Hi everyone!
It's time to meet another one of our Wonderful WikiTreers. This week's member is Betty Norman.
Betty became a Wiki Genealogist in October of 2019. She's active in our US Southern Colonies Project particularly the Carolinas, Jamestown and Bio-Builders teams.
What are some of the surnames you are researching?
Skelton Banister Moore Todd Norman Belew Ruhl Arnett Hembree McGougan McCaskill.
What are some of the locations you are researching?
Jamestown, the Carolinas, Ninety-Six District.
When and how did you get interested in genealogy and family history?
My great-grandfather started it. When he was 91 and I was 12, he told me some of his memories of the War Between the States. He was still a boy when the war ended, but his stories planted a spark of awe inside me that never went away. Only in recent years did I begin researching my family’s history. It was then I discovered the truth was far more amazing than my imagination.
Who's your favorite ancestor and why?
Sarah Hembree Todd Love, my second great-grandmother. She was bold and courageous, a field nurse during the War Between the States. It’s my belief that her pride in her Native American heritage led her to make unconventional life choices.
Tell us about a brick wall you were able to break down or hope to bust through.
I still have frustrating brick walls at the ends of my Skelton and Banister lines, but I was able to open up the Norman line. The brick wall was in colonial Carolina, where the immigrant patriarch appeared around 1676. None of the pieces of the puzzle fit together from there. Only when I put aside the works of the genealogists I had been following and started using primary sources did I discover there were TWO Norman patriarchs who immigrated around the same time. From there, I penciled in corrections to the works of the genealogists and made real progress!
If you could pick one person in history to be related to, who would it be?
Alfred the Great, or his daughter, Aethelflaed, both strategic rulers who changed the course of history.
What are some of your interests outside of genealogy?
Trail running/walking, raptors (mainly eagles and hawks), grandchildren, reading, travel, church, puzzles, chocolate. (I used to run ultramarathons, but have cut down on my mileage in recent years.)
[Interview continues below.]