Random Genealogy Bits

    In the last few months, I became aware of the improvements made on Family Search .  They have a search feature called " Full Text " that is being used on selected records.  It is an AI that reads handwritten pages and does a fairly decent job of transcribing it. I have spent many learning new things about my family. For instance, the Meeks family .  When I questioned my aunts and uncles they all had one response, "I don't know much except they were as poor as a church mouse."  Full Text verified this Wayne county Sept 1845 is evidently where Martha "Patsy" was living and it seems Andrew was in Russell county. January Term 1846    Ordered that Andrew Meeks infant son of Patsy Meeks aged about 5 years be bound out to Michael Huffaker until he arrives at the age 21 years of Whereupon the clerk of this Court together with said Huffaker executed and acknowledged in open Court the proper Indenture, which is ordered to be recorded.  I found pa...

  Two Desperate Characters Captured and Lodged in Jail                                     Thursday, April 18,1872                                                                  In yesterday's UNION AND AMERICAN was noticed the arrival in this city of the Sheriff of Fentress county with two prisoners, Robert Step and James Hull , charged with the murder of a man named Lewis Hill in Fentress county the 20th of November, 1871 . The facts in relation to the arrest together with the alleged circumstances of the murder, are these. Last year some time a man named William Smith was arrested for stealing a horse from a gentleman named Nathaniel Dobbs , and indicted by the Circuit Court of Fentress County. The murdered ma...