#52Ancestors Week 5: Census--John Marshall Dent

#52Ancestors Week 5: Census

A census entry led me to a trip to Georgia.

Just about all my direct ancestors were born in Maryland going back to the 1700's.  So, when I was researching my grandmother's family and found a census entry indicating that my great-grandfather, John Marshall Dent Jr., was born in Georgia, at first I thought it was a mistake since his family was from St. Mary's County MD for many generations back.  How did he get born in Georgia?

His father, John Marshall Dent Sr., born in St. Mary's County MD in 1844, left Maryland for Virginia at the start of the Civil War and served in the 1st Maryland Cavalry.  He retained the title of Colonel for the remainder of his life.  After the war, Dent went to Georgia where his Dent cousin, William Barton Wade Dent, had settled in Newnan GA.  JM Dent Jr. practiced law and also edited the local paper, The Newnan Herald, from 1874 to 1877.

In 1873, JM Dent married Ida Elizabeth Wright, the daughter of Judge William Felix Wright and Elizabeth Caroline Dent (a daughter of the aforementioned WBW Dent.)  In 1874, my great-grandfather, JM Dent Jr. was born in Newnan.  A second son, William Francis Dent, was born there in 1875.  In 1877, JM Dent Sr. left Georgia and returned to St. Mary's County MD where he and Ida had eight more children.  Ida Wright Dent died in St. Mary's County in 1925.  JM Dent Sr. died there in 1929.

All of this was interesting enough to me that I decided to take a trip to Georgia to see Newnan for myself.

I visited the Newnan Herald where the staff very kindly helped me do a search of the microfilmed papers from the era when I thought JM Dent had been the editor.  We discovered his farewell editorial from 1877 as well as announcement of JM's marriage in 1873.