Genealogical Society of Henry and Clayton Counties

10/30/2026

The State Archives of North Carolina is hosting a virtual program that explores the history of the American Revolution in the Cherokee Homeland.

👉 Register here: https://www.zoomgov.com/webinar/register/WN_Cy5GFEVJTbaXRljMRNaXNA #/registration

Topics Covered: The history of the American Revolution in Cherokee ancestral lands, the violence and destruction experienced by Cherokee communities, and the development of the Museum of the Cherokee People's exhibition, “Unrelenting: Cherokee People and the American Revolution”.

“Remembering the American Revolution in the Cherokee Homeland” will feature Shana Bushyhead Condill, executive director of The Museum of the Cherokee People and a member of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, and Andrew Denson, a professor of history at Western Carolina University.

This is a free online program that will be held on November 4 from 2pm-3pm.

For more information about the program, contact Adrienne Berney at [email protected] or call (919)-814-6863.

10/28/2026

Meet Shelbe Gosdin, one of our dedicated Board Members and longtime volunteers with the Genealogical Society of Henry & Clayton Counties!

Shelbe has devoted countless hours to preserving our community’s history, supporting the Society’s work, and helping ensure that the stories of those who came before us are not forgotten.

Pictured here with her grandson and great-grandchildren, Shelbe celebrates a particularly special family milestone as they become members of the First Families of Henry County, Georgia through her ancestor William Bailey Gosdin!

What makes this photograph so meaningful is that it represents several generations of one family coming together to celebrate their shared heritage. It is a wonderful reminder that genealogy is about more than names and dates. It is about connecting generations, preserving family stories, and understanding the people who helped shape the communities we call home.

The First Families of Henry County program, sponsored by the Genealogical Society of Henry & Clayton Counties, recognizes individuals who can document their direct descent from ancestors who lived in Henry County in or before 1850. The program helps preserve the history of Henry County’s earliest families while encouraging descendants to explore and document their family histories.

If you have ancestors who lived in Henry County by 1850, you may qualify for membership! Applicants must document their direct lineage through historical records such as census records, birth and death certificates, marriage records, wills, and other genealogical documents. Upon approval, members receive a certificate recognizing their qualifying ancestor.

For additional information about the program, membership requirements, and the application process, contact the Genealogical Society of Henry & Clayton Counties or visit us at the historic Brown House, located at 71 Macon Street in McDonough.

We are grateful for Shelbe’s many years of service and especially proud to see her family’s history being recognized and passed down to another generation.

After all, history is not just something we study. It is something we inherit, preserve, and pass along.

10/09/2026

Two centuries of history. Countless stories. One very special celebration.

The Genealogical Society of Henry and Clayton Counties invites you to step back in time as we celebrate the 200th anniversary of one of Henry County’s historic treasures—the Brown House.

TIME TRAVELERS WELCOME!

For 200 years, the Brown House has stood as generations have passed through McDonough and Henry County. It has witnessed a community grow and change while preserving a tangible connection to the people who came before us.

For this special anniversary celebration, the Brown House will open its doors for an in-person journey through its history.

Come tour the historic house and meet some of the people who have shaped its remarkable story. Through the rooms, stories, and people connected to the property, visitors can experience local history in a way that goes beyond names and dates on a page.

That is what makes historic places like the Brown House so important. They allow us to stand where earlier generations stood, see the spaces they knew, and better understand the lives that helped shape the community we call home.

Whether you are a genealogist, a local-history enthusiast, a longtime Henry County resident, or simply curious about the past, come help us mark an extraordinary milestone.

Bring your family. Bring your curiosity. And prepare to travel through 200 years of local history.

Happy 200th Birthday to the Brown House!

Tickets are available through the attached link.

— Genealogical Society of Henry and Clayton Counties

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/happy-200th-birthday-brown-house-tickets-2002198093395

10/05/2026

Your Clayton County Ancestor May Be in Henry or Fayette County Records

One of the most important rules of local genealogy is that modern county boundaries cannot simply be projected backward through history.

Clayton County was created in 1858 from portions of Henry and Fayette Counties. That has an immediate consequence for anyone researching a family living in the area before Clayton County existed: there could not have been a Clayton County marriage record, Clayton County deed, Clayton County tax digest, or Clayton County probate proceeding before the county was created.

The relevant record may be in Henry County or Fayette County.

This also creates situations in which a family appears to have moved when they actually remained in approximately the same location. The government boundary changed around them.

Instead of relying exclusively on county names, determine where the family physically lived. Deeds are particularly valuable because they may identify land lots, districts, waterways, roads, and adjoining landowners.

Once the location is known, determine which county exercised jurisdiction over that land during the particular year being researched.

This principle extends beyond Clayton County. Georgia created new counties repeatedly, and county boundaries were sometimes adjusted after creation. A researcher who does not account for those changes can spend years searching the correct surname in the wrong courthouse.

Historical maps therefore belong in the genealogist’s toolbox alongside census records and death certificates.

When a family disappears from one county and appears in another, do not immediately record a migration. First determine whether the family moved—or whether the county line did.

10/05/2026

Lower Income Families Can Be Hidden Throughout Probate Records

Researchers sometimes hear “probate” and think immediately of wealthy families, wills, plantations, and large estates. That misunderstanding causes people to skip an enormously valuable source.

Your ancestor did not have to own enough property to leave an estate in order to appear in probate records. They simply had to interact with someone who did.

When an estate was administered, the court might require inventories, appraisals, estate sales, annual returns, receipts, guardianship reports, distributions, creditor claims, and other documents. Those records can contain dozens of names beyond the deceased person and immediate heirs.

An ancestor might have purchased a bedstead at an estate sale. A neighbor might have appraised livestock. Someone might have been owed money by the deceased. A relative might have signed an administrator’s bond. A widow might have received property. Minor children might have been assigned a guardian.

Each of those appearances establishes a person in a particular place and connects that person to others.

For African American genealogy, probate research can become especially important when extending a family into the period before emancipation. Wills, inventories, estate divisions, annual returns, and sales involving slaveholding estates may contain evidence about enslaved individuals. The records are inherently records of human enslavement and must be read with that reality in mind, but genealogically they can sometimes preserve names, approximate ages, occupations, valuations, and family groupings that survive nowhere else.

This is why researching only your ancestor’s surname can be insufficient. Identify the people with whom the family was associated. Examine neighboring landowners, employers, former enslavers, relatives by marriage, and other prominent families in the community. Then examine their probate records.

Your ancestor may never have had an estate file bearing his or her own name. That does not mean the probate court left no record of them.

10/05/2026

Do Not Ignore the Witnesses on a Marriage Record

Finding the marriage record often feels like the end of the search.

It should frequently be the beginning of another one.

Study every name appearing on the document: witnesses, bondsmen, ministers, justices of the peace, clerks, consent-givers and anyone else mentioned.

Before modern identification systems existed, communities depended heavily upon personal relationships. Consequently, the people participating in a marriage transaction were often connected to the couple.

Suppose a marriage bond names Thomas Brown as bondsman for James Smith and Sarah Jones.

Who was Thomas Brown?

Do not assume he was merely a courthouse acquaintance.

Search him.

He could have been Sarah’s uncle, James’s brother-in-law, a neighbor or another relative whose connection eventually identifies Sarah’s parents.

Consent documents are particularly important when younger people married. A surviving consent paper may explicitly identify a father, mother or guardian.

The person performing the marriage can also matter.

If the same minister married several members of your family, identify his church. Church minutes, membership rolls, baptismal registers and cemetery records may survive.

Create a small list whenever examining a marriage:

Bride and groom — parents or guardians — bondsman — witnesses — officiant.

Research each person.

Genealogy often advances when you stop asking only, “Who married whom?” and begin asking, “Why were these particular people involved?”

10/02/2026

THAT CHILD DIDN’T DISAPPEAR — CHECK THE NEIGHBORS

You find a family in the 1870 Census with six children. By 1880, only four are living with the parents.

What happened to the other two?

Before assuming they died, start searching other households.

Throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, children frequently lived apart from their parents. A child might be found with grandparents, aunts and uncles, older siblings, married sisters, family friends, employers, or even seemingly unrelated households.

The reason could be as ordinary as helping an elderly relative or as significant as the death, separation, divorce, illness, or financial hardship of a parent.

For genealogists, these children can provide some of the best clues to relationships that were never explicitly recorded.

START WITH THE PEOPLE AROUND THE FAMILY

Suppose 12-year-old Sarah disappears from her parents’ household in 1880. Search the entire county for a Sarah of approximately the correct age and birthplace.

Do not immediately reject a possible match because the surname is different.

Look closely at households containing the surnames of Sarah’s mother, grandmothers, married sisters, aunts, or other relatives. A child living with maternal grandparents could suddenly appear under a surname you were not expecting.

Also check the census pages immediately before and after the parents’ household.

A child may literally be living three houses away.

PAY ATTENTION TO RELATIONSHIPS — BUT DON’T TRUST THEM BLINDLY

Later censuses are especially useful because they identify relationships to the head of household: granddaughter, nephew, niece, cousin, servant, boarder, and so forth.

Those descriptions can reveal previously unknown relationships.

But treat them as clues rather than unquestionable facts. Census information depended on whoever supplied the information, and relationships could be simplified or recorded incorrectly.

A person identified merely as a “boarder” or “servant” might still have a family connection.

A CHILD’S SURNAME CAN CHANGE

This is another major trap.

If a child’s father died and the mother remarried, the child might later appear using the stepfather’s surname—even without a formal adoption.

You may therefore find:

1870: William Jackson, age 4
1880: William Carter, age 14
1900: William Jackson, age 34

That does not automatically mean these are three different people.

Compare age, birthplace, parents’ birthplaces, siblings, neighbors, occupation, later marriage records, death certificates, and other evidence before eliminating a candidate.

DON’T ASSUME “SERVANT” MEANS THE CHILD WAS UNRELATED

This is particularly important when researching African American families after emancipation.

Children and teenagers might be enumerated in another household as servants, laborers, farm hands, cooks, nurses, or domestic workers. Economic circumstances could place young people outside their parents’ household even though they remained connected to their families.

Research the child’s parents and the household where the child was living.

Ask why those two families knew one another.

That question can sometimes lead directly into Reconstruction-era labor arrangements, landownership, churches, former enslavers, extended kinship networks, and community relationships.

LOOK FOR THE EVENT THAT CAUSED THE HOUSEHOLD TO CHANGE

When children suddenly scatter among several households, something may have happened.

Check for a parent’s death. Look for probate proceedings, guardianship records, divorce or separation proceedings, remarriages, estate records, poor-school records, apprenticeship records, newspaper notices, and court minutes.

Guardianship records can be particularly valuable.

A child living with another family may not simply have been “sent to relatives.” A court may have appointed someone to manage the child’s property or legal affairs. Those proceedings can identify deceased parents, siblings, grandparents, property, and other relatives.

SEARCH EVERY CHILD INDIVIDUALLY

One of the biggest genealogy mistakes is searching only for the family as a unit.

If a couple had eight known children, create a separate timeline for each of the eight children.

Where was each child in 1870?

Where was each child in 1880?

Who lived in that household?

What was the household head’s relationship to the child’s parents?

Who lived next door?

Where did that child eventually marry?

Who were the witnesses?

Who appeared on the child’s death certificate?

Once those individual timelines are placed beside one another, relationships that seemed invisible can suddenly become obvious.

The next time a child disappears from a household, don’t immediately add a death date to your family tree.

Search the grandparents. Search the married sisters. Search the neighbors. Search different surnames. Search the court records.

Sometimes the person who appears to have disappeared was never very far away at all.

— Genealogical Society of Henry and Clayton Counties

10/02/2026

SHE DISAPPEARED FROM THE RECORDS. BUT DID SHE REALLY GO ANYWHERE?

One of the most frustrating problems in genealogy occurs when a woman seemingly vanishes.

She appears with her husband in one census. Then she is gone. Her husband may appear alone, remarry, move away, or simply disappear himself. You cannot locate her grave, obituary, or death record.

The natural assumption is often: she must have died.

Do not make that assumption too quickly.

For women living in Georgia during the nineteenth century, marriage, separation, divorce, remarriage, and changes in legal status can create dramatic breaks in the documentary trail. A woman you have been searching for in Henry County might turn up years later in another Georgia county—or even another state—under a completely different surname.

DIVORCE DID EXIST IN 1800s GEORGIA

Divorce was possible, but the process changed considerably during the century.

Under Georgia’s early system, divorce was an extraordinary legal proceeding. An 1802 statute provided for a petition in Superior Court, and Georgia’s constitutional framework required a favorable court verdict before the General Assembly could grant the divorce. Legislative approval required a two-thirds vote.

That changed in the 1830s, when divorce authority shifted away from the General Assembly and into the courts. But divorce remained considerably more procedurally complicated than it is today. Later in the century, Georgia’s 1877 Constitution still required two jury verdicts at different terms of court before a total divorce could be granted.

For genealogists, that means a failed marriage might have generated far more paperwork than you expect.

Do not search only for a document labeled “Divorce.”

Search Superior Court minutes, petitions, pleadings, jury verdicts, legislative acts, newspaper legal notices, alimony proceedings, property disputes, and records concerning the legal status of married women.

And remember: separation did not necessarily mean divorce.

A husband and wife could live apart without legally ending their marriage. That can produce a particularly confusing genealogy trail. A woman may suddenly appear in another household, another county, or near relatives while still being legally married.

SEARCH FOR HER WITHOUT HER HUSBAND’S SURNAME

This is where many searches fail.

If Mary Smith disappears after 1860, do not spend the next three hours searching only for “Mary Smith.”

Search for:

Mary + approximate birth year + birthplace

Mary + names of her children

Mary + maiden surname

Mary + mother’s or father’s surname

Mary + siblings

Mary + former neighbors

Mary + the county where one of her children later lived

Also search neighboring counties. County lines were not walls, and family networks frequently extended well beyond them.

Then investigate every plausible woman instead of rejecting someone merely because her surname changed.

FAMILYSEARCH HAS MADE THIS MUCH EASIER

One of the most important tools available to genealogists now is FamilySearch Full-Text Search.

Unlike a traditional genealogy index that may extract only a few names and dates, Full-Text Search uses artificial intelligence and handwriting-recognition technology to create searchable transcripts from historical document images. FamilySearch says the system now searches nearly two billion historical records, including many records that were previously unindexed.

That is especially important for court research.

Your ancestor’s name might be buried on page 347 of a handwritten Superior Court book that nobody ever indexed by name. Twenty years ago, finding her could have required reading hundreds of pages yourself.

Now try searching her name.

Then search the husband’s name.

Then the maiden name.

Then the children’s names.

Then unusual surnames associated with the family.

And do not stop with names. FamilySearch allows searching by keywords, names, places and dates.

For a nineteenth-century Georgia woman who apparently disappeared, useful terms associated with court records might include:

divorce, alimony, wife, husband, deserted, abandonment, adultery, marriage, separate, maintenance, custody, petition, libel, decree, dower, property, feme sole

The AI transcription is not perfect. Old handwriting, faded pages and unusual spelling can produce errors, so always compare a promising transcript against the image of the original record. FamilySearch itself cautions that AI-generated transcripts can contain transcription errors.

THE BIG LESSON: DON’T DECLARE HER DEAD JUST BECAUSE SHE DISAPPEARED.

When a woman vanishes between censuses, build a timeline around the disappearance.

Find the last record proving where she lived. Find the husband’s next record. Trace every child. Trace her parents and siblings. Search surrounding counties. Check remarriages. Check court records. Check newspapers. Search her maiden name again.

Sometimes the woman who seemingly vanished from Henry County did not die there at all.

She may be sitting in a courthouse record 150 miles away, under another surname, waiting for someone to find her.

— Genealogical Society of Henry and Clayton Counties

10/01/2026

Have you visited our newly updated website? Take a look and see what the Society has to offer.

Discovering family trees, no matter where they are planted.

10/01/2026

If you are researching an African American family and your trail seems to end before 1870, don't assume you have reached the end. Instead, recognize that you have reached the point where your research method has to change.

The 1870 census is important because it was the first regular federal census after emancipation to enumerate most formerly enslaved people by name. Before immediately jumping backward into slave schedules, however, squeeze everything possible out of the records created after emancipation. Your goal should be to reconstruct the family as completely as possible before trying to connect them to records created during slavery.

Start by building the entire family in 1870. Record every person in the household, including their ages, birthplaces, occupations, and property values. Do not stop with the household itself. Record at least ten households before and ten households after your ancestor because those neighbors can be extremely important to your research.

Families who had been separated during slavery sometimes reunited after emancipation. Parents, siblings, children, in-laws, and former neighbors may therefore appear nearby but under different surnames. Former enslavers and members of their families may also have remained in the same community. This makes the neighborhood surrounding your ancestor part of the genealogical evidence rather than simply background information.

Next, locate the family in the 1880 census. The 1880 census is particularly valuable because it identifies relationships to the head of household. A woman who appeared simply as “Mary” in an 1870 household might be identified ten years later as a mother, sister, aunt, or mother-in-law. That relationship can provide the clue needed to identify another generation.

Marriage records should also receive close attention. A marriage from the 1860s or 1870s can establish a woman's maiden name and introduce another surname that needs to be investigated. Search the witnesses, bondsmen, ministers, and other people associated with the marriage as well. Those individuals were often relatives, neighbors, or members of the same community.

Death certificates can be even more valuable when researching people who survived into the twentieth century. Although Georgia did not begin statewide death registration until the twentieth century, the death certificate of someone born during slavery may identify that person's father and mother. A twentieth-century record can therefore provide the names of people who were born in the early nineteenth century and may have spent much or all of their lives enslaved.

One of the most dangerous shortcuts in African American genealogy is finding a white person with the same surname in 1860 and immediately assuming that person enslaved your ancestor. A shared surname is evidence worth investigating, but it is not proof. African Americans acquired and used surnames in many different ways, and the surname used after emancipation does not automatically identify a former enslaver.

The better method is to build the free family first, establish their community, identify relatives and associates, and collect as many post-emancipation records as possible. Once you know the names, approximate ages, relationships, locations, neighbors, and associated families, you can begin moving backward into probate records, wills, estate inventories, deeds, tax records, court proceedings, and other antebellum sources. Records created before 1865 become considerably easier to interpret when you already know exactly whom you are trying to find.

“African American family posed for portrait seated on lawn.”
- W.E.B. Dubois Photograph Collection