Party in honor of Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Maddox, 1918

"In Honor of Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Maddox," announcement, Alexandria Times-Tribune, 4 March 1918; online images, Newspapers.com (www.newspapers.com : accessed 29 March 2015).

RURAL ROUTE, 20

In honor of Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Maddox, who will soon move to their new home south of Linwood, a party was given last Tuesday night.  Refreshments were served, and a general good time enjoyed by Mr. and Mrs. Henry Clevenger, Mr. and Mrs. Robert Thurston, Mr. and Mrs. Frank Wright, Mr. and Mrs. Virgil Bowers, Mr. and Mrs. John Lewis, Mr. and Mrs. Elmer Thurston, Mr. and Mrs. Purl Ice, Mr. and Mrs. Allen Gooding,Mr. and Mrs. Rube Maddox, Mr. and Mrs. Virgil Wright, Mr. and Mrs. Earl Stephenson and familes, Mrs. Lon Nichols, Wm. Dickey, Walter Davis and son Ralph, George Hughes.  The Misses Mary Vermillion, Hazel Nichols, Sybrina Tobin, Leona Hughes, Sybrina Tobin, Leona Hughes, Messrs. Marshall Stephenson, Thomas and Edward Tobin.

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My maternal great-grandparents, Virgil and Edna (Pierce) Wright, were attendees at this party hosted for Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Maddox.

I do not know if this Maddox family was related to the family of Edna's stepmother, Vida (Maddox) Pierce.

I also do not yet know the relationship, if any, with the Frank Wright family. 

Linked my Rootsmagic to FamilySearch

I finally decided to take advantage of one of the features of my Rootsmagic 7 software and link my genealogy database with FamilySearch.  I'd read the helpful posts Randy Seaver had written about using the software with FamilySearch's Family Tree and am eager to see what online collaboration brings to my database.

The first step was to log into FamilySearch with my free account and then have RootsMagic do an auto-match to find matches between my database and the online database.  My database is quite large, as it contains not only my ancestors, but Eileen's and Corinne's as well as unconnected Lemaster family members.  Of the over 31,000 names in the file, RootsMagic matched 20,694 with FamilySearch.

Now that I've synched the two databases, FamilySearch has gone behind the scenes and notified me that it has new information on over 3000 of my people.  These would be hints to documents in their databases.  My next step is to start going through these hints and seeing what information they find, as well as sharing information from my database to the online tree at FamilySearch.

I already have a small tree online at Ancestry, but am looking forward to using the free tree at FamilySearch, as many of my contacts don't have an Ancestry subscription.

Directors of Southwestern Alexandria Telephone Company, 1918

"Telephone Officers," announcement, Alexandria Times-Tribune, 8 January 1918; online images, Newspapers.com (www.newspapers.com : accessed 29 March 2015).

Telephone Officers -

M.E. Blacklidge has been elected president of the Southwestern Alexandria Farmers Telephone Co. and James Wright, secretary, and Robert Thurston, treasurer.  The directors are: Virgil Wright, Walter Davis, Robert Thurston, James Wright and M.E. Blacklidge.  The company maintains a party line in the country southwest of Alexandria.

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My maternal great-grandfather, Virgil Lee Wright (1894-1972)was listed as the director of the Southwestern Alexandria Farmers Telephone Co., along with his uncle, James Wright.

My folks have a copy of a stock certificate for this company.  It would be interesting to find out more about it and see how it fared.  I did find an earlier article about its' formation in 1908.

Alexandria Times-Tribune, 17 Apr 1908, page 4

TELEPHONE COMPANY

Will Connect Its Lines With Those of Alexandria Exchange

The members the Southwestern Alexandria telephone Co., met last evening at Andrew Berg's and selected the following directors to serve for one year: James Wright, Andrew Berg, Jordan Reeves, Lawrence Hollowell and M.E. Blacklidge.  The company expects to have the line connected with the D. and M. lines at Alexandria and in operation by May 1st with the following subscribers Thomas and R.G. Ellis, Jordon Reeves, James Edward and Joseph Wright, Andrew Berg, Wm. Tennell, Warren Stephenson, M.E. Blacklidge, Noah Whetsel, Ed. Fuller, A.M. Peck, Johnson Maynard and T.G. May.