Backroads to My Ancestors

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.

07/05/2026

Today we attended my husband’s home church is Marietta, Georgia. An old fashioned, historical church in downtown, Marietta First Baptist is full of old charm.
The church that is most central to my Wardlaw family history is Lower Long Creek Associate Reformed Presbyterian church is Troy, SC. The sister church who often shared a pastor is Cedar Creek ARP church in Abbeville. My cousin Donna and I visited a few months ago and got to go inside. I’ll link a few articles in the comments to about the history of both.
The sessions books for both churches are at Erskine college and it’s my to do list!

07/01/2026

Another mystery solved by DNA testing. I started with the assumption that my great-great grandmother was widowed young, and started searching for Martin men in Civil War records, since this generation was the right age to serve, and most of my ancestors did. I made a list, then I really started to think about it. Cencus records show that Elizabeth Martin was living in the household of the same man, William T. Squires, for generations, from the 1870-1900 Census. In 1910, she is living in the household of her son, my great grandfather, Thomas Milton Martin, and lists her marital status as single (not widowed). She died in 1915. I assumed that he might be the father of my great grandfather, and DNA testing showed some relationship, but not directly to him.
Since I had DNA testing done recently to prove the parentage of another illegitimate ancestor (in this same generation, mid 1800s, which I wouldn't have thought was very common), I looked and found a cousin of my father, who is the daughter of my grandmother's brother, and had the same grandparents as my dad. Her tree showed a 'mystery man', not 'Martin' as all other trees have. She answered my message and gave me the information I had been looking for. My assumption that William T. Squires fathered both Thomas and his brother Lemuel was the same one she had made, until her own DNA testing. There is a Y chromosome that appears only in the male line (I do not completely understand the science), and it led her to another family, and I do have DNA connections to that family. She verified the Y chromosome through her brother; I haven't gone to my own yet, but his son has had DNA testing done, so I'm considering reaching out to verify the same chromosome. Then she found a court record proving the relationship and shared it with me. So I now know who my great-great grandfather is...Thomas B. Capps. A married traveling mailman (he delivered mail by horseback in remote areas). Elizabeth shows in one census that she could neither read nor write, but I'm assuming she met her mail carrier and had a fling and took him to court over support for their child. Good for her. William T. Squires is the father of her second child, and even though they never married, he took care of her and left her property in her will, which was left to her and BOTH boys, since he helped raise another man's child. Is it wrong to feel bad that my ancestor is the one who took advantage of a young girl, left her pregnant, and then declared insolvency to get out of paying support instead of the kinder man who raised another man's son and took care of her and both boys until he died? What a difference between the two men in her life. She was clearly loved by the second.

06/24/2026

You should see what my area looks like now that Familysearch.com has a full text search feature! Found some really cool documents though!

06/24/2026

This state historic site is one of the locations my Cantey ancestors settled after they arrived on the Carolina at Charles Towne!
Tiege Cantey and two sons George and William, boarded the remaining ship from England in Barbados and were part of the ‘first fleet’ in Charles Towne, later Charleston! Details to come!

06/22/2026

For Father's Day, I'm going to share one of my most recent and interesting discoveries. Back when I first started researching, around 1990, my grandmother Bessie Martin Belk told me the history as she knew it of the Belk family. My grandfather, Leslie Alston Belk, was the son of John Wesley Belk. John was the son of P. R. Belk (Phredolon Rudolph), and PR was the son of Permelia Belk. He had two brothers, AHA and Napoleon, who was mentally challenged. I always assumed that Permelia was married to a Belk, and then found the book "The Lathan-Belk Families and In-laws 1710-1979" in a local library. This book, a limited print, had the genealogy of my family line in it. Next to Permelia's name was 'unmarried'. She was the daughter of James P. Belk and Nancy Hargett; all three of her sons were born out of wedlock. PR was born in 1846, AHA in 1845, and Napoleon in 1844. I didn't find a clue about their father until I ran across an old court case "Belk vs. Belk" in her estate records in Ancestry.com. PR sued his brother AHA, his son John, and a few others in the name of Napoleon for a piece of property that Calvin Laney 'sold' his mother, and claims that AHA's deed to the same property was invalid (he lost, after the case went to the NC Supreme Court). PR, AHA, and a son of Calvin Laney all verified that they were assumed to be the son of Calvin Laney (I've included copies of the documents). For a woman of a prominent family in Union County, NC, to live openly as the mistress of a neighboring landowner and give birth to three sons in that time is pretty amazing in and of itself, but seeing his legitimate son testify in court to their relationship was another level of impressive. I cannot find a copy of the original deed, but plan to visit the clerk of court sometime next year since they couldn't destroy it; it would have to be there somewhere other than a deed book. I decided to take a DNA test to see if their claim was true. I got the results last week, and I am a DNA match to Calvin Laney thorough several of his descendants, so I now know who my great, great grandfather is.
PR is buried in Old St. David's Church Cemetery in Cheraw, SC, and his wife, Mary Arant, is buried in Old Antioch Cemetery in Union County, NC, next to their daughter, Maud, who was 6 when she died in 1883. Mary died in 1903, and PR followed in 1925. They were the parents of 12 children.