Warren Griffin 100th Birthday

Warren Loraine Griffin will soon be 100 years young and there will be at celebration at his house in Wicksburg, Alabama on August 21, 2010. If you can’t be there, he would love to receive a note or card. Click on the announcement to see all the details.

Gone Fishing

By the Spring of 2014 I will retire and move to another state. To insure the family tree stays alive and flourishes, I moved all the data to Ancestry.com. If you are a descendant of Lunsford Griffin, please contact me and I will send you a link to the tree. You will be required to set up an account with Ancestry.com, but there is absolutely no charge to participate.

Griffin Crest

A crest is part of a coat of arms. Coats of arms do not belong to surnames and actually they don’t belong to families, except maybe in Poland and France.

Coats of arms were granted to or assumed by individual men. In England, Wales, Ireland and Scotland they are granted by the specific heraldry authority for those countries. In some continental countries they are assumed by individuals.

There are numerous peddlers on the internet, at shopping malls, in airports, in magazines and recently I saw an ad on TV selling them like they belong to everyone with a particular surname and they don’t. There are no laws regarding heraldry in the U.S. Therefore you are free to display any coat of arms you wish, but to do so without documented proof that you are entitled to it is taking on another’s identity. If you have pride in yourself and your family, you wouldn’t want to do that.

Anytime you go into someone’s home and see one of those walnut plaques over their fireplace or on their den wall, you can pretty much be sure that it is one that belongs to someone with their surname and probably isn’t evey related.

What is so bad about these scam merchants that sell them is that a family history will usually come with them. That family history will not be the same family history for everyone with the same surname. A lot of people have been misled when starting their family history because of that.

The only thing you can do is to trace your father’s or your husband’s family male line ancestry to see if either are entitled to one. Another thing you can design and have your own made up.

Click on the image for a larger view.

Now that locations are going to be geocoded, it is very important to enter locations properly. The proper way to enter a location is:  City, County, State, USA, for example, Troy, Pike County, Alabama, USA. Please spell out the word “County” or “Parish”. The location “Probably Alabama” or “Near Enterprise” is not a proper location. If you don’t know the location for an event, leave it blank and enter things like “Probably Alabama” in a Note. To find a County, a quick way is a Google search on the city. I’ve had good luck searching for terms like: “Macon GA wiki”. The first result is usually the Wikipedia page for that city and the first line in the article will usually tell you the County. If you know the City or Town, please find the County (unless it’s a city in Virginia for instance).

Remember, Louisiana has Parishes and Virginia cities are usually not located in Counties (something I learned recently).

Durden Looper and crew of the Lonesome Lady

An excerpt from http://www.outsider.gol.com/magazine/septmber/hiroshima.html: (link now broken)
On July 28, 1945, thirty-three B24 Liberator bombers from Okinawa attacked and sank one of Japan’s last battleships, the Haruna, in the heavily defended anchorage at Kure, thirty miles from Hiroshima.
Two B24s, Taloa and Lonesome Lady, were shot down. The surviving crewmen were brought into Hiroshima where they were held, together with other captured American airmen, in the local Japanese military police headquarters by chance, less than eight hundred yards from where the Enola Gay’s atom bomb was soon to explode. All the prisoners and their guards were killed, or died soon after.

Lt. Durden William Looper was on board the B24 Liberator Lonesome Lady.

The other crew members were:
2nd. Lt. James M Ryan 2nd Lt. Ralph Neal Sgt. Hugh Atkinson Sgt. Buford Ellison Cpl. John Long

see: http://www.interment.net/data/us/mo/stlouis/jeffbarr/l/jeffbarr_l12.htm for burial information.

Hazzard Been

Hazzard BeenHazzard BEAN/BEEN was born in Franklin County, Tennessee on 04 December 1815. His parents were John Hogan BEAN and Jane McFARLAND.
At some point before 1830, Hazzard moved away from Tennessee with his family-of-origin and eventually arrived in Marion County, Alabama. Also, prior to 1830, Hazzard’s mother died. It is not clear whether the family had already settled in Marion County by the time Jane died, or whether they might have still been living elsewhere. At any rate, when Hazzard was fifteen years old or younger, his father remarried. By the new marriage, his father and step-mother had at least two more sons. Family stories suggest that when this marriage took place, the children from the first marriage–including Hazzard and his sister Jane–left home.

By 1839, Hazzard was living in Yalobusha County, Mississippi, where he married Martha OSBORN on the 18th of December. Martha was born on 25 July 1823 in either Tennessee or Alabama (the census records vary on her place of birth). To date, it has not been proven who her parents were; but, it has been established that she was a sister to Nathaniel D. OSBORN, who married Hazzard’s sister, Jane BEAN.

Hazzard and Martha lived together in Yalobusha County until some time before October 1844, when they moved to Tallahatchie County, Mississippi. It is assumed that they lived in Tallahatchie County until 14 December 1852, at which time they sold their land there. By 01 March 1853, they had moved to Sebastian County, Arkansas, where they began to homestead forty acres of land. After proving this homestead in 1857, they went on, over the next several years, to homestead and prove 160 more adjoining acres–land for which they paid 75 cents per acre.

As tensions in the South grew, the Confederacy drafted Hazzard’s son Rufus LeRoy. Family stories handed down have told that Hazzard advised his son to resist. He was steadfast in his belief that no one had the right to draft anybody into anything but the United States Army. For their resistance, both Hazzard and his son were imprisoned in the town jail, where Hazzard continued to proclaim proudly his views. Fortunately, for these two gentlemen, the prison guard knew them both, and respected them. Since he, himself, was sympathetic to their cause and did not wish for them to be shot, the guard staged an escape for them. They were to hit him over the head, run, and hide in a particular thicket in some woods. When the guard would be sent to search for them, he would be certain to NOT look in those bushes. The plan succeeded, and Hazzard and son won back their freedom. When the ordeal ended (sometime before 01 October 1863), not only did Rufus enlist in the Union Army, but the prison guard did as well.

Hazzard and Martha lived the rest of their lives in Sebastian County. He died on 14 April 1890; and she, on 13 October 1902–both in Greenwood, Sebastian County, Arkansas. Each of them has been buried there in Liberty Cemetery.

by Valerie Carolyn Been (Lober)