Backroads to My Ancestors

09/02/2026

I’m very old school; I like to have a piece of paper for every discovery. And worksheets. And pictures. And my kids are probably NOT going to want all this paper. My husband cringes at the amount of things I print, but being the wonderful man he is, doesn’t say a word. Eventually I’ll scan it all into a hard drive and donate what can be donated, but for now, it’s paper.
I’m so grateful for the internet and all the treasures that can be found there. It’s so much easier now than it used to be. But paper allows me to highlight, make notes, and have something easily found in my color coded files, kept in file boxes in the extra bedroom my stepsons use when they’re over. (Eventually I’ll do this for my husband’s family in case they want it).
Belk=red
Marin=blue
Wardlaw=green
Burgess=yellow.

Today is a green folder day. Decided to walk through the DNA links to see if any suggested ancestors could actually be ancestors, found a couple of mistakes in FamilySearch’s tree (it’s a common tree so anyone can change it, which means it’s not always accurate). That will happen when there’s more than one Hugh Calhoun (three in this line), and multiple Mary Calhouns that married a Morrow. Discovered that the Mary Calhoun listed most places as the wife of George Morrow (changed to Morrah several generations later) was actually married to his son John, the daughter of Hugh Calhoun 2, and the Mary Calhoun actually married to George was the daughter of Hugh Calhoun 1 and the sister of Hugh Calhoun 2. Easy mistake to make, right?
So that’s where I’m digging today.
This Hugh Calhoun did not live in the Long Cane section of SC; it seems he went back to Ireland from Charleston to see about his estate there and died, but his wife died in Virginia. Their children migrated to South Carolina from Virginia. That’s what I’m trying to piece together, since Hugh was not among the well known Calhouns. But he was a branch of the tree that became the line of John C Calhouns. Same story as with the Belk family/Belk store founder…there were several brothers and my line descended from one of the ‘other’ brothers.
Wish me luck! This one won’t be as easy to prove! DNA helps support the connections; it’s proving it that’s not as easy.

08/23/2026

I’ve been tracing the piece of land that this house sits on in McCormick County, SC. I’ve got a few missing pieces, which a trip to the courthouses in Abbeville and McCormick should fill in now that I know what I’m looking for. McCormick county records are not online at all, and Abbeville land records aren’t, but the Equity records are. I easily found the estate packet of Uel Wideman, who built the original house, but I found by accident a court case that was separate from his estate packet. It was in the Equity files for Abbeville, yet a Full Text Search on FamilySearch.com didn’t pull up these records. This court case (brought by David J. Wardlaw and his wife, 16 year old Mildred Elizabeth Wideman, daughter of Uel, against Uel’s second wife Emily, who had previously sued him to have the will revoked successfully) had two purposes: the first was a distribution of the land, which was ordered to be sold, and second, a dispute over the ownership of an enslaved person named Elsie and her son Peter.
I know DJ bought the home place, which he later sold to his son, John Uel, who left it to my grandfather, but I need the record of the commissioners sale to verify this.
The history of the land is important, but it’s easy to overlook the the second purpose of this lawsuit. In the South, we are used to the concept of slavery. The Confederate flag was everywhere growing up and we were taught in school (this was in the 70s and 80s) that the Civil War was fought over states rights and we should be proud that we were from the first state that seceded from the Union. We were desensitized to what all this actually meant.
The South went to war for the state right to own other humans, who they didn’t see as human, just another piece of property, valued for what they were capable of doing for their owners. Were they a woman too old to be helpful, or a young man strong enough to work in the fields?
Was the woman young enough to be able to produce other pieces of property for them?
My ancestors lived in a time when this was normal, just as we think today it’s normal for everyone to be free, despite race or ancestry (at least, those of us who aren’t nationalists do). Yes, they could have bucked the system and freed all their slaves, but it probably never occurred to them to do that. That was just their culture. It does NOT make it right or moral, but it’s just the context for the time they lived in. We don’t live in that time, thank God for that, and I’m looking at my family history with fresh eyes, trying to see these people as fallible humans who contributed to the history that made me who I am, and to see what their lives were like.
And this ancestor, as were most of my ancestors in this time frame, was an enslaver. I don’t want to be so used to the concept of our history that this is not shocking to me as I see it in the documents I uncover and share.

As I find mentions of each enslaved human, I’m making a spreadsheet. They had names, they had families, they have descendants, one of which is maybe looking for their history like I am. They had Lives of Value. Maybe someone else has already compiled this information, but that’s not the point of doing it. The point is to see each of these people as a person, not just a word in a document, but a person with as much history and contribution to the future as my ancestors did, even as they were very immoral on this topic. They were real, they existed. They shaped their descendants lives. And although I can’t erase what my ancestors did to them, I can give them dignity and recognition now.

So take a look at the list of names of humans ‘owned’ by Uel Wideman. See how his estate valued them. Imagine them building the house I love so much, even in ruins. The imagine their faces. How the mother Elsie, the subject of this lawsuit, loved her child Peter. Who was his father? How Sam loved his wife Palsy. Think about the relationships between these people. Were they family sold apart? Were they cousins, neighbors? How dud they feel watching the family they built together on this plantation being broken apart?

08/12/2026

I Spent the morning at the Presbyterian Heritage Center researching the information from several Associate Reformed Presbyterian churches in the Abbeville area. Lower Long Cane, Upper Long Cane, Cedar Springs, Troy, and Greenville Presbyterian are all embedded in my family history in that area. I didn’t find anything mind blowing, but I did find the baptismal and death records of one distant Weems ancestor, and met several nice people who volunteer there, and even had a pleasant lunch with Bob C., the volunteer who gathered my information for me, at the Huckleberry in Montreat, NC. Research doesn’t always have to be finding hidden gems, but sometimes just simple church history to give us a peek into the lives and our ancestors. And meeting kind people along the way!

08/08/2026

Finally found the elusive Cantey Cemetery just over the Williamsburg County line in Colleton County, SC. We looked in January and couldn’t find it, and I found several months later a website https://www.cemeteryscgs.scgen.org/ that gave me an exact location, so we walked right through the field to get to it. Nothing like January when Dan walked through the woods and I thought he was lost (no phone)! Many of the graves are now unmarked, although you can see the depressions where they probably are, but I did find several ancestors! Joseph Cantey (wife Susannah McDonald is unmarked), their son William James Ransom Cantey, his wife Mary Ann Eliza Bennett, and their grand children Samuel and Anna Keels (by daughter Margaret Ann Cantey Burgess and first husband Robert Keels, both buried elsewhere).

I had promised by husband that there would be no family history on our anniversary trip, but since we were so close…he agreed. I’m grateful he puts up with my quests!

(My great-great grandfather James Madison Burgess was the second husband to Margaret Ann Cantey, buried in New Market Cemetery in Williamsburg County. Their son Andrew McDonald Burgess married Elizabeth Banta Noland, and my grandmother Florence Sassard Burgess Wardlaw was the second of their three daughters.)

07/18/2026

I love bringing my ancestors to life. I don’t just want to know vital statistics. I want to know what they did (old newspapers are a treasure trove for this), where they lived, what kind of person they were. What their handwriting looked like. Who their neighbors were (census records are great for this!). What their estates looked like (estate packers have listing of everything they owned). There is so much information out there; my job is to compile it and put it into a form that others will want to read.

07/12/2026

This old house…it was originally built by my ancestor Uel Wideman in the early 1800s. Located along the banks of Long Cane Creek in what was then Abbeville County, SC, and is now McCormick County, it’s still standing alone in an area that’s always been rural. I’m still researching deeds for a definitive story, but when Uel died, he left the property to his daughter, my great great grandmother Mildred Wideman Wardlaw. His second wife contested the will, won, and it looks like Millie’s husband David Jordan Wardlaw David bought the property from her for his wife. I am not yet sure if they lived there, but don’t think so since they already had an established home. He later sold it to his son John Uel Wardlaw, who did live there, and he left it to his wife Lillie Morrah Wardlaw, who left it to my grandfather David Morrah Wardlaw. All the rest of the Wideman and Wardlaw lands were sold over time, but this 179 acres has stayed in the family since the land was granted to a Wideman ancestor in the 1700s.
Today, the property is solely owned by the last surviving Wardlaw child of David Morrah Wardlaw; the other two sold their interests to her in the 90s. The house is slowly disappearing; hurricane helene took half of it when a tree fell.
When I go visit, though, early in spring, daffodils are everywhere, a testament to the love that shared this house through centuries.
My cousin Donna can still feel it. There’s something about this place. So I had google Gemini take the pictures and show me what it may have looked like. It’s not perfect (there are no windows on the left side, just the porch, but it’s still close enough to really get a feel for it!

07/08/2026

I’m organizing my old research with my newer research and found something interesting. My great grandfather, John Uel Wardlaw, of McCormick County, SC, died of a sudden heart attack in the Abbeville Opera House during speeches being given by state government candidates. I had seen his obituary multiple times but never really looked at the details. But there it was…and in the newspaper was a larger article of the speeches and mentioned who was speaking when he died. (Fun fact: JJ Cantey, a link to his future daughter in law’s family tree, was the speaker). Both articles were on the front page of the Abbeville Press and Banner 8/18/1922 edition.
Small town newspapers are such a treasure trove of information. There are shopping trips of his wife a daughters, committed he served on, and an article about his mother’s (Elizabeth Mildred Wideman Wardlaw) 71st birthday gathering. I actually have a picture taken during that event.

07/08/2026

Britain Belk is the grandfather of Permelia Belk, the ancestor with three illegitimate boys in a previous post. This is an interesting post about him!

Born in 1746, Brittain Belk was part of the early Carolina backcountry community that helped shape what would become Union County. His grave marker remembers him as serving in the North Carolina Militia, Salisbury District, during the Revolutionary War.

According to Belk family history, Brittain Belk was present in Charlotte when the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence was read from the courthouse steps in May of 1775. Tradition holds that the reading was done by Col. Thomas Polk, one of Charlotte’s leading Revolutionary figures. The story becomes even more meaningful because Brittain is said to have taken his young son, James Pearson “Pegleg” Belk, with him and James later remembered being there as a child.

That detail brings the Revolution close to home. Imagine a father and son traveling from the Waxhaws area into Charlotte to hear words of independence spoken aloud, more than a year before Congress adopted the national Declaration of Independence. For James, it would have been a childhood memory that connected him forever to the beginning of America’s fight for freedom.

In 1780, the war came painfully close to home. At the Battle of the Waxhaws, also known as Buford’s Massacre, British forces under Banastre Tarleton overtook Patriot troops under Col. Abraham Buford near the Waxhaws borderland. Family tradition says Brittain Belk was wounded in that fight, and one local account remembers that his wife found him after the battle and brought him home, where he died a few days later.

That detail makes his story especially powerful. This was not just a soldier falling on a distant battlefield. This was a local husband and father, carried back into the world he knew back toward family, home, and the Waxhaws community that would remember his name for generations.