I was born and raised in Smithville, DeKalb County, Tennessee. I graduated from DeKalb County High School May 1951.
I worked for the State Highway Dept. for a while until my father had a heart attack. I took over the business that
he had until he was able to go back to work. On 4 October 1954 I entered the United States Army. I served 27 years,
1 month, and 6 days. I retired on 31 Oct 1981 and my wife and I moved to Nashville, TN. Some time after retiring
from the Army, I went to work for the U. S. Postal Service as a Letter Carrier. On 30 November 1995 I retired from
the Postal Service with 12 years service. About a year before retiring we moved to Smithville and I drove back
and forth everyday to Nashville.
I knew very little about my family past my grandmother and grandfather on either side of my family. A distant
cousin of mine (Thomas G. Webb who is the DeKalb County Historian) wrote a book "A Bicentennial History of
DeKalb County, Tennessee". I bought the book and read it. One day I saw Tommy and ask him if any of the Foster's
in the book were related to me. He answered "everyone of them". Well that got me started and I haven't
been able to stop.
I was on the TNROOTS mail list and one day an email came along from Billie McNamara asking for volunteers
to start a new program. The Tennessee Genealogy Web. I answered her telling her that I knew very little about computers,
the Internet and that I was new to genealogy, but I would volunteer for DeKalb County. She answered me that if
I would furnish the information, she would do the web page for me. Billie and several others kept me going for
some time until I learned HTML. This DeKalb County page went on line on July 3, 1996.
My wife Julia and I moved to Crestview, Fl. in April 1999. We wanted to get out of the Ice and Snow. In
Jan. 2005 we moved from Crestview to Enterprise, AL where we now live.
