Family Genealogy Opening

Photo of National Park Service sign telling about the trading post that the Rogers family ancestor, Nathaniel Folsom and his family, operated in Choctaw Territory where Mississippi is now located. Bro. Reggie Rogers took this photo three years ago while on vacation.

You may not think the hunt for ancestors bears much resemblance to digging for most things, but you would be wrong. They must be "dug" out of old and obscure records and documents, from old photos and letters, from the memories of family and from other researchers; a chore that taxes your brain and your patience at times, but one that never fails to hold a fascination for me. It is a detective mystery in the truest sense. You must gather clues, search for obscure and often forgotten facts, follow people as they move sometimes across the entire country. Finding just the piece of evidence you've been missing about an ancestor is like finding the answer to a mystery, and the reward is worth all the work you've put into it.

I recently noticed that someone on a website I visited said that those of us who are interested in our family histories are the family "storytellers." I like that. And more than that, I am comfortable with it. I do not know nearly enough to be called a "genealogist." But I am a storyteller, and I love to dig out the stories of all those who came before us, to bring them alive so our present and future family members will be able to know them, too.

There are many different types of family history records and genealogy sites, and the record you will see here is one that has been compiled from the work of many people. I have done very little of the original research work for our family lines, and due to illness in the past seven years, my research has been confined to the internet. While there is a lot of information on the internet, the enthusiastic interest in genealogy these days mean that you must wade through tons of information that's useless in hopes of finding just the one piece you are searching for. It is a science, and it is work, but it is also very interesting, which is what keeps me going.

We owe many thanks to the following people, along with others. You will find additional credit on individual family pages, but most credit for the original research of our extended family goes to:

Dean McClure, Donna Tattershall and Dan Cowden for the McClure family research; to Bobbe Budda for the work done on the Rogers and affiliated families, including Burks, Hampton, Castleberry and McCracken lines. Betty Campbell Ford for Campbell research, and Don and Carol Heuer for Compton research. Much of the work done by these people was done prior to, and without the aid of, the Internet, and they report most credit is due to the complete LDS Libraries in various sections of the country. We are all indebted to them for their dedication of years of research to put together the history of our families.

In the last several years in particular, the information available on the Internet is absolutely amazing! It takes some time to learn how to find it, but I'm firmly convinced that most everything you need is available, if you're able to find it.

The work I have done has been to search the Internet and "flesh out" the family lines. I have done this by locating and furnishing information of siblings and other family members about our direct antecedents, and with more information about the people in these families. Some information received from the contributions and credit for those who have researched will be found on individual family pages.

The search for family records, and the stories of our family members in the past can be exhaustive and sometimes very frustrating work. Even where records existed, some burned or other calamities happened. Family members who did not have any records make the search for a person, and how, when and where they lived very difficult. In some cases, all we can find are clues that lead to conclusions, based on what few records there are, and in these cases I will try to make that known. I will also include documentation where I can.

I originally put this section online in the spring of 2002, but I was ill at the time, and had become increasingly more ill for the previous five years. In August 2002 I found out why... I was diagnosed with cancer, and they estimated I'd had it for five years previously. Due to the delay in discovering the cause, treatment has had to be long, difficult and aggressive. This is the first I've been healthy enough to tackle it again (summer 2005) and I am revamping some pages to correct errors, add updates, and include new information.
-----Marcia Rogers Foley

If you are the child of one of my siblings or their children, you can get your own Choctaw "CDIB" (Certificate of Degree of Indian Blood), and get them for your children.

Some of our Choctaw ancestors were preachers. Some were cattlemen, something that became a very prominent livelihood with the Choctaw; some were storekeepers, millers, farmers, carpenters and woodworkers, some were statesmen and men of means, and others did not care at all about money, or possessions.

One ancestor was a French Canadian who introduced cattle to the Choctaw, and helped the tribe so much in dealing with the US Government he was adopted into the tribe as a chief. He lived among them the rest of his life and raised a prominent family. He also put together a company of men (including three sons) and fought with Chief Pushmataha under General Andrew Jackson at the Battle of New Orleans.

He was so respected that when a town began across the river and below the bluff where his large home stood, it was named after him. And, once in Indian Territory (later Oklahoma), one of his grandsons had a town of the same name, named after him! Our forefathers helped settle and civilize the states of Kentucky and North Carolina, Oklahoma, and probably others. And some of them in the northern states helped to bring the country into being by serving with the First Continental Congress and in the Revolutionary War, as well as other battles.

In fact, two of our cousins (both with the same first and last names, Nathaniel Folsom) but unknown to each other, led very exciting lives. One was leading an adventurous life in New England; fighting with Robert Rogers (of Rogers Rangers fame); fighting in the French and Indian War, and then the Revolutionary War. He had no idea that at the same time, the other was having numerous adventures with the Choctaw Indians as he began a trading post among them, married two Choctaw women at the same time (who were sisters, and princesses!) and working hard to raise a large family (27 children) in the wilderness of Mississippi. A number of those children became quite prominent or important. There is a marker commemorating the location of his trading post on the Natchez Trace, still today (shown at top of page in photo).

If you are a researcher looking for information, I hope you find something here to help you in your search. Be sure to check out the page of links in this section, which will contain some good information. And if the one you are searching for is in one of our lines, please feel free to contact me. I�ll be happy to share any information I have. If you have some information that will help with our family lines, we will be grateful for anything you have that you might be willing to share.

Well, we are fairly well equipped now for our "digging expedition," and although the pages you are about to see will continue to grow, there is already a pretty good start in most family lines. I hope you enjoy your journey back in time, and don�t forget to let me know about any missing or incorrect information I might have on these pages. I do not pretend to be an expert, and while I have been careful about where my information has come from, and am reasonably sure it is well documented, errors do happen. I would appreciate your letting me know about any errors immediately.

Don't forget to also let me know how you liked the pages, even if you don�t have any errors to report. I'd love to hear your comments or suggestions. Just click on the email link below.

Update, October 2006
It has been exactly a year since I updated this section of the website, and I didn't have time to do much at that time. This has been a very eventful year for us (of course, all of them seem to be), and I've not had time to do much of anything about genealogy research. At this point, I consider myself very blessed just to still be alive, more than three years after my predicted demise. I have received some information from others in that time, however, have had some corrections suggested, and just recently came upon new information about Nathaniel Folsom, mentioned above, and received permission to use it on our website. It is a portion of his memoirs, and is quite interesting, having been written in about 1824, I believe.

I did come across a great deal of additional Compton information sometime this last year, taking the family back to European royalty, and I hope to get that online. There is much interesting information included in it.

My problem right now is that my computer died at the beginning of this year and I replaced it, but because I was so ill for some time, I have not replaced my genealogy program with an updated one, and need to, because I can't put it into this computer until I do that. So, I'll have to get that done quickly now. If you read the main page of my website, you know that we also just moved (again), and are still not settled yet, so time is somewhat limited to work on all this, and we are in a very rural area (again), so shopping trips are limited, and time for unnecessary things is at the bottom of the list each time. I will get it done as soon as possible, however.

I have come in contact with several new relatives from different family lines, and you will find information about that on the pages of each of the lines affected. I always get excited to get new information, and solve a bit more of the puzzle. I can almost see the pieces fitting into the full picture.

In going through my website I am finding things that have not been connected to anything else, and other problems due to navigation mostly, so I'm beginning, with this update, to try to organize each family's information on one page, so you'll be able to clearly see everything we have involving that family. The index on this page is now getting too lengthy to do that, so this should help. To start, I am organizing the Hampton family information, to see how well this works before I do all of it. Please let me know if it makes things easy to negotiate. Thanks!

In a recent exchange with my niece Jenny, she sparked the idea for something I plan to create for this section that will be especially beneficial for those who are not familiar with genealogy or the different family lines in our extended family, but which will also be very interesting for all of us, and that is to create a family tree - not one in detail, but one that shows the overall picture of all the families and their relationship to one another. I'll let you know as soon as I get it created and online.

Thank you all for visiting our site, please come often to see what's new!

Page updated October 2006
James and Marcia Foley

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(Happy Birthday, Billy)

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