As I have mention before, genealogy is one of the most fascinating hobbies for me, however, there are some family lines that no matter how much time and effort you put into them it seems to lead to a dead end. Well I this is true for my mother's paternal line, the "King" family. My King family primarily resided in Franklin County, Arkansas from many decades before my birth. However, the family originally settled Arkansas after leaving the Rome, Georgia area shortly after the Civil War. Matter of fact, my g-g-g-grandfather William Voit King fought on the side of the confederacy in many battles in the south. During the battle at Vicksburg, Mississippi he was taken captive to Fort Delaware. This is the prison depicted in the movie "Cold Mountain. Upon his return to Georgia, he took his civil war horse, his belongings, and his family and moved to the Ozarks of Arkansas. During the journey, at Memphis Tennessee, a group of bandits stole his horse, which was returned by The Masons who tracked the bandits and William's horse down. The picture above is William with his civil war horse sometime after he got to Arkansas. When my family and I moved to East Tn, one of the things I looked forward to most was getting to the bottom of "where did the King's originate". I know that William's parents were Lyndon & Nancy (Hughes) King. I know that they were married in Anderson County, South Carolina and that Lyndon was born in NC and Nancy in Virginia. Also, I know that Nancy's father was a William Hughes who was a revolutionary soldier. Other than those few details there is little more "facts" to trace down the King line. My family and I took a very quick trip down through NC, down to Anderson County, South Carolina. We stayed just outside Greenville, SC at a town called Easly. We spent a little time in Old Pendleton District where there seems to be a host of King's who had lived there during that time. However, I found that the more I dug the more dead ends I found. A librarian pointed us to the Anderson library, which I found to be another fascinating town historically. However, without knowing more about where they lived it was hard to pinpoint what group of King's or Hughes' they might be related to (if any in that area, I still do not know if their families had come down with them or were already living there). On our way home we very quickly drove through Van Wert, GA (where I believe they lived according to census records several years after they married). I know Lynden King died just before the Civil War. However, the area changed many district and counties during that time and again it is hard to pin point any records/wills etc for the family during this time period. Last year, on my mother's birthday we returned to Georgia to visit the town of Marietta, Georgia and the Gone With the Wind Musuem. My mom was named for Ms Melanie in the movie, and we thought it would be so neat to take her down for her birthday. On the way home we stopped one more time in Rome, again only to walk away with little to no information. I was able however to gather some facts about William's war records, and suspect the "John King" in the same infantry with him may possibly be his brother. I was not able to visit a court house while I was there, but I am finding there are a lack of records or missing records for the area. Alot of it makes me wonder if there is any trace (documents) of my King relatives that survived the war, or are they simply Gone with the wind? I will continue my pursuit in hopes that someone, somewhere kept the King family heritage alive and well in Georgia!
