At times I have to remember that our genealogical work is all about family and put down our work on the dead in favor of the living. Such was the case this month. Kathy and I made a long trip out west to visit with our children and grandchildren.

Unfortunately I did not factor that trip into my planning for the web site and I fell a little behind in my work. So this month's newsletter is a little late, but hopefully still helpful.

Several months ago we discussed the value of writing down family history information and quizzing your oldest living relatives about their oldest relatives. To illustrate this process we interviewed my mother about my father's mother, Clara Louise Comer Whitehead.

Along the way I solicited the help of my sister Anne Garner, and my first cousin John Whitehead, since we all had a stake in understanding Clara a little better. The process proved to be informative and helpful in our understanding of our paternal grandmother.

The process started with my recollections and items we could glean from the census data. We then passed around my thoughts for corrections and additions. Finally we took that writing to my mother, Virginia Whitehead, for her additions and revisions. Along the way we made a visit to one of the family homes on Grady Avenue in Athens, Georgia which proved to be informative.

We are not through and will probably add a fact or two in coming weeks or months as we learn a little more, but this is ninety percent complete and now out on the web site and can be viewed in the Oral Histories section.

We also found an oral history of Sandford Whitehead and his family dictated by Edward Winston Whitehead as a part of the History of Oconee County, Georgia. That narrative is in the same section of the web site.

I also mentioned last month that I thought I had solved the mystery of Sandford Whitehead's parents, and I still think this is true. However, with the visit to see the children and grandchildren I did not have a chance to document my theory.

But what I did have time for was moving all the Sandford Whitehead specific documents from the old web site to this new one. This time we married the text version of the document with the original images of the documents to produce one file for each document. This keeps the text with the image, but has the disadvantage of creating rather large documents as a result. So if you decide to download any of these please be patient. All of the documents are in Adobe PDF format and should be easily readable. We did our best to transcribe a lot of microfilm items and there is little pride of authorship here. If you look at one and want to change the wording please let us know. Nineteenth century writing styles and bad microfilm sometimes makes for strange wording.

I transcribed forty-four documents in this process and that took all my time for the month. If you are a descendent of Sandford Whitehead and have not seen these I think you will find them to me of interest. These are the only known documents that he signed and I think they hold the clue as to his family identity.

Next month I will have the story of his family detailed as I believe these documents reveal, but if you would like to send me your speculation please do so.