence:  Newport, Ga.  Also new information.

Place of burial:  Stock Hill.  I’ve been to this cemetery and he is buried next to his parents.

Date of burial:  11 Jul 1939.  New information

Births

• Mary (Boggs) Ellis was born in 1807 in Georgia.

Deaths

• Mary Louisa Brown died in 1898.
• Lucy Ann Tucker died in 1905 in Murray County, Georgia.
• Cynthia Caroline (Reed) Whitener died in 1915 in Shelbyville, Tennessee.
• Carrie (Bell) Johnson died in 1920.
• Charles Kilgore died in 1959 in Murray County, Georgia.

Marriages

• Isham Lawson and Sarah Randolph were married in 1803 in Greene County, Tennessee.
• Rachel Louisa Johnson and Newton Coleman Ward were married in 1909 in Fannin County, Georgia (my great-grandparents).