Post # 2 : WHERE. Macon County Alabama is located in the East Central part of Alabama just west of Montgomery and most famous for Tuskegee University and for the 70's cult classic "Macon County Line". It is also the place where my Maternal ggggreat grandfather, Freeman W Boyd, lived in 1850 according to Federal census records.
Macon county was formed from land taken from the Native Creek Indians in an 1832 treaty in which all land claimed by the Creeks east of the MS river was traded for land located in present day Arkansas and Oklahoma. To explain: when a state was formed, it was a governmental entity, joining together the disparate parts of settlements in a particular geographic region. For example, Alabama was formed in 1819, but not until after 1832 did all the land that occupied the area we know as the state belonged to the people of the state of Alabama and was the case of most deep south states. When President Andrew Jackson, a proud Tennessee boy and patriot of the Indian war of 1814 (also goes by the war of 1812 plus two) signed the Indian Removal Act of 1830, it started a push by the federal government with the aid of the local state's militias to forcibly remove the native tribes. At this point, it's hard for me to explain... The Seminoles and Lower Creeks didn't like the situation, so they attacked a plantation and a couple of notable white people. Their attacks were exploited by the land speculators and the federal government to rouse sentiment in the local people for the removal of the Indians off their land.

Post #1
Hopefully, I will be able to keep this up. I have a resolution to get as much of my research out there for everyone this year.
The best way for me to begin to organize this massive Monster in a Box (to steal a line from the late Spaulding Gray) is to establish an over all structure to what I am going to write about. Here's my first attempt. I don't guarantee that I will stick to it, but for now...
Ok.
It's original... It's innovative... ok it's the tried and true questions of Who (family or surname) What (an event like military service or land speculation or marriage) When (a closer look at a particular era) and Why (social or political forces that affected the family)

I will try to put a WHO on every post so my reasons for the research make a bit more sense.

Who: The Boyd Family. I am related by my maternal grandmother, Ottie Simmons, whose mother was a Boyd. I have good records for the few generations that lived in the Jasper County area. What I'm mostly focusing on is the first Boyd in our line to settle in Jasper County, Freeman W Boyd. Freeman and family moved to Jasper County MS from Macon County AL around 1852 according to the birth place records of the Boyd family children. Freeman received a Land Grant from the federal government in 1854 (T3R11S19) in Jasper County MS and was a farmer. You can see his gravestone along with that of his wife, Emiley, at the Palestine Baptist Cemetery in Montrose, MS.
Accounts of records from early Jasper history show Freeman paying taxes in 1854. Also in 1854 was a William Boyd listed on the tax roles. This is particularly interesting to me because Freeman is the end of the line for me in terms of researching the Boyds back any further. I could guess that this William might have been a relative since Freeman had a child named William, but I can't say if he was a brother, father or cousin. I did get a family story that told the Boyds were on their way to Texas when a flood stopped their journey. Some of the family chose to stay while the others chose to travel onward to the west. Could this William be a family member that traveled on? I don't have an indication as of yet that William stayed in Jasper County. He is not listed on any census records from this time forward, but this doesn't mean that he wasn't nearby. Boyd is a very common name (Scottish by origin) and so is William. There are scads of William Boyds out there probably born in Georgia around the early 19th C and until I can nail down a bit more concrete information on this guy, this is a trail left for another time.