For this week's post, I am introducing a new prompt: Side-by-Side Sunday. In family history, we often look for the threads that bind us together, but sometimes the most revealing stories are found in the spaces where we drifted apart. For this inaugural Side-by-Side Sunday, I am laying out the final records of my great-grandparents. By placing their death certificates and their shared headstone next to one another, we see a vivid picture of two people who shared a homeland and a family, yet ended their journeys in very different worlds.
This week, as we observe National Agriculture Week, I am looking closer at the life of Sidney D. Rogers (1865–1924). His records illustrate the grit required to sustain a family in the Pee Dee region of South Carolina during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Sidney’s relationship with the land was one of lifelong labor, beginning in the wake of family loss and ending with a surprising professional shift in his final years.
This weekend I was cleaning up and organizing my genealogy files. Part of that collection included a cache of newspaper clippings I had downloaded during a free weekend on Newspapers.com. It turns out that my wife's grandmother, Mary Marjorie Voorhees (born March 16, 1908), was frequently mentioned in the Richmond Times-Dispatch during the late 1920s and '30s. One of those clippings, a delightful society notice from 1927, really caught my attention and I knew I had to write a post about it to share it.
In my last post, we used census records, tax records, and estate sales to bridge the gap between my wife's ancestor Daniel Epps and his brother William. By applying the principle of genealogical proof by close association, we didn't just find a father; we found a hero.
If the story of our family began as a faded sketch, the most vibrant stroke of color was added in the spring of 1781. In the world of the American Revolution, "Continental Blue" was more than just a uniform color; it was the hue of a new identity. While many Halifax militiamen like Moses Epps fought in their everyday linen hunting shirts, they stood under the banner of the Blue and Buff.
Moses didn't just witness history; he marched directly into the smoke of the The Seige of Yorktown. In this post, we look at the "Blue" in our family palette—the service of a man who risked his life for a nation that was still just a theory on parchment.
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| Surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown, Virginia, October 19, 1781, marking the capture of more than 7,000 British and Hessian troops; copy of a lithograph by James Baillie, ca. 1845. Courtesy of the National Archives (National Archives Identifier 532883). |
I’ve written before about the day my great-grandfather, Ludvig Amandus Olsen, lost his life. It’s a story defined by a split-second tragedy—a falling steel rod on a Brooklyn pier in January 1930. (Link HERE) But lately, I’ve been looking past that single day and focusing on the quiet, grueling survival story that followed for my great-grandmother, Gulborg, and her five children.
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| Arthur, Irving, Gulborg, Clifford, Ethel and Gertrude. Digital image of an undated photo ©️Edward R. Olsen |
52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks is a series of weekly prompts to get you to think about an ancestor and share something about them. The weekly prompt is provided by www.amyjohnsoncrow.com. The prompt for the week of March 9 is "Turning Point."
A turning point is a specific moment or event at which a decisive change in a situation occurs—the "hinge" upon which the rest of a story swings. It is the point after which nothing can ever go back to the way it was before.
The following biographical sketch is based on the family history research conducted by my mother, (name withheld for privacy). Supplemental historical context and geographical details of the Bavarian Palatinate have been provided by Gemini.
Adam Pirron was born on February 22, 1871, in Fockenberg-Limbach, Bavaria (modern-day Germany). He was the son of Adam Pirron and Elisabeth Westrich. While his sisters, Catherine and Caroline, sought new horizons across the Atlantic, Adam remained the "anchor" of the family in the Palatinate, living a life deeply tied to the land and his community until the winds of war changed everything.
Thomas Archer Davidson was born on February 15, 1850, in Buckingham County, Virginia. He was the son of Joseph Cornelious Davidson and Vitula Sandridge. While his official death certificate recorded his birth as February 14, his family records and traditions maintained he was born on February 15, a date that persists in family history despite the official record.
In my last post, I shared my "Theory in Progress": the hunch that my wife’s ancestor, Daniel Epps, was the brother of William Epps, making them both sons of the Revolutionary War veteran Moses Epps. Proving a connection in early 19th-century Virginia often requires looking at who lived next door to whom. Since I lacked a birth register entry, I turned to the Halifax County Tax Lists and Census Records to see if these men occupied the same physical and legal space.
Henry Miller (abt 1806-1883) was a long-standing brick wall in my wife’s ancestry. I originally began my “The Ohioans!” series with a post about Henry and “The Land” they lived and were buried on. However, while researching for the 52 Ancestors prompt “What the Census Suggests,” I discovered documented histories that I had missed back in 2020.
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| Scan of a photo of Edward Olsen and his great-grandmother Cecelia Strahle Hillenbrand. From the collection of ©️Virginia Summers Olsen, originally from the collection of Emma Dorothy Hillenbrand Olsen. |
This post is part of the 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks challenge hosted by Amy Johnson Crow. The prompt for Week 4 is "A Theory in Progress." What started as a simple attempt to bridge a gap in my wife's family tree quickly took on a life of its own. As I began to dig, the "theory" didn't just find proof—it found color. This has grown into a five-part series I'm calling Halifax Hues, where we move from a faded sketch to a vibrant, multi-generational portrait of this particular branch of the Epps family.
Every family has that one document—a hand-scribbled note, a faded letter, or a carefully typed list of names—that serves as the unofficial map of their history. For me, that map was a multi-page document titled "Ancestry of Charles Arthur Epps." It came to me from my wife’s grandmother, whom we called Grancie (Sarah Rogers Davidson). While the document was likely compiled by one of Charles’ children—one of Grancie's cousins—it functioned as the original, uncolored outline of our family tree.
52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks is a series of weekly prompts created by Amy Johnson Crow to encourage reflection on our ancestors’ lives. The prompt for the week of January 12 is “What the Story Means to Me,” so let me introduce you to Josiah W. Bagby.
Josiah W. Bagby’s life can be traced almost entirely through census records, which follow him from a rural farming community into the city of Richmond over the course of seventy years. Taken together, these records tell a story of mobility, skilled labor, and endurance across changing economic landscapes.