North Carolina Genealogy

Some time back I ran across this great genealogy resource from the US Citizenship and Immigration Services. They will do lookups of immigration and naturalization records. You can pay for an index search or record request at fairly reasonable fee levels ($20/$35 depending on the item…)

The records they have go back to approximately 1906 judging from their page, but it still may be a valuable resource for those of you who had immigrant ancestors come into the country since then.

I’ve been meaning to post this for a while and I’ve added to the links list in the sidebar.

I’m not sure if I had posted about this before, but I just ran across the State Archives collection of North Carolina Family Records Online. They have digitized a number of items in their collection and you can browse or search. (Including browse by last name or location.) So, what records are included? They have digitized over 2000 family bibles and have also included their 6 volume collection of marriage and death notices from North Carolina Newspapers that cover 1799-1893. I’m eager to see more sources in this resource, but if you’re lucky enough that a families bible has been donated to the state archives, it will be a real find!

Just a note to pass along: the Madison County Genealogy Society holds it’s meetings at 7 PM on the first Monday of the month in Marshall, NC at the Public Library.

The program on August 2nd will be on a “Madison County Oral History Project”.

North Carolina certainly has a unique and interesting history. The lost colony, Sir Walter Raleigh, the various tribes of Native Americans…. mountains, plains the coast, our state’s tapestry is so rich…. pirates, ship graveyards and… castles? There’s a castle in North Carolina? (Actually several… in Asheville there is Seely’s Castle (spelling?)) Today I’m writing a bit about Castle McCulloch. I saw an interesting feature on it on Our State a few weeks back and had to look up their website for more information. It’s located in Jamestown, NC which is in Guilford County, NC and started out as a mill.

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I’m reposting the Declaration of Independence here in celebration of the events of 1776! Also, you might enjoy this reading of the declaration you can find at monticello.org podcasts done by a portrayer of Thomas Jefferson (Bill Barker).

Transcription of the Declaration of Independence, plus links to the Declaration at the National Archives.

This document, writted originally by Thomas Jefferson in June of 1776 documents the greivances that the colonists had against King George and asserts our right to be an independent state.

IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776.

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

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June 6th… it’s a day that to many is no different from any other. In many ways it’s a day that should be more sacred than so many on our calendar. I can’t help but get emotional thinking about D-Day June 6, 1944. The beginning of the Allied invasion of Europe and the liberation of France as well as the turn of the tide in the course of history. Hitler’s Germany had steamrolled Europe, the “Atlantic Wall” was seemingly impenetrable and England and been suffering the repeated bombings from the Luftwaffe…. The sheer scope and scale of that day in Normandy is unimaginable and as I watched specials and retellings of the day on the History channel here I can’t help but get emotional at the amazing feat that those men achieved and the horrible “what if it had failed”… unimaginable as well.

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It’s been too long since I’ve posted here, but things have been quite hectic. I’ve had a couple projects for a business that provides self storage in Greenville South Carolina and then another, sister facility that also provides self storage near Greenville. Work outside of those has stayed pretty busy and we just got back from a Surfside Beach vacation (South Carolina). So, I’m looking back seeing my plans for one post a week and realizing that is probably too ambitious. (Especially since I had the same goal for each of my sites….) So, instead of trying to make that goal, I expect to be looking at one good post a month (give or take) and spending more time on working on improving the existing county pages (which I see as the main centerpiece of the site.) The day after we got back though there was a fascinating afternoon of programming on the NC channel of the UNCtv network. It was all about the different dialects in North Carolina….

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Here are the most popular baby names from 1880:

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Here are the most popular baby names from the year 1900:

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Here are the most popular baby names from 1920:

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