Local Resident Speaks to the ROAHS About 
Researching Their Ancestry

Around the Town by Jo Ann Dennis

The River Oaks Area Historical Society meeting held in February,  featured a very interesting local resident who whetted the appetites of members to research their ancestry.  Carol Byrom became interested in genealogy in 1975,  and started her research at that time.  She has studied the ancestry of her family,  and the family of her husband, Coy Byrom,  for years and has edited and published a family newsletter since 1994.  She is a member of several genealogical societies including the Fort Worth Genealogy Society and has been on the Family History Radio Show numerous times.  Carol has lived in Tarrant County all her life and moved with her parents,  Bob and Ruth Grisham,  to Meandering Road in River Oaks in 1950.  She has been a member of the River Oaks Lady Lions Club for a number of years,  serves as its secretary,  and was introduced as guest speaker by her fellow Lady Lion, Mearl Ellis, who is program chairman for ROAHS. 

Carol told us that genealogy is a human history of the nation's growth and a puzzle infinitely more challenging than crossword puzzles in the daily newspaper.  She said you get hooked for life on genealogy and noted that the painting and gardening she used to do have gone by the wayside.  She laughed when she said that you spend all your time in libraries and in dusty basements of courthouses and in cemeteries, while driving your family and friends crazy because all you want to talk about is genealogy.  She said you need to love history,  have a desire to know more about your family and your country and be willing to read a lot of material and look at a lot of microfilm.

She was always interested in the history of her family, but she did have somewhat of an unpleasant experience with her grandfather one day when she went with him to the annual family cemetery clean-up day.  She got in trouble when she asked her grandfather to "dig up" his parents because she wanted to see what they looked like.  Maybe the request was a little un-nerving because he took her home.  Carol couldn't remember if she got a spanking or not.  I think she was headed in a genealogy direction even as a youngster.  There is now a cemetery in Benbrook that has five generations of her family in it.

The first thing that most genealogists want to know is who were the ancestors who came from England.  Carol said many of them were called "criminals" even though they might have only been stealing a loaf of bread to feed their family.  Regardless,  they were among the first settlers along with adventurers and fortune hunters. Some were soldiers who came to fight in the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812. They liked the country so they stayed. Probably the biggest group were those who were seeking religious freedom. She said it was rare to look in the record books and find a “first son” who came to American soil because they were the ones who inherited their father’s land in the old country. But many “second Sons” are recorded as coming to America to settle. The families of these new settlers followed later. Some of the settlers signed on as indentured servants of rich people, because they did not have the funds to get here on their own.

Carol said her great-grandfather was named Napoleon Bonaparte Johnson and when doing her research, she thought he would be the only person with that name, but

there were others. She learned he became a Confederate soldier at age 18 when the Civil War started, but was captured and kept as a prisoner till the war was over. Her great-grandparents settled in the area where our court house is now and her grandparents settled in what is now the Arlington Heights area. Another ancestor from Texas was fighting in Tennessee when he learned his wife and family in Hill County had been threatened by a certain man. He came home, shot the man, was cleared in court and returned to finish fighting in the Civil War. Further research showed Coy’s great-grandfather was drafted as a Confederate soldier but did not want to fight because his brother was fighting with the North, so he was allowed to deliver supplies. Carol said many times, you will discover a scandal connected to your family. She said, “That ‘public ceremony’ your ‘distinguished ancestor’ was involved in where the ‘platform collapsed under him’ just might turn out to be a hanging. You may discover royalty, success stories, and outlaws, but it is still interesting to know our family history”.

She laughingly told that in searching out some of the archives, her family would have two lines written about them while there would be a whole book about the Byroms, and Coy and his brother’s names would already be recorded in it. When they were in Georgia doing research, the archivists brought out scrolls that researched Coy’s family all the way back to England. She said when they would visit cemeteries, her ancestors would be buried in what might be called a “hog wailer” and Coy’s family would have gravestones that could be seen a mile away. She enjoyed saying that they didn’t do any thing important, but someone did a lot of writing about them. This was all stated with a great deal of humor.

Carol advised those who wanted to get started with genealogy early in life to go to their parents and grandparents and take down all the information they could get such as dates of birth, parents and grandparents names and places of birth, education, dates of marriages, occupations, military service, church affiliations and dates of deaths. However, in the crowd she was speaking to, we WERE the parents and grandparents so that would involve a little more research, but she said we would still need to write down everything we knew statistically about our families before beginning the research. Carol said items that might not seem like history to us would be history to our children and grandchildren. She reminded us to write the names of people on old pictures and she urged us to interview our relatives on tape or video. She added that if most of our relatives are gone, then ‘interview ourselves’ for our children and grandchildren’s sake. She mentioned that she didn’t recognize the value of her mother’s hand­written recipes or the things she would say, nearly as, much when she was living, as she does now. She also told us that before Coy’s mother passed away, they drove her to every place she had lived and took pictures of her and wrote down the information. Another item she stressed was to pick up on all spellings of a last name. Her maiden name, spelled as Grisham (and often pronounced Grissom) was spelled in England as Gresham. Carol has transferred all her written notes from those early years, to her computer and recommends a couple of software programs such as “Family Tree Maker” and “Brother’s Keeper”. “The Handy Book for Genealogists” is expensive but also of great help. We learned that our downtown library is one of the finest genealogical li­braries in the southwest. They have the above named book plus many census records, immigration records and other genealogical helps. Carol told us the library workers are usually very helpful in this area.

Carol and Coy with their two daughters, Teresa and Tamara, were in Georgia looking for a certain country cemetery. When they found it, a very “country looking” woman came out of a nearby house with two dogs that were tall enough to look through the car windows. The Byroms asked if they could get out and look at the cemetery which had tombstones that dated back to the 1700s.

 The woman told them that the dogs would probably kill them if they did. However, they slipped back later with Carol holding the camera and Coy holding a tool he found in the trunk of their car. Is that dedication or not? Carol had all of us laughing pretty hard by this time. Then, their daughter, Teresa, who was with them that evening, told about a trip she and her husband, Ron Bertel, made to England. There was a statue of one of their ancestors, Sir Thomas Gresham, founder of the Royal Exchange (comparable to our Wall Street Exchange) on a building in London, about three stories from the ground and Carol had asked her daughter to take a picture. Teresa went in a bank building with fabulous offices across from the statue, told a man what she wanted, all the while blaming everything on her mother, and she was escorted by a security guard upstairs where she could lean out the window and take a picture. She kept apologizing and thanking him and he said, “Oh, don’t worry. Every now and then, another member of ‘your family’ comes in and we do this for them.” That brought a good laugh and applause from the crowd also.

Teresa had their two children, Rhonda and Robert, with her that night. The Byrom’s other daughter, Tamara, is married to Lorne Green and they also have two children. Both families live a short distance from the Byroms and all the children go to Castleberry schools. Carol and Coy are members of ROAHS but a number of visitors came that evening to hear Carol’s very enjoyable and informative talk. She was presented a beautiful potted plant by member, Merle Bradley. We were saddened by President Mary Earwood’s announcement of the death of Char White, River Oaks resident and a faithful member of ROAHS. She said Char had left some historical memorabilia which was to be given to ROAHS. Mary also appointed a nominating committee for new officers for the new year starting in April. These were Anna Sherrill, Bennie Stone and Nell Dahl. Friends visited and looked at the genealogical materials Carol had brought with her. It was the close of a great evening.