-Grimes family Facebook group- gave me the push I needed to get started.
My name is Stacy Johnston my Grandparents are Percy Alexander Grimes and Bell Gray Grimes they both come from King George county, Virginia, and they both had quite a few siblings. They are where I will start and I hope we'll work in both directions, that's ancestors and descendants. Hopefully with luck and the help of the internet we can bring some of the extended family in contact and at the same time find out more about our historical roots.
I haven't ever tried something like this before so I don't have any idea what kind of format to start with. I do have a few ideas that might come into play a little bit down the line but for now I'll just put this out there and contact those of you that I know and we'll see what happens from here. Please feel free to comment, offer ideas, contribute family info, stories, photos or there documents and links if you have any. Don't be shy to ask questions or correct any information that you think might be wrong. Please share this blog with any family members that you are aware of.
I've been doing some research, so although I myself never really got to meet
any of the family in Virginia, except for the ones that came up to New Jersey,
usually for a funeral, I do have quite a few names. I also discovered that, so many of our family was from King George County that it was not too difficult to come up with lots of info.
Two items that were instrumental in my research were a hand drawn family tree called
EVANS, GRAY, GRIMES Family Tree 1988 by Virginia Gray Winchester and a list called arkstones.txt created by Amelia Pryor from the cemetery adjacent to Little Ark Baptist Church. I should also add that I had a subscription to Ancestry.Com that combined with the other two documents was a very powerful tool.
The family names we'll start with are - EVANS, GRAY, GRIMES, GRYMES, DUNLOP, BARCLAY, PRYOR, PRIOR, BUMBREY, HOWARD, JACKSON, JOHNSON, LEWIS
If you are aware of any names that should be added please don't be shy to comment what they are and why you think they should be added. I'll mention here that the spelling isn't always what you think it would be. For example when I was searching Grimes I found nothing related to our family but when I changed the spelling to Grymes, I found that grandpop's father and the rest of his family was spelling it that way on the census. Another time, I found one Evans that I was looking for had the name spelled ivans this was possibly an error that happened when the name was being transposed to digital. Anyway be alert and don't be shy to check out alternate spelling if you do get to search records and documents.
This is the family tree mentioned above click on it to enlarge the image.
I guess this is a big enough first step. I'm looking forward to hearing from you all real soon.
Stacy
Stacy, The Family Tree is awesome. Here are a couple of corrections. I am Brian K. Grimes (not Bryant, although that's what Grand-pop always called me, lol). My Wife and the Mother of my children is Sherri L. Redd (not cherrie). We have two (2) sons, Andrew K. Grimes and Brian K. Grimes, Jr. I will continue to share corrections as I notice them.
ReplyDeleteThanks for those corrections Brian. We are going to have to do some corrections and some major updating of this family tree since it was done in 1988. Our cousin Virginia passed those out at the family reunion at uncle Charlie Gray's, in Mt Laurel in 1988. Did you go to that one?
ReplyDeleteI'm so glad I kept it. I didn't look at it for years but finally my lady Camille
got my curiosity up because she was so deep into her genealogy. Once I started to use it I began to discover all kinds of things. You'll see what I mean once we get rolling.
Hey Stacy, the blog is great. I'm not blog savy but I think I get it! My brother's name is John Williams Grimes. I am married to Elise and have two children, Brittany and Alex Jr. The family tree is awesome. I look foward to us working to grow the tree. I will see if my dad can add any additional information. God bless you cuz!
ReplyDeleteAlex
ReplyDeleteThanks for the input cuz.
It would be great if you could get Uncle Junie's input.
Try to encourage him to make some audio recordings
with stories of his siblings and parents and uncles and aunts.
I know that's a tall order but he's our best bet on a lot of family info.