FREE Small Books History Genealogy

Here is a listing of the free small books available for download on this site.

This is a commercial site and you need to go to the "Free Small
books"  in the middle of the page and click on the "here" to connect to the site.

http://www.dmkheritage.com/store/

Hope this helps some one in their research.

Free Books In Gallery:

GA:     History of Crisp Co. DAR  1916

 History of Washington Co. by Ella Mitchell, 1924

Ky: History of Russellville & Logan Co. by Finley

Old Kentucky Deeds: Lincoln Co. 1779-1787
 

Old Kentucky Deeds: Fayette Co. 1782-1794

N.C.     Marriage Bonds of Tryon County NC from 1769-1870.
    

Friends Records of Births and Deaths, Cane Creek, NC

     St. Bartholomew?s Parish, NC

     Bertie Co. Wills (1795-1840 abt.) NCHGR

     Bertie Co. Marriages 1762-1834 (1809-1819 missing)
NCHGR

S. C.     Annals and Parish Register of St. Thomas - St. Denis SC

     St. James Church, Goose Creek, SC 1706-1909

     Marriage Notices in SC & American General Gazette

     Chronicles of St. Mark?s Parish Santee Circuit
Williamsburg  Township, SC.

      French & Swiss Protestants in Charleston the Santee,
                 Naturalization Records 1695-96

    Vestry of St. Matthew?s Parish, SC   1769-1838

    History of Grandal Shoals (Cherokee & Union Co., SC

    History of Fairfield Co., SC  by Ederington

    The Parish of  St. Michael, SC

     South Carolina in the Rev. War. by A. Southron

Tenn.     History of Overton County, Tenn. by Goodpasture.

    Reminiscences of Early Settlements & Settlers of
McNairy Co.,  Tenn. by Gen. Marcus Wright

Va.       Lunenburg County, Va. Wills 1746-1825

   Frederick Parish, Va. 1744-1780, Churches, Chapels, etc.

   Revolutionary Soldiers and Sailors for Northampton Co.,VA

   Virginia Wills Before 1799 by Wm. M. Clemens

    Historical Sketches of ?Old Bruton Church?

Williamsburg, Va.

    Williamsburg Wills  Abt. 1750-1825

    Old Surry, Va.

     History of Hampton & Eliz. City Co. Va.  Tyler 1922

     Scotch-Irish in the Valley of Virginia by Waddell

Penn.     Penn. Marriages Prior to 1799

W.Va    History of Marion Co., W. VA.  by Geo. A. Dunnington

Sketches of Wood Co. W. VA  by S. C. Shaw

S-I         Scotch-Irish in America by Dinsmore

     Scotch-Irish in the Valley of Virginia by Waddell

© History Chasers Click here to view all recent Historical Melungeons Blog posts



Enter your email address to start receiving this blog in your inbox

Enter your email address:
Delivered by FeedBurner

Bessie Coleman First African and Native American Female Pilot

(1892-1926)
Aviatrix

by Janet Crain

Bessie Coleman was the world's first black female pilot and the first woman to receive an international pilot's license. She flew in the United States 3 years before Amelia Earhart. But this triumph over circumstance came after many hard years of work and sacrifice.

Bessie was born in Atlanta, Texas to George and Susan Coleman, the twelfth of thirteen children or the 6th of 10 according to which resource you read. In any case, life was very hard in the little home four miles from Waxahachie, Texas that George built with his own hands, then left for Oklahoma to establish his Native American citizenship as a Choctaw-Cherokee with a small amount of African American ancestry. Susan declined to move the family with him. She eked out a living picking cotton and the children helped. In some manner Bessie was sent to one semester of College in Oklahoma, but had to return home when her money ran out.

She then became a self employed laundress, walking the four miles to Waxahachie in the morning to get the dirty laundry and washing all day when this meant carrying water and wood to burn for fuel. After four years of this, she vowed to improve her condition and moved to Chicago where her older brothers lived. She attended a manicurist school for about one month and was then installed in the window of the White Sox Barbershop where her good looks attracted the maximum attention and clientele.

One of her brothers who returned from France after the war told her the women in her neighborhood would never be able to fly planes like the women in France. That was all Bessie needed to hear. Flying had been a lifelong dream of hers. She began a campaign among her well heeled gentlemen friends, both black and white, to contribute to her receiving flying lessons in France. Apparently Bessie was
persuasive indeed, as she was soon studying French and preparing for her trip.

She took lessons at the Federation Aeronautique Internationale and in 1921 she became the only black pilot in the world. A year later she became the first black woman to fly over American soil.

Bessie soon became a role model, not only for blacks and women, but for others who admired her tenacity and endurance. She barnstormed, performed sky stunts and flew crop dusters to earn money to establish her own flying school. Never adverse to publicity, Bessie designed a military costume and shaved 4 or 5 years off her real age.

At one performance in Houston she took up, free of charge, 75 different people in her plane, saying they may not be able to ride the train but they had flown in an airplane.

To fulfill her dream to own her own plane and start a school for African American students, she made a deal with a businessman to pay for a $400. Jenny, a plane that she would use to advertise his business to repay him.

When the mechanic flew the plane to her, they took it up for a check and for once she did not fasten her seat belt because sitting in the passenger seat she was too short to see out The engine stalled and the plane lurched, throwing her out. Her death was instantaneous and so was the mechanic's as the plane crashed and landed on top of him. An investigation revealed a wrench left carelessly behind which became lodged in the controls.

And so a dream died for Brave Bessie. But not for her adoring public. 5,000 people attended her funeral and for many years afterward black pilots dropped flowers on her Chicago grave on her birthday.

Only after her death did Bessie receive the recognition she desired. Her dream of a flying school for African Americans was fulfilled when William J. Powell established the Bessie Coleman Aero club in Los Angeles. Influenced by the Aero Club, hundreds of black aviators -- including the Flying Blackbirds, the Flying Hobos, and the Tuskegee Airmen -- continued to make Bessie's dream a reality.

Related:

http://www.gale.cengage.com/free_resources/bhm/bio/coleman_b.htm

© History Chasers

Click here to view all recent Historical Melungeons Blog posts

Red Dirt Rising

But first the world's largest sport industry started here:

Click here to watch the video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3R5p1V34pQ

By Tucker McLaughlin
The News & Record / August 04, 2009

South Boston Speedway fans were exposed briefly Saturday night to a new movie production, showcasing part of the early origins of southern stock car racing.

The movie is called, ‘Red Dirt Rising’.

Todd Morris, who lives in High Point, N.C., said the movie “is really based around the formation of NASCAR, as it popped up all through the Southeast. Some of the hot spots are based in High Point and some of the first tracks.

“The movie is based around (early southern racing figures) Jimmie Lewallen, Bill Blair and Fred Harb,” noted Morris. (Bill Blair Jr. raced in the Legendary Flatheads series at SBS last weekend, and his dad, Bill Blair Sr., won Daytona back in 1953).

The movie deals with selected North Carolina racing families before the sport became widely exposed as it is today. It’s escapist fare, and some old-time NASCAR fans, in particular, may appreciate the approach here.

Based on promotional materials for the film, ‘Red Dirt Rising’ tells the kind of story that should be interesting to tradition-minded NASCAR fans.

Based on a true story, the film shares with us a decade in the lives of Jimmie Lewallen and his wife Carrie as they experience the joys of love and marriage along side the tragedies of war and poverty (1939 - 1949).

Jimmie and his friends, Bill Blair and Fred Harb, find escape from life's challenges in racing - born out of hauling moonshine on warm North Carolina evenings - and inadvertently become racing's earliest heroes. Ultimately their antics laid the ground work for what has become one of the most lucrative sports in the world. A number of racing firsts occurred during the The Fightin' Forties, making this film a sensational history lesson as well as an exciting journey of romance, friendship and action.

Cont. here:
http://www.thenewsrecord.com/index.php/sports/article/red_dirt_rising/

Related:
http://www.reddirtrising.com/new/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=5&Itemid=6#mce_temp_url#

Video here:

© History Chasers

Click here to view all recent Historical Melungeons Blog posts

A most obnoxious and dangerous population

a>

Black Texas Women
150 Years of Trial and Triumph

By Ruthe Winegarten
Janet G. Humphrey & Frieda Werden, consulting editors

Mary Madison's Galveston neighbors considered her "a very valuable citizen, in a variety of ways: especially in the capacity of a nurse." Eighty-two of them, many of whom had probably "experienced her kindness, her attention and watchfulness," signed a petition in 1850 for her to remain in the state and enjoy the "little property" which she had accumulated. Her request was one of the few granted by the Texas legislature.

Mary Madison's petition is a sample of the rare documents that preserve scraps of information about the lives of free women of color in Texas before the Civil War. She was one of many courageous women who resisted the law and struggled to protect themselves and their families. They used a variety of strategies, including the right of petition and the judicial process, to avoid being sold into slavery or banished from their homes. Many defied the law; when their petitions were denied, they remained anyway. Some women purchased their own freedom; some were purchased by their black husbands. Others married or became the concubines of white men or served so loyally that they were emancipated by their owners. This theme of resistance by black women would resonate through the history of the state.

Although the numbers of free blacks were much more significant in the Old South, Texas had enough to count. At the time of the Texas Declaration of Independence, an estimated 150 free blacks lived in the new republic. (Most antebellum African-Americans were, of course, slaves.) The 1850 census reported 394; ten years later, the figure was 355, including 174 women living in forty counties. Historian Randolph Campbell believes that the actual number of free people of color was probably double that counted by the census.

The rights of free women of color in Texas varied with the flag. Some free people of color were drawn to colonial Texas by the antislavery position of Mexico, the lure of the land, and the greater freedom of the frontier. The women employed their domestic skills as nurses, laundresses, cooks, house servants, seamstresses, boardinghouse keepers, stock farmers, and milk women. Some used their earnings to become prosperous business women, property owners, and even slaveholders. Since children took their legal status from their mothers, the children of free women were also free.

Despite their contributions as pioneers, free people of color were legally unwelcome from the days of the Republic of Texas. Slaveholders were apprehensive because free people of color constituted a threat to some of their most cherished assumptions—that whites were racially superior and that blacks were incapable of self-government. The Marshall Texas Republican editorialized that "free Negroes are certainly a most obnoxious and dangerous population ."4 Whites feared that free people of color might entice slaves to run away or rebel, but scholars have found no evidence of this.

Under Spanish and Mexican Rule

Among the first Africans in Mexico were men who arrived with the Spaniards in the mid-1500, like the famed Esteban, a slave who was the translator for an early expedition which included Cabeza de Vaca. They often married or took as mates Native American and Spanish women. As sovereignty over Texas passed from Spain and Mexico to the Anglos, some slave and free black Spaniards and mulattoes and their descendants lost their identity in the census records and were absorbed into history as persons with Spanish surnames. Among the earliest colonists were free women of color. An official Spanish census of Texas in 1792 counted 167 female mulattoes and nineteen female Negroes, a mixture of slaves and free citizens.

Since Spain recognized free people of color, Mexican Texas became a haven for runaway and freed slaves from the nearby United States South. This kind of immigration was fueled by word of mouth and continued even after Texas independence. Felipe Elua, a Louisiana creole and slave, purchased himself and his wife, Mary Ortero, a mulatto, and their children. In 1807, they settled in San Antonio to become landowners and farmers, educating their children in Spanish and French. Another fifteen male and female Negroes were recorded in Nacogdoches in 1808, where they had fled from North American masters.

Antislavery sentiment and equality for all people surfaced as major issues when the multiracial Mexican populace rebelled against Spain. In 1821, Mexico negotiated a treaty of independence that promised citizenship along with equal rights and opportunities for all Mexican people, even though it also made Catholicism the official and only tolerated religion. For the next fifteen years, Mexico (including the state of Coahuila and Texas) passed a number of ambiguous and contradictory measures relating to the legal status of slaves. Nevertheless, opportunity for free black immigrants from the United States in Texas reached its peak during Mexican sovereignty.

The main attraction of Texas—cheap and good land—convinced many Anglo colonists to brave a few legal problems with regard to slaves. The new colonists were skillful in negotiating the everchanging legal system. In 1823, Stephen F. Austin received approval from the newly independent Mexican government to bring settlers and their slaves from the United States. The "Old 300" colonists included slaveholders and slaves, but also a few free people of color: Lewis B. and Sarah Jones, Samuel H. Hardin, and Greenbury Logan. Lewis and Sarah Jones emigrated to Texas in 1826 from Mississippi, along with their two daughters. The barber Samuel H. Hardin married Tamar Morgan in 1838. She came to Texas as a slave in 1832, but purchased her own freedom with the proceeds of her labor. By 1840, this industrious Brazoria County woman had accumulated four town lots, one hundred acres, and four slaves. Greenbury and Carolyn Logan were another Brazoria County couple. He came to Texas in 1831 and purchased Carolyn's freedom with earnings from his blacksmith shop. He was granted legal title to land in Brazoria County. After he was wounded fighting for Texas independence, the couple operated a tavern, boardinghouse, and retail store in Columbia, the first capital of the Republic.

Some free women of color were married to whites. In 1828, David Towns moved from Louisiana to Nacogdoches with his wife, Sophia, and his family, who were also his slaves. He manumitted them, and they lived together in harmony, alongside their Mexican neighbors. Other white husbands manumitted their slave wives (or concubines) in their wills.

Celia Allen sought the legal assistance of William B. Travis, later a hero of the Alamo, to help protect her status as a free woman in 1833. Her owner had emancipated her along with her four children, but a prominent pioneer, William H. Jack, claimed her as a slave. With Travis's help, she won the case and lived free until her death in 1841. Her estate at that time was valued at $214.65 and included two horses, seven head of cattle, several pigs, two feather beds, and kitchen utensils.

Some single women came to Texas already free. The most famous, Emily D. West, is better known as Emily Morgan, "The Yellow Rose of Texas." A native of New York, she came to Texas with Mrs. Lorenzo de Zavala in 1835. When General Santa Anna was on his way to fight Sam Houston's forces in 1836, Emily took refuge with the de Zavalas at James Morgan's home. There the general captured her. Texas myth credits her with ensuring Houston's victory during the Battle of San Jacinto by sending word of Santa Anna's whereabouts and "distracting" him while his enemies approached. Her passport application to return home stated that she had lost her freedom papers on the San Jacinto battlefield. She is said to have returned to New York in 1837. Few academic historians credit the myth, although there was an Emily D. West who applied for a passport back to New York.

Cont. here:

http://www.utexas.edu/utpress/excerpts/exwinbla.html

© History Chasers

Click here to view all recent Historical Melungeons Blog posts

New Research Library Now Open

Harry Truman's hometown hosts a new site for genealogy buffs

By JUDY WILEY
McClatchy Newspapers


Travelers who've caught the genealogy bug may want to make plans for a trip to Independence, Mo. The new $8 million Midwest Genealogy Center opens May 11 and houses microfilm and microfiche with Civil War histories, American Indian records, black family history records, passenger lists, plantation records and more.

Classes will be offered, as will consultation with foreign-language experts. And if you're really wrapped up in research, there's a break room, lockers and "limited" food service. More: http://www.midwestgenealogycenter.org/

Cont. here:

http://www.miamiherald.com/814/story/528501.html

Midwest Genealogy CenterDiscover YOUR History

The Library's goal in building the Midwest Genealogy Center is to provide a fitting and appropriate facility to house the library's nationally recognized, world-class collection.

The new library will be built on about 8 acres of land at the intersection of Lee's Summit and Kiger Roads in Independence, Missouri, and will open on June 2, 2008.

The new library will cost over $8 million and is being built without an increase in library taxes.

The new library will have over 50,000 square feet of space, on two-levels (more than 4 times larger than the current space).

The new library will have ample tables, computers, and reader-printers for researchers.

The new library will have lockers, a break area, and limited food service for patrons who frequently spend entire days exploring family histories.

The new library will include several oversize parking spaces for people visiting on daytrips, or those passing through with RVs.

The library is accepting donations to make this facility become a reality.

http://www.mcpl.lib.mo.us/genlh/mgc.htm