Gordon Stewart: An Ancestry DNA Story

In two genealogy books -  The John Lastinger Family of America by Aurora Shaw (link here) and Jesse Greene Williams', The Prosperity of Marmaduke Williams  - the mother of George 'Henry' Merritt is given as Lydia (Pittman) Webb. But we found William Stewart, a family researcher, on ancestry.com. His family tree claimed our * (see relationship notes below) second great-grandmother.

Jesse Greene Williams
1894-1967

George Leonard Merritt and Lydia Stewart

Our grandfather was Willis Edgar Musgrove, born September 9, 1909, in Schlatterville, Pierce County, Georgia. He married our grandmother, Carrie Mae Merritt, on June 13, 1929, in Bickley, Ware County, Georgia. She was born there on April 1, 1910, to George Henry Merritt and Mary Jane Williams.

Willis Edgar and Carrie Mae
(Merritt) Musgrove

Civil War Stories: The Merritts

The Civil War: April 12, 1861- April 9, 1865



Headline: Fall of Fort Sumter

The American Civil War started at four-thirty a.m., April 12, 1861. P. G. T. Beauregard, the first brigadier general of the Confederate States Army, fired on his former United States Military Academy teacher, Robert Anderson, at Ft Sumter, South Carolina.

Thirty-four hours later, when the white flag of surrender went up over the fort, the causality count was one horse.

Thus began the deadliest war in American history. (World War II was the bloodiest.)

Newly elected President Lincoln declared war the next day and called for seventy-five thousand volunteers, with possibly two hundred thousand more requested later.

Grandma Musgrove and our Parker Lineage

Our grandmother, Carrie (known as) Mae Merritt, was born on April 1, 1910, in Bickley, Georgia. Both her parents, George (known as) Henry Merritt and Mary Jane Elizabeth (known as Mamie) Williams, were 43. 

Carrie Mae (Merritt) Musgrove