From census records and her death certificate I knew my 2nd
great-grandmother was from New York. My
burning question was how she got from New York to Savannah in the 1860s?? I knew I needed more details about where she
was from but wasn’t finding anything definitive until I was able to discover
her father’s name “Albert Graham” on her 1910 Montgomery, Alabama death
certificate. I combined Albert’s name
with Annie when searching on FamilySearch one day and hit pay dirt! An index of New York births and christenings
revealed a record from the First Dutch Reformed Church in Rochester, Ulster,
New York with Albert Graham as the father and Anna Rebekkah Graham as the
child. It lists the birthday as March
13, 1832 which is two days off from the March 15 listing in the family bible,
but the year does match. And it revealed
a potential name for Annie’s mother: Rachel Cole.
I still need to find more documentation, but it’s pretty
exciting to narrow down the possibilities from a whole state to a county and
town AND to find a possibility for her mother’s name. Census records showed
Albert in 1850, in Ulster County, but not Annie, when she would have been
18. Perhaps she moved out to work
elsewhere??
Sources:
New York, Births and Christenings, 1640-1962, index, 13
March 1832, First Dutch Reformed church, FIRST DUTCH REFORMED
CHURCH,ROCHESTER,ULSTER,NEW YORK, FHL microfilm 823668.;
https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.1.1/FDRT-2PL : accessed 10 May 2014.
"Alabama, Deaths, 1908-1974," index, FamilySearch
(https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.1.1/JDD7-1PF : accessed 14 Apr 2013), Annie
Rebecca Davis, 17 Jun 1910; citing reference cn 289, Department of Health,
Montgomery; FHL microfilm 1894077.
