These are the lines I am working on.
(1) KUNZ: Earliest Kunz ancestor found is my great-grandfather Jacob Kunz (1819-1889). He was said never to have written home after he & brother John immigrated from Switz. to Tennessee in 1848. May have been born in Wald, canton Zurich, Switz.
(2) SCHWEIZER: My great-great-grandfather Johann Conrad Schweizer & family immigrated from canton St. Gallen, Switz. to Tennessee in 1853/4. We have his diary!! (Or, more accurately, a translation of it. The whereabouts of the original is unknown to my branch of the family.) Using the diary, I was able to connect him to Swiss 'parish' records available through the Family History Centers. I have traced all of his direct ancestors in Switz., some as far back as 1598.
(3) WOOD, MILLER, PIERCE, SUTTON, THOMPSON, WALLACE, GORDON, FREEMAN, HARRIS, BEASLEY: all in middle Tenn. c.1807ff. Traced back to NC, Penn. (except Sutton from Kentucky instead) but not to the immigrant ancestors. Have much detail on their descendants, largely due to long-lived women and obsessed genealogists who collected & shared their information with distant cousins in the first half of the 1900s.
(4) WILLIAMS, SPEIGHT: NC, GA, Ala., then Florida c.1855ff.
(5) BRACKEN: James Bracken and relatives came from Ireland to Philadelphia in 1829. Son Peter James Bracken moved to Georgia, was engineer in "Great Locomotive Chase" during Civil War. (Oldtimers in family disgruntled that his part was played by Slim Pickens in Disney movie!)
(6) COULLION: Wife of James Bracken was a widow called by descendants 'Lady Julia Coullion' but found in Philadelphia Roman Catholic church records & probate records as plain ol' ordinary Julia/Judith (Mc)Killion, and Julia (Mc)Donnough (1st husband's name). She was also born in Ireland but I have nothing about birth date or place or parents.
(7) SMITH, SEWELL: William G. Smith in Confederate Army; have military records. Difficult to trace further back because name is so common. Bracken-Sewell-Smith descendants lived in Macon, GA, then Florida.
(8) TYRIE, MACDOUGALL: Mary H Tyrie of Edinburgh and Retis Williams of Florida met in Edinburgh Scotland when she was teaching at Lady Erskine College and he was obtaining a medical degree at the University. They lived outside of Williston, Florida, after their marriage in 1883. Mary died of "childbed fever" after the birth of her 4th child in 1892. Two or three generations of Tyries & MacDougalls have been traced back in Perthshire, Scotland.
I am also tracing paternal ancestors of my children:
DUNAGAN, PRUITT, REYNOLDS, EBERHARDT: northern Georgia
PATTERSON, BLANTON, MCCLURE, SPIVEY: western North Carolina
I would be delighted to swap stories and speculations about all of these lines. Will be adding reports and/or tree with many details to this site very soon.
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