Forgotten Family - Part III: The Hairston Family

I continued to search for my grandmother’s Hairston family with hopes of identifying additional pictures. Extended family names were Thompson, Chisum, and Noah. Bob, a Noah descendant, and my only connection to other Hairston descendants sent me a matching copy of the above picture complete with names.  

The tattered picture above was sent by my cousin Jackie. Bob had an identical picture and was able to name each person. 

I had not been successful in locating any other descendants of the Hairston family. Thompsons were too numerous and I didn’t have enough information about the Chisum family to begin a search. My grandmother’s cousin, Stella Chisum, married a William Gresham so Gresham, a less common name than Thompson, became my focus.  During one late-night search I located more than twenty researchers at Rootsweb.com looking for Gresham families in Texas.  E-mail queries to all resulted in a reply from Carol who published a Gresham newsletter.  She suggested that I contact Bobby in Stephenville, Texas for more information about my father’s Gresham cousins.  Bobby called me the next day. He stated that he was not a Gresham, but that his mother’s uncle married into “my” Gresham family. He also put me in touch with one of his neighbors, a descendant of the elusive Thompson family.  I wrote a letter to Nadine, the Thompson descendant, and she responded quickly.  Her father was Edd Thompson, another of my grandmother’s first cousins. She identified her father’s brother, Floyd Thompson, in one of my pictures and she gave me an address for Juanita, one of Floyd’s daughters.  

Next - Forgotten Family – Part IV: The Letter

Diana

© 2011, copyright Diana Quinn