Making a timeline

I would imagine that there is software out there to make a timeline. Ancestry.com creates a timeline for each person but doesn't combine it on a family level. With the Gaulthair family, I used Excel to combine all the family members into some sort of order. I found it was really helpful.

With the Rhea family, I decided to do the same. I started with Martha Jane McColloam and her parents. I was shocked to find that my great, great grandfather, James Northcross McColloam, left his family somewhere between 1852 and 1867 and went to California. Doing a little research, I found that he was a miner in Klamath County, California. That is a beautiful area and is described as the Redwoods meeting the sea. I don't know if he was a gold miner on his own or worked for one of the larger mining companies. However, I did find that he was still there in 1880, leaving his wife, Mary Polly Gray,

to raise the girls in Tennessee.

It was certainly a change in career for him as he was a farmer when he headed west. It makes me wonder why he would make such an abrupt change. California would have been a real adventure for him and for all those times I have been there, I never realized that part of the Tennessee family had taken the same paths. While he was there, he experienced earthquakes that were not common in Tennessee. The weather is different. It does snow in Trinidad but certainly not like the winters in Sneedville.

Again we don't know when he came home but when he died in Sneedville, Tennessee, he was 75 years old.

Martha Jane McColloam

The Armchair Genealogist is starting their Family History Writing Challenge for the month of February. I am joining in with Martha as my topic. I have the five letters and with the recently unearthed photo, I feel like I have a good starting place.

Swiching gears

There are two blogs I follow religiously. "The Armchair Genealogist" and "Maybe Someone should write that down". Both of the have inspiring stories of their family histories but they also share tips on organization and posts from other blogs on motivation. I look forward to receiving their posts in my email. Today both of them talk about getting a handle on all the information that floats around my desk. It's the new year and getting organized seems to be the theme. Usually, I read it and then, go back to jumping from spot to spot without getting much done.

Today, I am going to organize my desk. I am going to make a file for all the papers I need to get my husband enrolled in the tribe we recently found he belongs to. We had his adoption records unsealed and have a lot of things to do to get the package ready to send in.

I have a heart template. I want my grandson to make valentines to use on my Squidoo lens. It is sitting on the forms for the original birth certificate. There is an envelope on top of that with some new information I found on the Gaulthair children. That needs to be filed for updates later.

What I really want to do is develop a in-depth history for my great grandmother. Spending time on the research is being sidetracked by all the other stuff sitting on my desk. Thanks to the two blogs for sharing their ideas. Today I clean my desk, tomorrow, I am off (figuratively) to Sneedville, Tennessee to peek into the past.