Who Do I Think I am? Wow! part 1

I noticed the family research TV program on NBC, WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? the person that is being researched says WOW! a lot. WOW! is probably the most used word on the program.

In a way, WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? is a 60 minute infomercial for ANCESTRAL.COM, the on-line genealogy research engine. The system is good. Many times in minutes you can pick off your ancestors as easily as picking ripe fruit off a tree. It is also costly. It costs hundreds of dollars yearly. You can find out the same stuff on your own, free.

Each week there subject is a household word celebrity. And you go through his research with that person, visit grave yards, old court house or church records and you find out, along with the celebrity what dent their ancestors made in the history books. Then you can say along with the celebrity “WOW!”

I have been researching my roots since 1976 and have said, “WOW!” quite a few times myself. Here are some of my WOW findings:




My great grandfather was born and grew up with the name William Trammell. He enlisted into the Confederacy and married with that name. His mother died before he was eight years old and he lived with his grandparents, Jacob and Polly Trammell. William became an accessory to murder that his uncle Van Trammell committed and he and Van fled the state. William changed his name to William A. Hunter. Actually , I think William being a accessory was because he told the sheriff that Van was with him, which the Sheriff proved otherwise. It was enough to be an accessory and get out of town.

In 1842, William A. Trammell’s mother Rebecca sued Jason Henderson Hunter for bastardy. The court ruled in her favor and Jason Hunter was ordered to pay Rebecca Trammell $100 a year in child support.

After William was wounded on Kennesaw Mountain during the Civil War he recuperated in a private home just north of Woodstock , Georgia, in the Andersonville Community. While there for those months he made friends. After he fled Franklin, North Carolina, he and his wife went to Texas for a few years, and in 1879 returned east – to Woodstock, Georgia, where he and his wife, Emaline Ray lived the rest of their lives.

Jason Henderson Hunter was in the local militia and was Federalized to be a soldier in the infamous Trail of Tears, marching the Indians to Oklahoma. Ironically, years later he would live on the two different places of the Trail of Tears.

In the Civil War Jason Hunter recruited men for his own CSA unit. Their unit was to fight the Yankee water vessels on the Mississippi River. Jason was a state representative when he lived in Bollinger County, Missouri and again was a state representative in Greene County, Arkansas. Both places were on the Trail of Tears.

Jason also went through about four, maybe five wives, and had over 15 children, at least four being born out of wedlock.

To be continued - (there is a lot more Wows!)