Week #5 Theme is "Oooops!"

We all make mistakes, follow rabbit trails down the wrong path, fail to record our sources of information, etc. So every family researcher has probably said "Ooops." I had to choose just one. Early in our research, we used Gerry's Grandpa Grimes' family history booklet to begin following the Grimes family. He had recorded direct family lines back to John Power Grimes, born in Georgia 1814, and challenged Gerry to go further. When you first begin to do searches, you grasp and collect the new "facts" wherever you can find them. So we found the father of John Power Grimes, Thomas Miner Grimes. And on to William Grimes, father of Thomas. He claimed a land grant in Georgia, 1784, for his father's Revolutionary service. Not realizing that William Grimes was a common name, I latched onto a little news item of the era which said "William Grimes, nephew of Mr. Mebane, was scalped and killed by Indians on the Harpeth River in Tennessee." Our family ran with it even though that river is nowhere near Elbert County, GA. Every time we traveled from Georgia back to see family in Oklahoma, we had to cross the Harpeth River. I think we held up traffic on the bridge near Nashville, taking pictures of that river, stopping short of tossing flowers, (a la Billy Joe McAlister). Our kids probably told about it in Show and Tell. I wrote up a history as far as we had researched, including poor, scalped William, and passed copies out to cousins. After a couple of years of searching, I came across a will of OUR William Grimes. He died at age 49, and the will was submitted in Elbert County, GA. I'm pretty sure that William didn't write a detailed will before traipsing off to Tennessee, about 430 miles into Indian lands. About the same time, I discovered a William “Graham”, who was related to a Mebane and was killed by Indians in Tennessee. I have since apologized to all the close family, but distant relatives may be still spreading that news item. Now I guess I should make my apologies to the Grahams and Mebanes for glomming onto their family history. Oooops!