Holidays: Time to build yourself a History

With Christmas time upon us, I'd like to urge all Williams-Rivers Family members to take a few minutes and talk to your parents and grandparents... our family elders. You never know what you might discover.

A good chunk of the information in this website was sourced through conversations with family members at birthday celebrations, Mothers Day, Fathers Day, as well as Christmas and Thanksgiving Dinners. For me, one of the most valuable sources of information was my grandmother Elnora Evans. She was born Elnora Fouse in Haywood County near Brownsville Tennessee in 1914 and she married into the Williams-Rivers Family in 1935 when she married my grandfather Lemuel Williams. Although their marriage only lasted a few years, she remained close with the family and kept up with births, deaths, marriages and relocations of many family members. Although the family reunion booklets provided the structure that this website's family tree was built on, it was my grandmother Elnora's stories and recollections that gave much of it life for me.

She provided me with explanations for many of the links in the family where her family (the Fouse-Lee Family of Haywood County / Borownsville) had married into the Williams-Rivers Family producing "double cousins" who we see at reunions on both sides of the family. Her insights were invaluable to me as I began to piece things together and to fully understand the magnificent richness and heritage that we all share.

I thank God now for the many hours that we spent talking in 2005 and 2006...and I am sad that I did not have the presence of mind to engage a tape or digital recorder during our conversations. Her insights, wisdom and knowledge are silent now--we lost her earlier this year after a brief illness, at 92 years old.

Strangely enough, though, I feel her presence in the pages of this website, in some of my notes and recollections about family members. It was always her hope that I would one day make a website for the Fouse-Lee Family as well. I still hope to do so one day...and when I do, her stories, recollections and humor will all be waiting, stored in these gedcom files...waiting for one of her great neices or nephews or perhaps one of her great-granddaughters to stumble across it and want to know more about the woman whose memory was so sharp, well into her nineties that she could, with her words bring her two sisters, who died as children, back to life, so that we would all remember them, and know that they had once walked and played upon this earth.

Talk to your elders this holiday season, ask them to tell you about a family member who you never met. Don't forget to write it down...or better yet grab a tape recorder.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

The Short/Austin Family Connection

Many of you know that our family shares several connections with another family which also has it's roots in Haywood County TN. The Short/Austin Family, which produced both Alice Short and Luella Short--who were cousins and the wives of Wash and Dennis Williams respectively, is another old and distinguished family from Western Tennessee. Much like us, they trace their lineage back to a slave woman named Silla (Perscilla) Short (whose life was roughly contemporary with Mandi). You can find their web site at www.shortaustinfamilytree.com. The SAFT web site is absolutely first rate, in fact, The Short/Austin Family Tree was one of 3 finalist out of hundreds nominated for family web site of 2007 by www.BlackWebAwards.com.

The link to the complete list of final nominees is below. The family web site nominees are located at the bottom of the list.

The final Nominee list for the Black Web Awards 2007
http://www.blackwebawards.com/list_of_all_finalists

Visiting this site, holds interest for any African American Family, but because of the connections, it is especially so for members of the Williams-Rivers Family. When you get the chance I highly recommend that you check it out. The site was built and is maintained by Lamont Beauregard, who would qualify as a cousin to many of us because of the connections. Do check it out!!!

The Family Tree is Back

Well I've finally updated the Williams-Rivers Family Tree. Last May (2006) I took down the Family Tree portion of the site due to concerns over personal information contained there about living family members. As the World Wide Web has progressed and gotten more popular, identity theft has become a real concern, and I'd noticed that other sites no longer listed much information on living people.

This realization came at a point when my plate was fairly full, so rather than risk it, I decided to take the tree down, and repost it when I could output a more "private" version of the Family Tree. Well it is done, and now as with most other genealogy sites on the web now, the Descendants of Mandi respects living family members by not sharing personal information.

Just for information sake, I had not received any complaints about anything, but I decided why wait for a problem to occur?

Hope you all enjoy the revised site.

Eric J.

A Biography for Mandi Williams

One of the oversights that we have been meaning to fix since the launch of this website, was the lack of a biographical sketch for Mandi Williams, our family matriarch and our ultimate common ancestor. We have now corrected this oversight. See the new biography for Mandi Williams.

Updating the Family of Cullen Caldwell

This month at Descendants of Mandi, we have done extensive updates to the family records of the descendants of Cullen Caldwell, son of Albertine Williams, who is the daughter of Dennis Williams and Ella Woodson. We have added spouse information for all three of Cullen's daughters (Marilyn, Sharon and Vera Caldwell) and adusted offspring names to reflect the correct surnames. Thank you very much to the Caldwell Family for taking the timeto fill out the genealogy worksheet...as cousins fill in the gaps and return the information, the family tree continues to grow in accuracy. Check out the new family info page for the Cullen Caldwell Family.

Tributes to family members

As we continue the process of gathering information on the Williams-Rivers Family, and filling out the branches of our family tree, we'd like to ask everyone to think of a family member for whom you can write a tribute or provide a three or four paragraph historical biography. It can be detailed or based memories and recollections. It can be someone living or someone who has passed on...but contributions like these will help our family site come to life--and stress our family's many contributuons.

Searching and Finding

With our new search engines, it's easier than ever to find yourself or your branch of the family in the Descendants of Mandi Website. If you are trying to remember that cousin you met at the last reunion, try putting in whatever information you know about them and watch the results-- you'll be surprised.

Making contact with distant cousins

While I was creating the Descendants of Mandi Genealogy Website, I did some searching on the Web based on key family names. One day as I entered some family names and browsed the results, I was stunned to find an exact match on what appeared to be someone else's family tree site. I made a mental note that as soon as I got our site up and running, I would contact the other site's webmaster and let him know that there was family on the Web.

Today, three days after lauching the new website, I kept my promise to myself. I sent the following note to Lamont Beauregard of the Short/Austin Family Tree Website-- Subject Line: My Website, Your Website, Our Family:

---

Hello cousin Lamont!

Your website-- http://www.shortaustinfamilytree.com/The Short Austin
Family Treeis fantastic!!! ...and I am your distant cousin. Our Common relative is Silla Short.

My name is Eric J Williams and I live in Chicago IL. I came upon your
website a while back, and realized that our families overlap to a
considerable degree. I am the great-grandson of Luella Short and the
great-great-great-grandson of Silla Short.

I also have a family tree website charting the Williams and Rivers
Family of Haywood County Tennessee. Our website
( http://www.descendantsofmandi.com/ ) is very new...just
launched last week...though I have been building the Gedcom files for
several weeks from paper charts the family has done for family reunion
booklets and conversations with family members. I would love to hear
what you think about our new website.

If you click the link below, you can see and trace my relationship to
the Shorts who appear in your Short/Ausitin website.

http://www.descendantsofmandi.com/Records/INDIs/II0965.html

My grandfather, Lemuel Williams was the son of Luella Short. I was
very happy to find your webite as I was in the process of launching
our Williams-Rivers Family Tree website-- called Descendants of Mandi.
Your site will allow me to fill in many blanks about my
great-grandmother's family.

In the spirit of your message on the Short Austin website, I've
included a few notes which point out some missing or inaccurate spots
in your family tree--specifically charting our branch the Henry Short
family.

Here is a family record for Luella Short and Dennis Williams--my
great-grandmother and great-grandfather... notice the third child (my
uncle Donald), who your family tree identifies as Darner...which was
his nickname, click Donald's link for the note on his nickname).

http://www.descendantsofmandi.com/Records/FAMs/FF010.html

your page is:

http://www.shortaustinfamilytree.com/lueellashortpage.html

Here is a family record for Alversa Williams and Robert Edward Lee
(you'll find there are two missing children for them in your page for
Aunt Alversa). Click the link and you will find them here---Sandra
Faye and Lewis Edward) the correct place for these two is between
Wesley Gene and Brenda Aleece.

http://www.descendantsofmandi.com/Records/FAMs/FF279.html

your page is:

http://www.shortaustinfamilytree.com/alversawilliamepage.html

You'll also find that our new site contains considerable additional
info on offspring for the children of Dennis Williams and Luella
Short...enough to keep you busy for quite some time.

I would, however, be open to sending you a gedcom file which you could
merg into your existing file to pick up the additonal info...but we
can talk about that later. I will be picking up considerable info from
your site as well. Maybe we could swap files at some point and save
each other considerable typing.

Anyway, Lamont, I was glad to find you, and I hope to meet at some
point in the future.

Sincerely

Eric J. Williams
http://www.descendantsofmandi.com/
ericjw33@gmail.com

Getting this thing up and running

The Descendants of Mandi website is a labor of love to say the least. The site was just created on May 13 2005, but in fact it represents the genealogical efforts of dozens of people over the past 28 years. Printed family trees which were used as the basis for the genealogical links in this site, were first published as inserts in the keepsake booklets from the Williams-Rivers Family Reunions (1978-2004). This site is an outgrowth of the Williams-Rivers Family Website created in July 2004 for the 2004 Williams-Rivers Family Reunion.

I built the Gedcom files in late April and early May 2005, and went live with the website on May 13. There's always a bit of trepidation when going live with a site as large, involved and detailed as this one will one day be. The problem is that you have to start somewhere, and our booklet inserts, while great for showing the basic relationships between individuals, only gives spouse information for the first few generations. After that only descendants are shown, making it difficult to track changing famiy names for female membes of the family and their offspring.

I intend to correct these shortcoming in future editions through family interveiws and continued genealogical research. I am indebted to the following individuals for the basic knowledge and research that made this site possible: Alversa Williams Lee, Elaine Lee Turner, Susan Lee Adekpuitor, Eloise Williams Tolbert, and others too numerous to mention.

For now, I hope you enjoy the site for what it is-- a work in progress-- and please feel free to contact me with corrections, changes, and updates.

COTACT ME: Eric J. Williams

GENEALOGY HOME: http://www.descendantsofmandi.com/
FAMILY SITE: http://www.williams-riversfamily.org/