Recent Updates:

Genealogists, of all people, should be very aware that a persons time in the world is limited. Our research exposes the lives of those long gone, and we become familiar with headstones and graveyards and beginnings and endings.

2006 has brought some endings in our family. In March of this year, Hubert A. Richardson, aged 93, the last of my fathers brothers passed away in Sweetwater, Tennessee. Uncle Hubert was a wise and funny man who lived life large. Around my office he’s known as “Jim’s Uncle Hubert, the one that was run over by a train”.

Little were we to know that a mere 30 days later we would lose my mother, Thaine Browne Richardson. At a spry 71, we really didn’t pause to think of her as becoming elderly.

I’ve also underwent major back surgery in the late summer, and with the other events, settling mom’s estate and dealing with several bouts of bad back pain, the Genealogy project has largely gathered dust.

This new posting includes lots of new information and corrections that I’ve gathered over the past two years.

How It Started

As a small child, I remember hearing the grown-ups discuss many things that had happened in what I thought of then as the far distant ancient past. I wish I had paid more attention, for many of those dearly loved folks have passed on, and many of the stories the told of the places they lived and the people they knew are lost forever.My Great-Aunt Hazel Browne Misner however, collected notes about the family. At every family gathering, she was present with a camera, and over the years she filled shoe boxes with hundreds and hundreds of photographs. When she passed on in 1978, someone got the bright idea that perhaps all of Aunt Hazels "stuff" should go to me. And so it did. 

I Discover that the Pilgrims were a day late and a dollar short

One of the very first things I discovered is that either I paid little attention while in American History classes, or what they taught me was biased in favor of Plymouth Rock and the latecomers in the Mayflower that settled on Cape Cod.

One of the first successes I had was to stumble over a large and professionally done Genealogy of large sections of my maternal Grandmothers' family. I discovered that some of my ancestors up that line arrived in the New World as early as 1609, and were a part of the early Jamestown project. I've read of the suffering and horrors of those early settlers. Reports say that most of the people arriving as part of the Jamestown project between 1600 and 1625 died of starvation, cold, sickness or were killed by the Indians. If you are a descendant of any of these people, you are from hardy stock. 

Horrors! There's a Yankee in the Closet

Even though my mothers father was from Wisconsin, he had been in deep south Florida since the early 20's. As a child, I identified much more strongly with my Tennessee Hillbilly father and the warm and friendly south Georgians of my mothers maternal line. I never really paid any attention to the fact that I had "yankee's" in the family, and identified very strongly with the rural south.

As you learn more about your family, you come to understand that people, no matter when or where they lived, moved frequently. Bad farming, intolerant rulers, religious persecution, lousy weather, free land...the reasons are nearly as numerous as there were families. We are truly a mixing pot. Upon finding my first example of one side of the family being Union and the other side Rebel during the civil war, I was dumbstruck. I had always known it was likely, but seeing actual proof that different parts of the family may have been in battle against one another is a reality that brings history alive.

The first time you notice that parts of your family tree look more like a pine tree than an oak also give you pause. Marriage between cousins was not always frowned on, and in our distant past was even encouraged, or sometimes was just the only available option.

Here is the result of over 30 years of research by myself and those who came before me. I do not guarantee it's accuracy. Where possible, I've made notes about sources and questions. I've collected much data on  lot of time to verifying family lines not directly part of my ancestry, there are probably some mistakes. Please feel free to contact me with corrections.

My visit to Wisconsin in 2004

In the fall of 2004 I visited Waupaca County, Wisconsin for the first time. Waupaca County is the home of my Mother's father, Ray M. Browne, and is where the Brown, Maney, Eggleston and Wilson's migrated too from their earlier start in New York and Pennsylvania.

I was able to visit the Lind Cemetery, in Lind Township, and to my amazement, discovered tombstones of my Brown, Eggleston, Chrisman and Maney relations all located within 20 paces of one another. It appears that they all moved to Waupaca County beginning about 1850, only a year or two after the county was formed. 

Compiler: James Richardson

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Site updated on 10 Oct 2006 at 7:38:51 PM from My Project; 4,856 people