Callaway Family Association - April 2000 CFANet

THE CALLAWAY FAMILY ASSOCIATION
CFANET e-NEWSLETTER
April 2000

Volume I No. 3

INTRODUCTION

This is our third Bulletin of the year and it is being sent to 244 CFA members who have e-mail. This is up considerably from the 185 on the list at the beginning of 2000. The figure of 244 includes, however, 63 who have not as yet renewed their memberships in CFA. It is hoped that they will do so in the near future, now that Martha Winkler has sent out the Reminder notices.
We want you back!
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CFA HOME PAGES

As promised, here is an article from Donna Morgan, the new Webmaster.

Hello to all my new found Callaway Cousins. My name is Donna Morgan and I'm very pleased to be a new member of the Callaway Family Association. I live in Harrisburg, NC (very close to Charlotte). My
Maternal Grandmother is a Callaway (we spell it Calloway, and she is 101 years young!). I have already met several of the members and look forward to meeting many more. Isn't e-mail wonderful!!!

So that Cameron may enjoy a little R&R, I have taken over as Webmaster for the Association's Website. I am excited to be working on it and I hope to hear ideas and suggestions from our members. Please feel free to e-mail me. My e-mail address is dfmorgan at vnet.net.

Here are some of the new things going on:
*   We have a new URL. It's www.callawayfamily.org.
*   The Callaway Family Association Website has moved to a new Web Hosting Provider. Our pages no longer reside on the Metronet servers. They are now on servers at Interliant in Atlanta, GA.
*   Our Website size has increased from 10 megabytes to 100 megabytes. This will enable us to add and expand the information that resides on the site.

Here are some of the things planned:
* Adding more links from our site to Genealogy sites on the Internet.
* Perhaps starting an Ancestor Photo Gallery.
* Offering more Callaway genealogy and history information on the site.
* Listing links on the website to members sites pertaining to Callaway genealogy and history. (Send me your links!)
* If room allows on the site, offering personal pages related to Callaway to our members.

Please come and visit the new Callaway website. Let me know what you think, what you would like to see and what we can add to make it the best family association site on the internet!

I look forward to hearing from you,
Donna

Callaway Family Association
www.callawayfamily.org
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AN UPDATE:

1. Donna has just added the 1880 Census Records to the Callaway Family Census section of the Database.

2. Hit counters have been added to some of the main pages, to keep track of the number of times that they are visited.

3. Another new feature that Donna has just added to the CFA web site is called "A Callaway Moment In Time". It's a section devoted to Callaway Family stories which can be submitted by CFA members or Callaway relatives.

Donna has posted the first story from her own Callaway history. There is a link to it on the main page of the CFA site. You can send her (email or snail mail) the stories and photos and she will post them on the site. Submitters can also list their contact information if they would like to, so that the information may be shared by all Callaways.

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U.S. NATIONAL CENSUS DAY

Speaking of the 1880 Census Records, April 1 is National Census Day for Census 2000. An interesting web site www.howstuffworks.com/census.htm tells "How the Census Works". It contains a very useful section entitled "What Exactly Is the Census and How Long Has It Been Around?" Have a look.

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GETTING TO KNOW YOU

Kermit Bridges has kindly offered to kick off this topic. Who wants to be next? Just e-mail your own bio to Kermit (plus a photo if you wish), or send it by snail mail if you prefer. He will then get it ready for sharing in a future issue.

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MEMBER BIOGRAPHY - (Removed from CFA Web Site Archives)

To respect the privacy of our members, none of the biographies submitted to CFA will be posted on the CFA Web Site Newsletter Archives. =====================================================
STATE / REGIONAL ACTIVITIES

1. The 4th Annual CFA Texas Picnic - by Carole Romano
A lovely time was had by all at Bastrop State Park on March 11. Many first-time attendees enjoyed comparing family lineage and checking the census records. Gary Garnett told of the CFANET Bulletin, and I mentioned the 25th anniversary of CFA, to be commemorated with a medal at the Callaway Gardens annual meeting in October. Many regulars were unable to attend because of illness and were missed. Anyone interested in organizing their state/region, please contact me at lcr_csr at juno.com .It is such a worthwhile project.

2. CFA Arkansas Picnic
Evelyn and Don Dixon of Benton, AR will be hosting this event at the Dixon Farm on Saturday, April 29, complete with fishing and a hayride. If you live in Arkansas, don't miss it.

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CFA OFFICERS

We would like to feature a different officer each month, and Sherrill Williams, CFA Genealogist, has volunteered to tell us about herself this month. Thank you, Sherrill.

Who Is the CFA Genealogist?

I was born in Gaston County, North Carolina - too long ago - and moved to Tennessee with my family at the age of five, due to my father's change of employment. I attended the public schools of Bristol and Johnson City, TN, Stetson University in Deland, FL and earned a BS degree from East Tennessee State University. Actually, I was, and still am, just an ordinary person, but somewhat unique in that I am an only child and an only grandchild on both sides of the family.

After graduating from college, I taught school for a while, teaching the first grade in Bristol, TN at the very school where I had attended Grade 1. I also got married to Sherman Williams. We met while in college, but around a neighborhood boarding house table where he took his evening meal and my parents and I dined during the school year. I needed sugar for my coffee and the sugar bowl was sitting in front of Sherman. I was not yet acquainted with him, but I politely asked, "Would you please pass the sugar?" And he replied, "lipulated or granulated?" That was a rather bold public reply. But it worked! Over the years we had five children and I gave up teaching school to be a full-time mother. Well, that is partially true. The "genealogy bug" was still biting hard. Since Sherman's job required him to be away quite a bit, I had some time to pursue that passion.

I have had a little time for organizations, but I am not a "joiner". I was a charter member of The Watauga Association of Genealogists, an East Tennessee group, and served as its second President. I also served as chairman of the Unocoi County, Tennessee US Bi-Centennial Committee, and also served on the State Regional Committee. But organizations take too much of one's time. I prefer pure research.

My venture into genealogy began when I was only 12 years old. My father's sister, a wheelchair invalid, came to live with us in Tennessee. Away from family and friends, she decided to spend her endless spare time delving into our family history. Since I was taking typing that summer from a neighbor lady who taught in her home, I volunteered to help out by typing her records. Soon I was hooked on this fun thing. These were the days of primitive genealogical research when there were few books and periodicals on the subject. But eventually genealogy caught on with the public; genealogical societies began to proliferate, and periodicals were published. Researchers saw the need for publication of public records, and life became much easier for genealogy buffs. However, the advent of the Internet really gave life to the study of family history. As all of you reading this know, this high-tech medium has changed the lives of genealogists. It is so much easier today to find others with our own special interests, and much information is being made readily available to us from all over the world. This is really an exciting time for genealogy buffs.

Since working with my aunt, I had learned a lot about my father's family, but I knew nothing about my mother's family. She had lost her parents to tuberculosis when a child, and her contacts had mostly all been with her mother's family. She knew very little about her father's side. I decided it was time to do something about that, and for some unexplained reason, chose the name CALLAWAY from her surname list. That decision was to eventually get me in big trouble.

I began looking for other people interested in the Callaway name and found a query in The Genealogical Helper submitted by Hobart Bartlett, and he was inquiring about Callaways in the home county of my mother's relatives. I already knew Hobart Bartlett because I had volunteered on several projects he was working on. He had been to my home. When I contacted him, he was as amazed as I had been to learn that we had a common ancestry. Then a flurry of activity began.

Some of you newer members of CFA may not know, but Hobart Bartlett is the "founding father" of CFA. Life was never the same after this! A group of Callaway researchers got together and we began our series of assaults on the various state archives where colonial Callaways were known to have lived. The goal was to collect every piece of information on Callaways, and only then, when we had all the records, to begin to put everything together.

Our Callaway pursuit attracted a large number of capable researchers, all interested in getting the Callaway family straightened out. The group decided that forming a family association was the way to go. We have come a long way since those days, more than 25 years ago. And now the time has come to search for our Callaway connections in our mother country, England. That is a story for another day. But we do heartily welcome our international Callaway relatives who are stepping in to help out in this new phase of Callaway research.

I hope every one of you who reads this will join us at Callaway Gardens, Georgia, in October in celebrating 25 years of this incredible organization.

Your Genealogist,
Sherrill Underwood Williams

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IN CONCLUSION

It seems like it's becoming a habit, but we had more material for the Bulletin again this month than we had room for. We will try to include your items in next month's issue. Maybe we'll have to resort to Supplements to the Bulletin, like we did last month.

Please send any comments, suggestions or criticisms to me at:
callawaybill at shaw.ca

Bill Callaway, CFANET Coordinator
Parksville, B.C., Canada