Deason Hunt's Posts - Genealogy Wise2024-03-29T05:51:49ZDeason Hunthttp://www.genealogywise.com/profile/DeasonHunthttp://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/2206988891?profile=RESIZE_48X48&width=48&height=48&crop=1%3A1http://www.genealogywise.com/profiles/blog/feed?user=33j35zkdoovao&xn_auth=noI'm Proud to Be an Americantag:www.genealogywise.com,2010-07-30:3463583:BlogPost:2721872010-07-30T19:10:14.000ZDeason Hunthttp://www.genealogywise.com/profile/DeasonHunt
To get ahead of the curve of the U. S. Civil War sesquicentennial, I’d like to say that I’m glad that the seceding southern states lost the civil war.<br />
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That rumble you just felt was generations of my ancestors turning over in their graves, because I am a southerner to the core descended in all my lines from ancestors from the deep south and it’s Texas counterpart, East Texas.<br />
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I honor and respect my ancestors and do not sit in judgment on their lives as individuals even though they lived in and…
To get ahead of the curve of the U. S. Civil War sesquicentennial, I’d like to say that I’m glad that the seceding southern states lost the civil war.<br />
<br />
That rumble you just felt was generations of my ancestors turning over in their graves, because I am a southerner to the core descended in all my lines from ancestors from the deep south and it’s Texas counterpart, East Texas.<br />
<br />
I honor and respect my ancestors and do not sit in judgment on their lives as individuals even though they lived in and surely supported a culture which fought and died for, among other reasons, keeping the another part of the country and the national government from legislating or otherwise forcing the end of slavery in this country.<br />
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There is no evidence, documented or by family tradition, that the vast majority of my ancestors owned slaves. We were, for the most part, farmers who used family members for the farming labor. That being said, there is no question that the two major questions settled by the Civil War were slavery and do individual states have the right to go their own way if they disagree with the rules and laws of the majority. Slavery was an abomination which should have been settled in the 1770’s and 1780’s when our nation was born. I’m glad it ended, sorry it took so long to end it, and perplexed that we ever allowed it any role in the long history of the colonies or the United States of America.<br />
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And, I understand if descendants of slaves, don’t share my honoring of the valor and recognition of the hardships even unto death faced by my ancestors during the Civil War. I get their own take on the conflict incited by an attempt to prolong slavery.<br />
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I’m sure that my ancestors served and fought for all the right and wrong reasons associated with this war even the few who served on the winning side. Yes, my families like many others had brothers and cousins who served on both sides.<br />
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I regret we couldn’t end slavery or forge one nation, indivisible, without war, but I’m glad for both of those outcomes. I’m proud to be a citizen of the United States of America. — Deason Hunt<br />
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Previously posted on alkingroots at talkingroots.com.The Stuff They were Made Oftag:www.genealogywise.com,2010-02-13:3463583:BlogPost:2290342010-02-13T00:36:10.000ZDeason Hunthttp://www.genealogywise.com/profile/DeasonHunt
<h2 style="padding-top: 10px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; font-weight: normal; font-size: 2em; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); line-height: normal;"></h2>
<h2 style="padding-top: 10px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; font-weight: normal; font-size: 2em; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); line-height: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 23px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 14px; color: rgb(68, 68, 68); line-height: 23px;">As I sit here about mid-morning on February 12, 2010, pounding away on my unconnected netbook and, thus, on what is <strong style="padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px;">eerily like my last contact with the 21st Century</strong>, I let my mind wander back to the lives of my ancestors who lived out their time here in the 19th and earlier centuries without electricity and the electronic devices I have come to depend on for so much in my life.</span></span></h2>
<div class="entry" style="padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px;"><div class="snap_preview" style="padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px;"><p style="padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 15px; margin-left: 0px;">I am reduced to such thoughts due to the power outage growing out of the seven-inch accumulation of snowfall. Power has been out for and hour and half, and I’m beginning to grow a bit antsy.</p>
<p style="padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 15px; margin-left: 0px;">I can’t turn on a light switch and get instant light on whatever I am doing. I can’t check my phone machine for missed messages (although a battery backup from the cable company keeps the phone line working at present.) I can’t get cable service due to the need for electricity to power my cable boxes, but that’s not very big considering I need the same electricity to run my television sets anyway. The downside is that my internet service provider is also my cable provider. I am writing this in hopes it will be found by any survivors, and it will be shared with the world.</p>
<p style="padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 15px; margin-left: 0px;"><strong style="padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px;">Toilets are working, and I have running water.</strong> That’s very good. On the other hand the refrigerator is now racing against the clock to spoil all the food inside. For our safety, we don’t have natural gas, and they (the anonymous they) try to discourage tanks of liquid gas on the properties here, so no electricity means no heat. Yes, we have a fire place, but it is only a matter of time before we will be breaking up furniture to get some dry wood to burn.</p>
<p style="padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 15px; margin-left: 0px;">It took me six tries to get my car UP and out of my driveway earlier this morning (with only minimal damage to the car and a nearby tree), so I broke association rules and left it parked on the side of the road. Because of that I can get out and drive over the activity center (about four miles away) for a hot lunch and to use their wireless internet connection. The bad news is that the wife keeps saying she’s not going — something about eating soup and roasting hot dogs at the fireplace.</p>
<p style="padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 15px; margin-left: 0px;"><strong style="padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px;">My ancestors lived in log cabins, no electricity and with just a fireplace for warmth.</strong> If they had time to write out something like this, it was most likely with pencil and paper, and they were most likely thankful for having the things I am moaning about having to live with.</p>
<p style="padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 15px; margin-left: 0px;">Sometimes I wonder about how they made that long trip from eastern Tennessee to eastern Texas before cars, trains, buses, and airlines when I sometimes find myself dreading the 30 mile trip into Tyler in an air-conditioned car.</p>
<p style="padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 15px; margin-left: 0px;">If I had been the ancestor, I wonder if all the family today might still be living somewhere on the road well short of Texas and nearer Tennessee.</p>
<p style="padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 15px; margin-left: 0px;"><em style="padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px;">Posted here <strong style="padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px;">AFTER</strong> the electricity came back on (for the third time, but at least it stayed on this time).</em></p>
<p style="padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 15px; margin-left: 0px;">Posted also at <a href="http://woodtxgene.com/" style="padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); text-decoration: underline;">http://woodtxgene.com/</a> and <a href="http://talkingroots.com">http://talkingroots.com</a></p>
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</div>What's it about advertising?tag:www.genealogywise.com,2009-10-24:3463583:BlogPost:1995302009-10-24T14:04:04.000ZDeason Hunthttp://www.genealogywise.com/profile/DeasonHunt
I can't understand what so many people hate -- literally hate -- about advertising. First of all, it greases the skids of the economy. It brings sellers together with potential buyers. It helps buyers know about what's available and some of the pertinent data including price. It helps make purchasing decisions. It helps sellers sell and thus stay in business and do such things as provide a boost to our economy. Read that as jobs for people who manufacture, ship, and sell, etc..<br />
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In an…
I can't understand what so many people hate -- literally hate -- about advertising. First of all, it greases the skids of the economy. It brings sellers together with potential buyers. It helps buyers know about what's available and some of the pertinent data including price. It helps make purchasing decisions. It helps sellers sell and thus stay in business and do such things as provide a boost to our economy. Read that as jobs for people who manufacture, ship, and sell, etc..<br />
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In an environment such as this, it helps pay the bills. It takes money to provide access to Genealogywise. I would much rather have a chance to have ads and revenue generators made available to me while providing the funds which keep this site going and by which I can choose if, how much, and when I want to spend my money than to have no ads or revenue-generating apps but have a must-be-paid every month subscription fee.<br />
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Also, one of the attractions of this site is that it is available free. That attracts more users. More users mean more opportunities to share information about genealogy.<br />
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I think I see a win-win situation here.talkingroots: Those new-fangled devicestag:www.genealogywise.com,2009-07-30:3463583:BlogPost:1123702009-07-30T14:42:04.000ZDeason Hunthttp://www.genealogywise.com/profile/DeasonHunt
Sometimes after fiddling with new technology, I am reminded of a story about my grandmother Hunt (Anne “Annie” Elizabeth Fears “Mamaw” Hunt). I have a new cell phone which not only lets me make and receive phone calls but send and receive text messages (a la my computer but a bit slower). And, if my way bigger than the buttons fingers happen to accidentally strike a certain key, I am logged on and can surf the web. (I think. I haven’t done anything yet but panic and turn off the phone.) Mamaw…
Sometimes after fiddling with new technology, I am reminded of a story about my grandmother Hunt (Anne “Annie” Elizabeth Fears “Mamaw” Hunt). I have a new cell phone which not only lets me make and receive phone calls but send and receive text messages (a la my computer but a bit slower). And, if my way bigger than the buttons fingers happen to accidentally strike a certain key, I am logged on and can surf the web. (I think. I haven’t done anything yet but panic and turn off the phone.) Mamaw was born in the 19th Century before cars, electric lights, air conditioning, radio, and television. I guess you can say that she coped even though in the 1930’s and 1940’s she still could whip up a batch of home-made soap using the iron pot out in her backyard. We had a television in our home in Texarkana by the time I was 10 years old (ca 1953), but Mamaw didn’t. She had an old cabinet radio which sat in her living room.<br />
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On one occasion when Mamaw was visiting us in Texarkana, she and my mother (Ozie Mae Moody Hunt) were changing clothes in the room with the television as a man was on screen talking. As mother changed her blouse, Mamaw warned, “Ozie Mae, that man can see you.” That’s the story mother told years later. Not too long after that, Daddy (Deason Lafayette Hunt) bought Mamaw a small portable TV set which sat in her living room. She could turn it on and off, but if something went wrong, she’d just let Daddy know. I know we thought it was humorous that she didn’t understand about television, but it’s likely that my own children have had such thoughts about my dealings with cell phones and the nearly impossible-to-program VCR.<br />
<a href="http://talkingroots.wordpress.com/2009/02/10/those-new-fangled-devices/" target="_blank">Source: talkingroots.wordpress.com</a>talkingroots: Rolling out of the cartag:www.genealogywise.com,2009-07-29:3463583:BlogPost:1094982009-07-29T01:30:00.000ZDeason Hunthttp://www.genealogywise.com/profile/DeasonHunt
Lots of things make me uncomfortable. These include driving on freeways with cars and big, big trucks tailgating then whizzing by me and/or blocking me in and going over tall bridges like the one over the harbor at Corpus Christi or the high rise freeways of Dallas and Houston. I don’t ride roller coasters or tilta-a-whirls. As a child I remember feeling nauseous playing in the playground merry-go-round (whatever those round push with you foot and then jump on things were called).<br />
In later…
Lots of things make me uncomfortable. These include driving on freeways with cars and big, big trucks tailgating then whizzing by me and/or blocking me in and going over tall bridges like the one over the harbor at Corpus Christi or the high rise freeways of Dallas and Houston. I don’t ride roller coasters or tilta-a-whirls. As a child I remember feeling nauseous playing in the playground merry-go-round (whatever those round push with you foot and then jump on things were called).<br />
In later life, my dizziness and those early experiences have made me wonder if maybe I inherited a tendency toward those things. My Aunt Gladys (Gladys Jewel Hunt Stewart) would have small panic attacks whenever she rode as a passenger in a car over long bridges. She also had dizziness and/or fainting spells. My Daddy (Deason Lafayette Hunt) would avoid driving Houston freeways by going through Winnie, High Island, Galveston, and Surfside to visit us in Freeport.<br />
However, I also think that those motion and phobia things might also possibly be related to the incident known in our family as “the time I fell out of the car.” I was a toddler riding in the back seat of our sedan in the mid to late 1940’s. We were returning from Dallas to Longview in East Texas after having Aunt Gladys and her husband Uncle Bill (William Arthur Stewart II) up to see our house in the southern part of Dallas county. Somewhere on Highway 80, riding in the middle of the back seat between my mother (Ozie Mae Moody Hunt) and Aunt Gladys, I reached across Aunt Gladys and opened the door handle.Something (wind, speed, fate?) jerked me across Aunt Glady’s lap and past her startled hands which went up in the air rather than grab me, and I tumbled out on the hard concrete of Highway 80 and behind our car.<br />
I think I remember this and thinking, “I wonder what will happen if I open the handle right now.” Now, I probably don’t. That’s possibly something I heard and or thought up later. I don’t remember anything on the road surface, but Mother said a man driving a car behind us saw what happened and stopped his car blocking other traffic from running over me. Knowing my Mother I figure she was paniced as she dashed from the now stopped car back to where I was laying in the road. (Was I conscious? I don’t remember it.) I was picked up, placed in the car, and taken on to Big Sandy where there was a clinic on Highway 80. I supposedly fussed and cried so much at the examination that the doctor said that I couldn’t be hurt too badly and the trip continued. Aunt Gladys and Uncle Bill were dropped off in Longview, and we went on to Henderson and Mamaw’s (Anne “Annie” Elizabeth Fears Hunt) house.<br />
It was when we tried to go to bed there that night, and I was unable to lay my head on the pillow due to soreness that we really understood how badly I was going to feel from the road burn. Obviously, I lived, but for 15 years whenever we would take a road trip in the car, I would be nauseous and would only find relief by riding down in the back floorboard where I couldn’t see out of the car? Heredity or incident trauma? I really can’t say. Perhaps it was a little of both.<br />
Source: <a href="http://talkingroots.wordpress.com/2009/02/17/rolling-out-of-the-car/" target="_blank">talkingroots.wordpress.com</a>talkingroots: Teaching roots run deeptag:www.genealogywise.com,2009-07-26:3463583:BlogPost:1036992009-07-26T19:00:34.000ZDeason Hunthttp://www.genealogywise.com/profile/DeasonHunt
It was a great surprise when I discovered just how far back teaching goes in my family especially through my Moody ancestors.<br />
My mother (Ozie Mae Moody Hunt aka Koko) was proud that all three of her children went to college, graduated, and became teachers. Her goal, spoken to us time after time, was that we would go to college “one way or another.” I don’t know if she wished all to be teachers, but she always spoke highly of her cousins who were teachers. After both of my children also entered…
It was a great surprise when I discovered just how far back teaching goes in my family especially through my Moody ancestors.<br />
My mother (Ozie Mae Moody Hunt aka Koko) was proud that all three of her children went to college, graduated, and became teachers. Her goal, spoken to us time after time, was that we would go to college “one way or another.” I don’t know if she wished all to be teachers, but she always spoke highly of her cousins who were teachers. After both of my children also entered the teaching profession, I have often thought about about mother’s heritage of producing their her will and efforts a good number of teachers.<br />
It was just this month that cousin Betty Moody Walker shared with me a piece of her research which filled in some details on an early 19th Century common Moody ancestor, my great, great, great, great grandfather (g4 grandfather) Benjamin Moody of Chatham County, North Carolina.<br />
The item was an article/obituary about Benjamin in the Biblical Recorder, the official journal of the North Carolina Baptist Convention in its January 27, 1854 edition. The obituary concluded with this information: “He had been a school teacher for half a century and perhaps has taught more youths than any other man that ever lived in Chatham County, and there are many no doubt in different parts of the county when they read this, whose though (thoughts? dh) will run back to their school boy days when they went to old Mr. Moody.”<br />
Benjamin was born ca 1767 in North Carolina to William Moody. Previously, our research had turned up an abstract of his will dated February 1854 in Chatham County, we had found records of Benjamin being a member of the Rives Chapel Church of the same county, and documents helping us find the names of some of his children and his wife. This obituary, however, added a personal touch about this long-deceased ancestor that makes me a feel a closer kinship today.<br />
The entire obituary from the journal as transcribed by Betty Moody Walker follows.<br />
From the Biblical Recorder—–January 1854<br />
“Died January 5, 1854, Benjamin Moody in the 87th year of his age.<br />
The deceased had been for 20 years a member of the Reeves Chapel Baptist Church. Death did not take him by surprise, but he had anticipated it for some time, and seemed to be fully resigned to meet it, believing that it would be far better to depart and be with Christ, than to remain in this sinful world.<br />
“The writer well remembers the last time he ever saw him at meeting, when he talked to the people about the vanity of earthly things, and the greatness of eternity and eternal things, when he brought the tears from many an eye, but his voice is forever hushed.<br />
“Brother Moody had to pass through many sore trials during his pilgrimage on earth, especially his domestic trials, they were such that try men’s souls, and such as few are called to pass through, but amidst them all he still maintained his ground as a christian and exemplified in his life the power of grace of God to sustain the christian under trials.<br />
“He had been a school teacher for half a century and perhaps has taught more youths than any other man that ever lived in Chatham County, and there are many no doubt in different parts of the county when they read this, whose thoughts will run back to their school boy days when they went to old Mr. Moody.”<br />
Source: <a href="http://talkingroots.wordpress.com/2009/03/29/63/" target="_blank">talkingroots.wordpress.com</a>talkingroots: Riding to schooltag:www.genealogywise.com,2009-07-24:3463583:BlogPost:965992009-07-24T15:56:07.000ZDeason Hunthttp://www.genealogywise.com/profile/DeasonHunt
I never rode a school bus to school. I know as this is written, most children (and even parents) might wonder why. The rule was school buses only ran outside of the city limits. The rest of us got to school the best way we could. No excuses were accepted for lack of ride, rain, etc. My own children (Michael and Emily) also never rode a school bus to school. Where we lived in Lake Jackson, Texas was within two miles of their schools: A. P. Beutel Elementary, Lake Jackson Intermediate School, and…
I never rode a school bus to school. I know as this is written, most children (and even parents) might wonder why. The rule was school buses only ran outside of the city limits. The rest of us got to school the best way we could. No excuses were accepted for lack of ride, rain, etc. My own children (Michael and Emily) also never rode a school bus to school. Where we lived in Lake Jackson, Texas was within two miles of their schools: A. P. Beutel Elementary, Lake Jackson Intermediate School, and Brazoswood High School (actually across the city limits in neighboring Clute, Texas but still within two miles of our house on Carnation Street. The rule there was busing only beyond two miles from the school.<br />
I don’t know what the rules were in the early 1900’s when my mother, Ozie Mae Moody, also known as Koko to all her grandchildren, was in school. However, much to my surprise when I asked one day about her experiences in school, she recalled that once she was carried to school each day in a covered wagon. You never know what you might miss if you don’t ask.<br />
She describes her wagon experience in this excerpt from my family history, Out of Mississippi, The John Robert Wingate Family of Nacogdoches County, Texasfrom an interview I conducted with her October 19, 1991. Mother at the time of this event was living with her parents , Fred D. Moody and Pamilia Mae Wingate Moody in a logging camp in East Texas. She was sent to school even when they lived in the tent camps and outside of towns such as happened at Tucker Lake.<br />
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<p style="text-align: left;"><img src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/2232554292?profile=original" alt="" width="834" height="448"/></p>
Ozie Mae Moody (Koko) in front (center) and brother Oca Robert in front (right) in cap in a school group picture perhaps at Caro School, Nacogdoches County, Texas.<br />
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‘Well, now when we lived in that river bottom (Oca was still going to school then), the camp hired somebody to drive a wagon, and we went to school at Ashton. That’s down there about eight or ten miles below where Oca and Dena lived (note: near Joaquin, Shelby County, Texas). There’s not a building there now. It’s just woods.<br />
‘We had a hoodlum wagon. They never took the cover off. If it was a pretty day, the cover stayed on. It was covered all the way down. It had hooks on little things on each side of the wagon, those hooks fit down in there, but they never took those hooks off. We never went open. That was what made them call it a hoodlum wagon. It was just a wagon and mules. It was just that group of kids that lived in that bottom, but that hoodlum wagon was full. It had a bow top on it, seats on each side of the wagon that ran the length of the wagon, and a seat down through the middle. That’s way we rode to school, knees to knees. It had two mules. Oca rode his horse, and there was another boy who rode his horse. They didn’t ride them every day. But if the weather was pretty, they rode their horses. If they rode their horses, and it rained, they’d tie their horses to the back of the wagon, and they would ride inside going home.<br />
‘We were our little bunch at school. We were the Tucker Lake bunch. At lunch time, we all went to the wagon and ate together. Oca played basketball. We may have been there a full year. We had three little girls about my age. Most of the kids were older. I was in about the third or the fourth grade because we moved over there from Sandy Creek.’<br />
Source: <a href="http://talkingroots.wordpress.com/2009/04/19/riding-to-school/" target="_blank">talkingroots.wordpress.com</a>talkingroots: Remembering great grandpa’s firearmtag:www.genealogywise.com,2009-07-22:3463583:BlogPost:870002009-07-22T13:13:30.000ZDeason Hunthttp://www.genealogywise.com/profile/DeasonHunt
I’m not a hunter. I’ve never fired anything more serious than a BB-gun at any living creature (and I never hit anything alive). One of my prized possessions, however, is a 19th Century black powder rifle.<br />
I came into possession of this firearm sometime after my Dad, also Deason Hunt, died back in the early 1980’s. Mother saw that I got it because it is a Hunt family relic. It belonged to my great grandfather, William “Billy” Marshall Hunt and has been in the family from the time he acquired…
I’m not a hunter. I’ve never fired anything more serious than a BB-gun at any living creature (and I never hit anything alive). One of my prized possessions, however, is a 19th Century black powder rifle.<br />
I came into possession of this firearm sometime after my Dad, also Deason Hunt, died back in the early 1980’s. Mother saw that I got it because it is a Hunt family relic. It belonged to my great grandfather, William “Billy” Marshall Hunt and has been in the family from the time he acquired it.<br />
One of the special family stories about the gun occurred in the late 1930’s when my grandfather, Joseph “Joe” Lafayette Hunt, was terminally ill with cancer. One of his worries (or requests) concerned recovering the gun which he had loaned out to an acquaintance. My Dad took it upon himself to go out and find the individual and recover the gun and return it to his Dad to ease his mind in the matter. I am sure my words do not do justice to the anquish they all felt at that time concerning Granddad Joe Hunt and his condition and the small role the weapon played in their peace of mind.<br />
I know the gun came in the family either during or before the Civil War but not the exact time or manner. Perhaps it was carried when the family moved from Tennessee around 1850. Family tradition in the Joseph Hunt family was that the gun was carried by William when he served as a militia guard form Union prisoners at Camp Ford during the Civil War. This story came most recently from my Dad and his brother William Thomas Hunt, my Uncle Willie. Uncle Willie was old enough before William “Billy” Hunt died to have heard him talk about the weapon and his role in the war. Uncle Willie in correspondence in the 1960’s of hearing the fact of his grandfather serving at Camp Ford spoken many times in his childhood home.<br />
I am a member of the Camp Ford Association in nearby Tyler, Texas as a way to commemorate William Hunt’s service there during the Civil War. A future museum on land on which the prison camp sat is in the planning stages.<br />
Source: <a href="http://talkingroots.wordpress.com/2009/05/01/remembering-great-grandpas-firearm/" target="_blank">talkingroots.wordpress.com</a>talkingroots: My heroestag:www.genealogywise.com,2009-07-21:3463583:BlogPost:818902009-07-21T00:54:30.000ZDeason Hunthttp://www.genealogywise.com/profile/DeasonHunt
May 15, 2009<br />
My Heroes<br />
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I don’t guess it would surprise many people that among the top ten heroes of my life several were teachers.<br />
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Like everyone, I suppose, the nature of my heroes changed as I got older. In the 1940’s there was Roy Rogers. That hero worship would later turn to admiration as I followed his life while I was an adult. The “King of the Cowboys” first fascinated us in the movie theater and then on early television. Since I was a child during the last years of WWII and the…
May 15, 2009<br />
My Heroes<br />
<br />
I don’t guess it would surprise many people that among the top ten heroes of my life several were teachers.<br />
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Like everyone, I suppose, the nature of my heroes changed as I got older. In the 1940’s there was Roy Rogers. That hero worship would later turn to admiration as I followed his life while I was an adult. The “King of the Cowboys” first fascinated us in the movie theater and then on early television. Since I was a child during the last years of WWII and the post-war years, I guess it would also be no surprise that John Wayne playing WWII and old Western (especially U. S. cavalry) roles was a great favorite. We were children of a war era.<br />
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In the 1950’s like most kids, “I Like(d) Ike,” first WWII Allied Europe commander and General Dwight D. Eisenhower and then U. S. President. I remember going downtown in Longview to the Republican headquarters and getting “I Like Ike” buttons and wearing to Foster Junior High and passing out extras to friends. Also, in the 1950’s there was Mickey Mantle. In an era before Texas major league baseball teams and even before the Dallas Cowboys, for most kids, the New York Yankees were America’s team. Mickey was the young, talented player most of us could identify with and look up to.<br />
I had a number of teachers in school who I thought were the “bees knees,” but they three I most looked up to and, in many ways, took traits and procedures for my own teaching career were Mr. Glover, Mrs. Bourne, and Mrs. Prejean. To this day I think of them like that, and I would be very uncomfortable calling them by their first names.<br />
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Mr. Robert “Bob” Glover was my Tyler, Texas John Tyler High School American history teacher. His class was fascinating. His teaching style separated him from all my other teachers. It was like we were hearing stories and not studying history. After class was over, his students would often talk about what we had learned in class that day. I joined the high school history club mainly because Mr. Glover was sponsor.<br />
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Mrs. Mary Bourne was a bit scary. While I was in high school, I dreaded going to her Senior English class. She expected you to be prepared, to participate, and to get it right. She was tough, and I had to step up to the plate in that class. We studied English literature and related English history. For that reason, she was nicknamed “Bloody Mary,” but I know of no one who ever called her that in her presence. When I got to college (and in later years), I was better prepared for college English than many who not had her as a teacher. To this day, I appreciate her as a dedicated teacher who had our best interests at heart.<br />
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Mrs. Blanche Prejean was my journalism teacher at Tyler Junior College. She was also tough and a bit scary. She demanded your best preparation and effort. You knew better than to not deliver it. Work habits, diligence in research and writing, accepting that rewriting would be a way of life and path to excellence, and a love for traditional journalism were learned in her classes and labs and as student sports editor.<br />
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As a teacher, I never thought of myself as on the same level as these three, but trying to get to that level made me better than I would have been on my own and has kept me trying to improve even to this day. You never saw them on the silver screen or television, but they are forever among those (including my wife and parents) on the pedestals reserved for the special people who have guided me to where I am today. My heroes.<br />
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Source: <a href="http://talkingroots.wordpress.com/2009/05/15/my-heroes/" target="_blank">talkingroots.wordpress.com</a>talkingroots: Memories too precious to losetag:www.genealogywise.com,2009-07-18:3463583:BlogPost:728862009-07-18T23:57:15.000ZDeason Hunthttp://www.genealogywise.com/profile/DeasonHunt
Following a recent local genealogical society meeting, I was thinking about what is lost forever when a person dies. I feel fine, but I wanted to get down some things of which I am likely the last keeper. Otherwise, when I go, they go.<br />
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The first was a memory of my Dad and namesake, Deason Hunt. As we walked among the tombstones of Hunt Cemetery in eastern Rusk County, Texas, he was telling some of his memories. At the stone of his Aunt Lou Vicey Hunt Ables (1846-1922), Dad recalled her…
Following a recent local genealogical society meeting, I was thinking about what is lost forever when a person dies. I feel fine, but I wanted to get down some things of which I am likely the last keeper. Otherwise, when I go, they go.<br />
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The first was a memory of my Dad and namesake, Deason Hunt. As we walked among the tombstones of Hunt Cemetery in eastern Rusk County, Texas, he was telling some of his memories. At the stone of his Aunt Lou Vicey Hunt Ables (1846-1922), Dad recalled her funeral. He was 12-years-old at the time. At the cemetery, the coffin was opened for viewing before burial. It was snowing that cold December day, the 17th of December. It is likely my granddaddy Joseph Lafayette Hunt was there unaware that in an odd circumstance, he would die exactly 27 years later on December 17, 1939. My Daddy remembers as he looked into the coffin, a snow flake fell upon his Aunt’s cheek appearing as if a tear.<br />
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Years earlier, Daddy recalled, that, as a child, he was allowed to feel the bullets still carried in his leg from the Civil War by his grandfather, Thomas Edmond “Buck” Fears. This would have happened no later than when Daddy was 5-years-old because that was his age when Buck died in 1915 in the Hunt home. Daddy’s sister, Gladys Jewel Hunt Stewart, remembered in 1978 that Daddy woke up that night and asked “what’s happening.” When told what had happened by his mother, he said that “old Buck wasn’t dead.”<br />
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More memories will appear on this blog as time goes by.<br />
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Source: <a href="http://talkingroots.wordpress.com/2009/05/19/memories-too-precious-to-lose/" target="_blank">talkingroots.wordpress.com</a>talkingroots: No ancestor left unrememberedtag:www.genealogywise.com,2009-07-15:3463583:BlogPost:478422009-07-15T03:00:07.000ZDeason Hunthttp://www.genealogywise.com/profile/DeasonHunt
No ancestor left behind! That’s it after 32 years of researching.<br />
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I started my trek in genealogy in the late 1970s (my earliest correspondence files dated 1977) after receiving one of those “fill-in-your-family-tree” books for Christmas. I was like most starters just facing an empty 5-generation chart with little more data than my generation and that of my parents. Filling the blanks was the goal that motivated me at first with who and when. Over the years, my goals changed as I got deeper in…
No ancestor left behind! That’s it after 32 years of researching.<br />
<br />
I started my trek in genealogy in the late 1970s (my earliest correspondence files dated 1977) after receiving one of those “fill-in-your-family-tree” books for Christmas. I was like most starters just facing an empty 5-generation chart with little more data than my generation and that of my parents. Filling the blanks was the goal that motivated me at first with who and when. Over the years, my goals changed as I got deeper in some areas of research and broadened as I found interesting side paths to wander down.<br />
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It finally hit me this morning as I was driving and listening to NPR — No ancestor left unremembered. That’s what drives me three decades later. And I mean it for all my ancestors and all ancestors of everyone interested in genealogy and even those who could care less.<br />
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My religion teaches me that immortality has to do with the soul, and I get that. But I think how sad it is that people live out their lives and, one day, they are lost not only to memory but to history itself.<br />
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My limited reading in the development of family trees and genealogy leads me to believe that it is only the royal, rich, and famous who history remembers. Yet, don’t all our ancestors who laughed and cried, who passed days and nights of joy and pain, whose blood line and DNA testifies to the fact that they were here — don’t they deserve to be remembered? The common folk worked the fields, marched in the armies, raised the crops, and paid the taxes which allowed the rich and famous to be that and deserve their place in the sun. It is in remembrance and documentation that we save them for now and the future.<br />
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I don’t know where I will fit in the far distant future. I doubt that rich, powerful, or famous will ever be used to describe me; however, that doesn’t matter. My time is now with the resources and the stories which could disappear in a few generations. It is my place to provide knowledge of that which has gone before me so that the greater story might be known or written by future generations. Perhaps as we work and preserve names and memories today we set the stage for tomorrow’s more universal enlightenment of the value of all lives which otherwise might disappear into the mists of the past.<br />
Source: <a href="http://talkingroots.wordpress.com/2009/07/04/no-ancestor-left-unremembered/" target="_blank">talkingroots.wordpress.com</a>talkingroots: One of my favorite resourcestag:www.genealogywise.com,2009-07-12:3463583:BlogPost:332302009-07-12T23:00:00.000ZDeason Hunthttp://www.genealogywise.com/profile/DeasonHunt
Since all of my family lines come through southern states — North and South Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi — one of the most valuable background resources I have found for understanding the lives of my 19th Century ancestors is <u>The Dixie Frontier – A Social History of the Southern Frontier from the First Transmontane Beginnings to the Civil War</u>, by Everett Dick, research professor of American History, Union College, Lincoln, Nebraska. (Published by Alfred A.…
Since all of my family lines come through southern states — North and South Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi — one of the most valuable background resources I have found for understanding the lives of my 19th Century ancestors is <u>The Dixie Frontier – A Social History of the Southern Frontier from the First Transmontane Beginnings to the Civil War</u>, by Everett Dick, research professor of American History, Union College, Lincoln, Nebraska. (Published by Alfred A. Knopf, 1948). On page 221 of the book, we learn that intermittent fever was another name for malaria. Although girls married young on the frontier (average age 15), the “young maiden” could not “begin to compete with the widow” as a prospective bride (page 135). While a rail splitter did indeed split rails, it was often called mauling rails (p. 313). The book is well documented and offers original sources which can be used for further research.<br />
Source: <a href="http://talkingroots.wordpress.com" target="_blank">talkingroots.wordpress.com</a>, July 4, 2009.