One of the "sorries" of my life is that I never got to see my Great Aunt, Nannie SHARP CAMPBELL, wife of Jesse CAMPBELL, during her lifetime.  I haven�t exactly seen her since her lifetime but I have felt her with me.  Aunt Nannie collected genealogy info from family members and plotted out cemeteries spanning 20 years from the 1960's until her death in 1981. She published a book on her Sharp family and was planning on doing a Campbell book but her time ran out. I have, however, gotten to know her the past several years as I put into the computer all her notes on the Campbell family she had gathered which were kindly loaned to me by her daughter, Mary Price.  

Aunt Nannie was a beloved school teacher in the Greenfield area of Weakley County so her notes were written in blue ink, sometimes she would write down questions to ask people and the school teacher in her wrote the answers in red.  I loved the pages held together with an old hat pin and one bundle of papers held together with a tiny little cloth rag.  In the early years her writing was clear and precise but as time went by her writing was not so tidy. A piece of tag board was totally filled with names going this way and that but I enjoyed figuring it all out and smiled a lot.  

Cousin Jan told me while in high school, one day she was in Greenfield, getting her hair done and Aunt Nannie came in and was asking Jan about her COATS and PRICE family.  Jan was a little unresponsive, to which Aunt Nannie told her, "Girl, you should know about your family, it is your history!" Jan has turned out to be a great researcher so I know Aunt Nannie is smiling down on us, happy that we are learning our History.

Aunt Nannie did her genealogy hunting the old fashioned way -- she asked everyone about their family and surprisingly, almost all of it has checked out. One of the charming tidbits from Aunt Nannie's notes are all the nicknames of  people she has listed -- you usually do not  get those from a Census.  And Lordy, do Southerner's love their nicknames.  

William Thomas was "Willie Pete" his whole life, Gilbert was "Pete" which confused people into thinking his parents had 13 children instead of 12, George Washington was "Wash", Elizabeth was "Eliza", Willie Price was "Pricie", Martha was "Mattie", Lovanna was "Lovie", Charles was "Pony" Flag was "Cap" and the list goes on.

While working on this Census I felt the hand of my Genealogy Angels, guiding me.  When I go back and look at the microfilm now I wonder how did I ever figure out all that handwriting.  While putting the book together, sometimes things didn't work that should have but each time I would see an error that needed correcting or a better way of doing it.  Is that you, Aunt Nannie the school teacher, correcting my errors? - MaryCarol