Friday, July 31, 2020

Shaking the Hart Family Tree of St. Helena Parish

Elizabeth Hart Randles
Photo Courtesy: Lynette Randles
My maternal 3rd great-grandmother Rosa Hart Vining came from a huge family. My Vining and Richardson families know very little about the Hart family. I want to learn more about the Hart family. I started to look at some of the public trees on the Hart side of the family.

One of  William Warren Randles and  Elizabeth Hart Randles   descendants sent me photographs of her aunts and uncles. Despite not knowing anything about them. Social Media had provided a venue for the families to meet each other.

For thousands of families in the East Florida Parishes have no knowledge of their family history in the 1800s. They have no idea where to begin and how to start researching their long lost family members and ancestors.

What little information you have about your ancestors or family can be vital to making the family history connections. When we see study local history and family history, we can learn so much about our own history.  My mother often talked about our family being related to the Hart family,  but she didn't know how we were related to them. The fact that she knew we were related to them was enough for me to get started conducting genealogy research on the Hart family of St. Helena.

Lynette Randles shared the photographs in this blog with me. During and after Reconstructions many family migrated to other parts of the United States. Green Hart moved to Texas and soon some of his descendants made their way to Phoenix,  Arizona. George was born in 1834. In the United States Federal Census he was living in Ward 2, St. Helena, Louisiana. He was married to Celia Dudley, and they had thirteen.  The images on the flyer are the children of William Warren Randles and Elizabeth Hart Randles.