Sunday, July 21, 2013

Richard Halliburton vs. Nathan Bedford Forrest

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Explorer, Richard Halliburton

As further evidence that everyone in Haywood County, Tenn. is related in one way or another, I just stumbled across the fact that the famous explorer Richard Halliburton, who was from Haywood County, does occupy a very, very...very distant twig on my family tree.

I blogged about Halliburton back in February of 2012 and then my family and I paid a visit to his grave in Memphis.

"He was the most famous man of the early twentieth century. Or one of the most famous. He rivaled Amelia Earhart and Charles Lindbergh in popularity. He traveled the word and wrote about it in best selling books. You might say he invented "adventure travel," by doing such things as diving into a cenotes or well in an ancient Mayan site and registering as a ship and swimming the Panama Canal. He at least created the new era of travel writing." Source

This weekend I began researching the Forrest line of my family tree. My third great-grandmother was Ann M. Forrest and, when you're from the South and you have a Forrest in your line, you do wonder, if THAT Forrest is hiding behind the branches somewhere.

Anyway, it doesn't look like that's the case.

However, it does turn out that my third-great grandmother's niece, Sarah Frances Forrest (my second cousin, four times removed) was married to James C. Neely.

Their daughter, Anna Mae Neely, married William Robert Halliburton. Of course, as soon as I saw that name, I was hopeful I would run into Richard Halliburton in there somewhere.

It turns out, his second great-grandfather and the second great-grandfather of the explorer Richard Halliburton were brothers.

It's always fun to find an interesting connection to a historic figure in your line, no matter how distant. Even better when they aren't a controversial slave trader who started the KKK.

For more blog entries, visit my Blog Home Page or to check out the genealogy research about my specific family lines, go to my Haywood County Line Genealogy Website.

5 comments:

  1. I have been following your blog since I found it since doing a google search on the name SHERROD and now I will be following your research of your third great-grandmother, Ann Forrest Yelverton with great interest as I believe that her mother, Zilpha Sherrod, is connected to my great-grandfather, Wm Henry Sherrod and his siblings who were all orphans in Haywood county in 1860. Good luck in your research of your Forrest family.
    Susie Carroll Summers

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    1. I have now spent a few weeks on the Sherrod connection. I have no doubt you are correct. Through the death certificates of her children, I now understand Ann Forrest Yelverton was actually Ann Sherrod Yelverton. The Forrests raised the daughter of one of Zilpha Sherrod Forrest's relatives.

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  2. Scott, you do know that there is a Forrest Family Cemetery in the Big Black Creek neighborhood, and the Forrest still own some of the original land grant. One of the graves is Charolet Brown, born before the American Revoution. The Forrest were brick masons and had to clay sites in the neighborhood, one near the cemetery.

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    1. How difficult is that cemetery to find? I am planning to check it out when I am back in Tennessee this Fall. Thanks for the detail that they were brick masons. I didn't know that. Any info like that you have is greatly appreciated!

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  3. Scott , do you have a Mattie Lee Halliburton in your family tree ? She married my Great Grandfather Lewis Vernon Taliaferro . They lived in the Brownsville area. My GGG Grandfather Lyne Shackleford Taliaferro moved to that part of Tn. in 1832 from Virginia.

    Ben E. Taliaferro

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