Thursday, February 19, 2009

The Rounds Sisters Part I

The Rounds branch of my family has been an area of great interest for me in my genealogical research. The Rounds family of Adams county, Mississippi is my mother's grandmother's paternal line.

I was able to locate my oldest known ancestors to date, Charlie and Charity Rounds in the 1870 Federal Census. They are listed with their children and some grandchildren. The names are as follows: Charles Rounds, Charity Rounds, Andrew Rounds, Lucy Rounds, Goliah Rounds, Flora Rounds, Rose Rounds, Harrison Holmes, Minor Duncan and Joseph Rounds.

As any genealogist knows regardless of skill level, women are the hardest to track down in census records because of their change in surnames once they marry. I opted to take the challenge on of making a reasonable attempt to find my great-great-great aunts. Fortunately enough, I was able to find some information about my aunts by looking over census records in their county of origins.

I was able to locate my aunts by checking in their county and town of origins, comparing their birth years to make sure they were the same people, and seeing how far they lived from known male relatives. The tricky thing with the date is this, sometimes birth years were estimated on federal census records on some records they were very accurate. You have to use your best guess in order to figure out if it is that person or not. The clues are there, use your intuition.

I was able to find the follwing sisters and their families. They are listed below.

1880 Census:
Flora (Rounds) Shepherd b.1857 married Jeremiah Shepherd b. 1836
Children: James Shepherd & David Shepherd

I tied her to my great great great grandparents because of her father being born in Virginia like Charlie Rounds and her being neighbors to them as well.

Rose (Rounds) Hayes married Henry Hayes on 15 October 1881
Children: Charity Hayes/Hays and Henry Hayes/Hays Jr.

I tied her to my great great great grandmother by the name of her daughter and her proximity to the family homestead. Unfortunately, she was deceased by the 1900 census

I'm still searching for sister Lucy, I know she's in the census near by her brother Goliah. Hopefully, I can find her again. My fingers are crossed.

1 comments:

TracingMyFamilyRoots said...

Like you I have a great-great grandmother on my mother's maternal side of the family that I cannot find out any information on her prior to her marriage with my great-great grandfather, nor any information on her as far as when she died, and where, etc... We all are hitting brick walls, just in different ways.