(https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6005419622294275945#editor/target=post;postID=8624172164817637650;onPublishedMenu=allposts;onClosedMenu=allposts;postNum=1;src=postname).
To recap, prior to that posting, he was only found in Morehouse Parish, LA, in both the 1910 and 1920 censuses, and in Chicot County, AR, for his 1928 marriage to Helena Britton. Neither the 1930 nor the 1940 censuses yielded any results for him, but he was found from 1939-1941 in the city directories for Shreveport, Caddo Parish, LA.
Fast forward to today, when I received a message on Ancestry.com, from rbridges1940, another researcher whose WEST family members in his tree have been the source of a few shaky leaf hints in my "Dawkins-West Family Tree" over the past several months. Today, however, he responded to my inquiry about a shaky leaf on the 1867 marriage record of my great-great-grandparents, Allen DAWKINS (abt 1847-? LA) and Amanda GREEN (abt 1849 AL-1918 LA) in my "Allen Dawkins, Elbert Perkins, Albert McDowell, James Nation" tree. He had saved the same marriage record to an Amanda Green in his tree.
He explained that his mother's maiden name was WEST, and he provided a lineage of names unfamiliar to me until I saw "...Jesse Mae Barnes, wife of Lawyer Dawkins, son of Hester Emmett Dawkins, son of Allen Dawkins." I was flabberghasted and replied to him that my mother always said that her favorite uncle was Uncle Lawyer! Of course, Hester Emmett Dawkins was my mother's paternal grandfather, my great-grandfather. This reminded me of that Internet game of "Six Degrees of Separation" from actor Kevin Bacon. If you keep on digging, asking, researching, you will find more relatives than you can shake a stick at. My exact relationship to rbridges1940 is not yet clear, but it should be after I add him and that lineage of unfamiliar names into my tree.
Initially, when I first saw Allen's and Amanda's marriage record in his tree, my heart leapt with joy because he had "Edward Allen Dawkins" as Amanda's husband, and that he had died in 1921. His first name was Edward? Wow. In my tree, Amanda is listed as a widow with several of her children (including my great-grandfather, Emmett, listed in error as a daughter) on the 1900 census for Police Jury Ward 6, Ouachita, LA:
I clicked on Edward's name in his tree and then the associated findagrave link. Well, it was burial information for Edward Aidan Dawkins, not Great-grandfather Allen Dawkins. Edward Aidan Dawkins was born about the same year, 1847, and he died in 1921, but he was the son of Duncan Douglas DeKalb Dawkins. They were members of the white DAWKINS family who had held my black DAWKINS ancestors in slavery in Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, a few other states and in the Caribbean. The picture of Edward's headstone on his findagrave page included his wife Caroline's headstone.
So, Edward wasn't Allen, but -- had made another familial connection to the same person through two separate family branches. Through his mother's WEST line, rbridges1940 is more than likely a blood cousin to my WEST half-sister. As stated above, his relationship to my mother, a DAWKINS, is yet to be determined. One thing I can say about rbridges1940 and his son is that they both remind me of my late older brother. Hmmm...
