Reblogged from my December 8, 2010 Jones, My Opinion post:

Of All the Places in the World

The town of Crawfordville, Georgia had a population of a whopping 572 people in 2000. The county of Taliaferro, in which Crawfordville is located, had just over 2,000 people in the year 2000. This is according to the US Federal Census. Apparently, the county has fewer residents than that, according to the 2007 Census estimate. This county is also the most rural county in the state of Georgia. The entire county shares one school, K-12.

My point is, this place is infinitely smaller than you can imagine. The only reason that I even knew about this area was because my husband’s grandparents emigrated from the rural, farm life of Crawfordville to Atlanta city life. My husband’s story of Crawfordville and his family really piqued my imagination of the place.

He told me about the family’s journeying there during the summer. His great-grandfather lived in the same house that was built by his father, a freed slave. There was a well, plenty of muscadines, and that there was so much land, his great-grandfather allowed others to hunt on it. In order to do any type of shopping, they had to travel to nearby town Washington, Georgia.

Listening to my husband’s recollections, I could just about picture what I thought Crawfordville to look like. The family gatherings are infrequent to nil these days, as the family patriarch passed away in 1999. He lived to be over 107 years old. Sadly, I did not get a chance to meet him. He was surely blessed.

It just so happens that a few years ago, there was a family gathering, and I was fortunate to breathe Crawfordville air. If you haven’t been outside of the city limits in a while, then you probably don’t even miss true, fresh, clean air. I know that I didn’t. I had no idea that air could be that calming. Maybe it wasn’t just the air. It was the totality.

Crawfordville was everything I expected it to be. The gathering happened at the home of one of my husband’s great aunts, and their hospitality was welcoming as the air. Although, technically I think that the gathering was in Sharon city limits. Everyone made it home, I sat down and thought-what a wonderful place.

Earlier this year, the quest began to find my father’s roots. For all of the “ease” that accompanied my in searching for my maternal line, the complete opposite was true with his. Regardless, the hunt was on.

Thanks to the Information Age, I was able to gather some interesting facts about my father’s line. Nothing compared, however, to his discovery at the State of Georgia Archives in Morrow.

My father called me one afternoon after he and my mother had journeyed to the State of Georgia Archives in Morrow. Lo and behold, he’d found his father’s WWII Enlistment card. His father’s own handwriting told the tale of where paternal roots lay. I couldn’t believe what I heard on the other line.

My daddy’s from Crawfordville, Georgia.

Yes, Crawfordville. My jaw dropped. You see, the thing about Crawfordville is that seemingly everyone is related by either blood or marriage.

My next call was to my husband. I told him the news and he was just like me, astounded, excited, then sobered by the thought

Did I marry my cousin?

There’s been no confirmation one way or the other just yet, but how special it is that we both share amazing, blood ties to Crawfordville, Georgia.

While these are facts, this is still-

Jones, My Opinion

2020 UPDATE: DNA testing has revealed that there is some distant shared ancestry between my husband and I. We share a number of Crawfordville DNA connections without matching each other. So, as it happens, more answers come with more questions. Isn’t that just like genealogy?

The Genealogy Situation Room