William J. Blythe, III

One of the neat things about FamilySearch.org, where I work on the family tree and look up records, is that it is collaborative, like Wikipedia, so people can work on their family trees and eventually maybe everyone will hook up into one giant tree.

William J. Blythe, III, 1950
William J. Blythe, III, 1950
You can select people to follow and see a list of all the changes being made to them. For the most part I only follow direct ancestors, even though I have worked on a lot of brothers, sisters, cousins, and spouses of those direct ancestors. Going back about 5 to 7 generations in all directions, I’m following about 100 people, and I see changes to one or two of them every couple of weeks, usually the most distant ones since they have the most descendants that might be interested. Recently I saw a change made way, way back on my direct maternal line, which got me looking at that branch of the family.

If I follow my maternal line back I run into my great, great grandmother, who was born Emma Ann Farr and who married Rufus Chapman McCord (I’ve written about the McCords before). Rufus McCord died pretty young, but had a lot of kids for Emma to raise. There is a great picture of Emma and her children and grandchildren, taken in Birmingham on Easter 1922 (shown below, she is in the middle with the lace collar). The picture includes a big chunk of that part of the family, including 3 generations of my ancestors, down to my grandmother, Helen Brunson, who was just 15, born in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1907 (second from the right on the back row). She got married the year after this picture was taken, at age 16, but her marriage license said she was 18. Helen’s mother is Velma McCord Brunson, on the left side of the picture in the white blouse and directly above Velma is her husband, Roy Brunson.
Continue reading “William J. Blythe, III”