by Sharon Hall | Mar 28, 2026 | Digging History, Digging History Magazine, Services, Special Offers
Thomas Jefferson Roach and His “Sister Wives” I don’t mean to imply “Sister Wives” (as in the TLC reality show of the same name) meant Thomas Jefferson (“T.J.”) Roach was a polygamist. Quite the contrary, since according to family history Thomas was of the Baptist...
by Sharon Hall | Mar 25, 2026 | Digging History, Digging History Magazine, Services, Special Offers
Do you want to learn more about your family history and need to budget the cost of research (or a custom-designed family history chart)? Digging History offers a unique way to do just that with a month-to-month genealogical research subscription. For one hour per...
by Sharon Hall | Mar 21, 2026 | Digging History Magazine
The “Ocean Sisters” of Johnson County, Tennessee Andrew Garfield Shoun and Elizabeth Powell married in 1817 and began raising a family in 1818 with the birth of their first child Andrew. Then came George Hamilton (1822), Rachel Catherine (1823), Isaac Harvey (1825)...
by Sharon Hall | Mar 14, 2026 | Digging History, Digging History Magazine, Services, Special Offers
I often run across some of the most unusual names while researching either my own family or a client’s. I have to say, though, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a set of children named so “uniquely”. They were all kin, as in related (brothers), but were also all...
by Sharon Hall | Mar 7, 2026 | Digging History, Digging History Magazine, Services, Special Offers
I ran across this particular “way to go in days of old” while researching a Surname Saturday blog article several years ago about the Pimple surname (after seeing the name in a list of Revolutionary War veterans). As I researched the unusual surname, I came across...
by Sharon Hall | Feb 28, 2026 | Digging History, Digging History Magazine, Services, Special Offers
As genealogists we have all come across terms which are unfamiliar for one reason or another. Many times the word or terminology is obsolete, or it might mean something altogether different in the twenty-first century. Such was the case as I was recently researching...
by Sharon Hall | Feb 21, 2026 | Digging History, Digging History Magazine, Services, Special Offers
If you’ve researched Southern slave-holding ancestors, you may be aware of the term “manumission”. If not, it simply means the act of freeing one’s slave(s). As such, manumission differed from emancipation set forth by government proclamation, Abraham Lincoln’s 1863...
by Sharon Hall | Feb 19, 2026 | Digging History, Digging History Magazine
For all my genealogy and history-loving friends . . . I discovered this documentary through Crista Cowan’s (“The Barefoot Genealogist”) podcast. If you’re a fan of Finding Your Roots on PBS, you will love this documentary which highlights an...
by Sharon Hall | Feb 14, 2026 | Digging History, Digging History Magazine, Services, Special Offers
The premise may seem unbelievable, given what our history books have always taught us. It is true – there were free men and women of color who owned slaves. The question is, why would someone previously enslaved choose to enslave others? In 1790 in the St. Phillip’s...
by Sharon Hall | Feb 7, 2026 | Digging History, Digging History Magazine, Services, Special Offers
Seawillow Seawillow is a rather lyrical and poetic sounding name isn’t it? I ran across this name while researching a friend’s African American ancestry. Where in the world did this name come from? Wouldn’t you just know – there’s a story behind it! A search for the...
