Porch Swings, Fireflies, and Jelly Jars: October 2012

Wednesday, October 31, 2012

Lavinia (Burton) Selph

The obituary of Lavinia (Burton) Selph, wife of Rev. Duncan H. Selph appeared in The Nashville Tennessean on 30 May 1899:

My favorite day for genealogy research is Halloween. All Hallow's Eve. The night when the veil between the living and dead thins. I have had good luck other years, but this year brought a bonanza of information in a short period of time. I was able to slip in and out of a new site and found information that I have been hunting for decades.

The most exciting discovery was documentation for Grandison D. Nevill's first wife. Years ago I heard a secondhand story from a Howard family researcher that Grandison had been married and divorced from Minerva Peterson and that they had a daughter who died young. Years of searching for a marriage or divorce record produced nothing. Then this evening I found the advertisement that Minerva placed in The Nashville Tennessean on 11 June 1836, the first notice appeared on 31 May 1836:

It is noteworthy that Minerva (Peterson) Nevill filed for divorce in the same year that Grandison D. Nevill and his second wife Martha are estimated to have married. That would push their marriage to the last half of 1836. It is also interesting to see that at this point Grandison is no longer in Tennessee, or at least, Minerva believes he has left the state. By 1840, he had returned and was living in Dickson County, Tennessee with Martha and three little boys under the age of five. If these three boys were all the children of Grandison and Martha, they would have been between the ages of 1 - 3 in 1840. Martha divorced Grandison in Dickson County in 1846, stating that they had been married for ten years. Her divorce record provided no place or date of marriage nor any information about their children.

To date, four wives can be attributed to Grandison D. Nevill:

1. Minerva Peterson: divorced 1836

2. Martha E. ______: married about 1836, divorced 1846

3. Annette Travis: married 1846, divorced ______

4. Caroline E. Harper

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About Me:

My favorite memories from childhood include visits to my grandparents in East Texas. At dusk we'd run around my grandparent's yard, catching fireflies and putting them in jelly jars. When darkness descended, we'd return to the porch. It was a special treat to sit in the porch swing. Inevitably, the adults would launch into family stories of Pink Kelley's brush with Sherman's troops, of Great Uncle Hood Brown's tragic death, and of the Kelley family's wagon trip to Texas, among many others. The stars on those nights were magical.

I began my genealogy research in the summer of 1975, less than a month after my high school graduation. When I married in 1983, I started researching my husband's family as well. I was fortunate to start this hobby as a youngster because it gave me an opportunity to correspond with researchers who are long gone; to ask questions of family members -although not enough, never enough; and travel a bit. The result is a lot of information. I've come to the realization that I will probably never be able to afford to publish, so this is my publication.

This blog contains a mixture of information on my husband's family and mine. I've expanded into a second blog called Flimsies and Frippery with the intention of focusing on quilts and dolls, but I have several historical research entries there with more planned, which is why I don't get more quilting done.

Ultimately, genealogy is my passion. This is where I plan to record family stories, research adventures and misadventures, and those serendipitous moments that happen out of the blue. You should be warned that I have a bad habit of going back and adding information and links to individual entries, so it is beneficial to check back often if there is a family of particular interest to you. If you wander in and discover that you are a cousin, please contact me.

Since many younger family members who are new to genealogy are starting to contact me about their ancestors, I've started adding family trees to help them see how everyone is connected. The trees are divided between my family and my husband's. You will find them below under the label's Family Trees - My Husband's Side and Family Trees - My Family's Side.

For better or worse, this blog reflects the research, thinking, and writing of a human.