Thanks everyone who commented on the NCGenWeb redesign and all of my other crazy activities. Over the past couple of days I’ve continued to work on NCGenWeb “stuff” and am quite excited by all that is developing. As I take the time to futther explore more of the county sites, I am finding information & connections that I did not even know was available.
For example, I was speaking with the State Coordinator, Diane, who is also the County Coordinator for Craven County – that is the county my father is from. In reviewing the cemetery photos she has posted to the site, I saw that she had my father’s family cemetery there, Mitchell Cemetery. My father’s parents, along with many of his aunts & uncles and cousins are all buried there and I was ecstatic to see it. I last visited the cemetery in 2006 when my grandmother died and while I’d taken pictures, I did not get everyone. A couple of years ago, a FindAGrave volunteer posted photos in the cemetery, but it was nice to see Mitchell represented on the Craven site as well.
I was also corresponding with the County Coordinator for Henderson county on some technical matters and as I was reviewing that site, I noticed in the surname list the name Kirkpatrick/Kilpatrick. One of my ancestors, Silas Kilpatrick, is said by family tradition to have come from Black Mountain, NC, which is in a county next to Henderson. We know that Silas was a slave within the white Kilpatrick family, but I had not yet had time to investigate any Kilpatrick associations on that side of the state, and since I was told Black Mountain, I would have likely focused on it’s county instead of the neighbor county. Well, Kathy informed me that there is a white Silas Kirkpatrick listed in the 1835 Poll Book, residing in Crabtree precinct of Haywood County NC which is not too far from Black Mountain! This is great and gives me another lead for my family research.
In addition, I posted on the NCGenWeb News blog about the Randolph County Coordinator setting up an RSS feed for the county site. He already Twitters on behalf of the project so this is yet another avenue for further promoting the information available. Also, I am helping two county coordinators better understand WordPress as an option for redesigning their county sites.
Exciting time in NC indeed!
Update on NCGenWeb
