I have a number of matches that have a family tree that contains a woman named Catherine (Jenkins) Manning and it took me a minute to realize she's related to me. Aunt Cathy is a sister to Will, Tom, Levi, and JayGou Jenkins. She had married a man named Wallace Manning. That proves to be an important name for those Jenkins in McComb, Pike County, Mississippi. Wallace Manning gave the land to the family church of the Jenkins down there known as Spring Beulah Church which is the final resting places of Garrison & Delia Jenkins as well as Levi, JayGou, and other Jenkins and Mannings also. In my research I found that Spring Beulah Church is a very special place in the Jenkins family history. And here's an image Aunt Cathy via Ancestry. Catherine Jenkins Manning The one documentation, I was able to find on Aunt Cathy was regarding her enrollment at school at age 10 (she was probably born in about 1875) by her father Garrison Jenkins in Pike County, Mississippi. And now I'...

 Let's start with this and we've covered this before. My grandfather Levi had an uncle also named Levi . And this is the best pic possible that I found. Levi Jenkins Sr. (1892-1962) Wow! He almost resembles my uncle Lurenzo I can just see it. And it's interesting that his image is on an obituary from his funeral in 1962. Almost looks like a Xerox copy. It's a pretty cool find from Ancestry. Here's one of this brothers, introducing JayGou Jenkins. JayGou Jenkins (1894-1984) Uncle JayGou is posing with his granddaughter. I presume this was taken in the 1980s before his transition in 1984. I got this photo from his granddaughter whom I had been conversing with on Ancestry. One final pic and I never thought it was possible that we'd have it. Cora Dancy Jenkins That's right, we got the image of the widow of uncle Will Jenkins. It was likely her funeral that my mother visited with her Jenkins in-laws during the early 1970s. At the time of her death she was livi...

After writing a post about Will Jenkins , I decided to look for the post where I introduced Uncle Levi Jenkins and shared a map of Pike County. All I did was take a screencap from Google Maps and did a basic photoshop job. In that post it was important for me to show Pike County, MISS. If you look to the east or the right hand side of the map below near the middle you will see a place called Holmesville. I made sure to draw attention to it by underlining it and another city - McComb - which is known to have a presence of Jenkins. Pike County, MISS It seems something very important happened in Holmesville and it led to Tom and his brother Will leaving home for another part of Mississippi. And I learned they left this part of Mississippi with another man, Monroe. Not much is known about Monroe. Is he a brother or is he a cousin to Tom & Will? Him being a brother comes from a descendant of Uncle JayGou, however, the possibility of Monroe being a cousin comes from one of my uncles. Ha...

 I want to announce some sad news which was already noted on the companion blog which you see linked in the above masthead - Burns . The Hunter-Burns Tribal Historian had married into the Jenkins family and even when working on this side of the tree she was my greatest collaborator and was amazed by some of the discoveries I had made. My mother Lois Burns Jenkins passed away in late August and I missed sharing some of the new discoveries that were made. Sadly I never had the chance to tell her of my visit to a reunion of the extended Jenkins family. Also attempted to share pics of my visit, however, she had become so ill that she wasn't thinking about any of her electronic devices. Lois B. Jenkins ✝ While thankfully I do have other family members who are interested in these discoveries the main person who was part of this now has a new home . She was an important part of the story I had written months ago . She said that she had attended a funeral on the West Side of Chicago and w...

Will Jenkins 1881? - ? I went to a recent family reunion hosted by the descendants of my great-uncle Will Jenkins and I'm sorry to have not shared this already it was held at the Dan Ryan Woods Forest Preserve near 87th Street & Western Avenue. My time at this event was unfortunately very brief, however, it was great to meet my cousins and from one of them I certainly got some good information on my uncle Will - the man. It was interesting to hear my great-uncle referred to as grandpa Will. It was interesting to know he had his own favorite grandchild who is still with us to possibly tell us more about Will. It was also interesting to hear about Will's wife Cora who lived on the west side of Chicago on Adams Street with her son Hollis. And I went over  what my mother had told me about her visit to Hollis' residence and that funeral whom we had to guess who it was for . Unfortunately I didn't have the time to talk to everyone on this day, hopefully there will be more...

Tom Jenkins 1883? - 1934 Since starting this blog I got away from my great-grandfather Tom Jenkins - Head of the Table. Father's Day had just passed and on my own personal social media I noted that my grandfather and father had both given me my name (or variation thereof). It is also in fact the Head of the Table who's also responsible for giving me my last name. What do we know about him? We know that he died in 1934 per legal documents - reportedly from a snakebite according to one of my uncles (Tom's grandson). We also know that during the 1910s he purchased land somewhere outside of Mound Bayou, Mississippi which his descendants continued to hold until at least 2004. Tom also briefly owned this land with his brother Will though he later returned his interest in this land back to the Head of the Table. It's safe to say he was a farmer and certainly a landowner. He married Georgia Johnson in December 1908 and had ten children from this union. I didn't know about ...