Thursday, June 11, 2015

52 Ancestors Week 23- June Wedding.

The June Wedding highlighted for this week's 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks   blog prompt by Amy Johnson Crow is the one for my maternal Step Grandfather's parents.
  Francis "Frank" Emerson Sullivan (1923-2004) was orphaned as a small boy. He was raised by his maternal Grandparents who both passed away by the time he was 14.  Due to the early loss of family, Frank only knew a few details about his parents.
 On a research trip to The South Carolina Archives and History for the specific purpose of researching marriage records, I was able to find many documents related to several branches of my tree.
 Knowing that Frank was born in 1923, his parents names and the locations they had been living in before their marriage, I began a search of the years previous to his birth and the probable counties.
 I almost yelled out loud as I discovered Frank E. Sullivan and Mary C. Williams on the Kershaw County, South Carolina Marriage Register for 11 June, 1921. 


Marriage Register
Kershaw County, SC  June 1921
South Carolina Department of Archives and History


Wanting to know more, I headed to one of my favorite resources, The newspaper.
Frank Sullivan and Christine (Williams) Sullivan
Marriage Announcement
The State, Columbia, SC, 14 June 1921, pg. 

 This article announcing that Sgt. Frank E. Sullivan had brought home a bride was such a fun find. Not only does it confirm the marriage  but it tells where and by whom they were married.  It gives me one more piece of evidence for Christine's  father's name. It even tells me where they were making their home as newlyweds and what Frank's job was.

Concentrating on one record group at a time and newspaper research helped me locate the marriage information for Francis "Frank" Emerson Sullivan (1880-1925) and  Mary Christine (Williams) Sullivan (1896-1930). The clues provided nay lead me to even more.

 Are we kin? Please contact me. Together we can find our people. 
Thanks so much for stopping by.



2 comments:

  1. Cheri, you have great luck & skill in finding treasures in the newspapers. I need to improve my knowledge of newspapers searches. DO you have a favorite database?

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    1. Colleen, the key is to find out which of the databases have the newspapers for your area. Start with Chronicling America. It is free. The local libraries in the areas that your ancestors lived may have them as well. For instance, the Richland County, SC library has a searchable database for many SC newspapers. It is worth it to me to buy an out of county library card since most of my searching is in SC. So many fun stories in the newspaper!

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