John C. Calhoun article from American History Illustrated (February, 1975)

For years I had a black and white, multiphotocopied handout of this article. Thanks to the wonders of the internet I'm able to share with you a copy of how it looked when it was first published almost 35 years ago.

Index To Orval Calhoun's Our Calhoun Family Vols. 1-4

I think I've finally figured out how to do this. For several years I've had the index some of our members made in the early 1990's of a 4 volume set of genealogy gathered by Canadian Orval Calhoun.
This index was originally sold for cost on 31/2 inch discs and was in an early MS/DOS form that couldn't even be read on my new computer without a special program.


A page from the contents

Thanks to Sue Gilbert (Alice Calhoun book in earlier post) I was able to convert the index to a PDF file and post it on Google Documents.

The Index to Volumes 1 & 2 is here.

The Index to Volumes 3 & 4 is here.

Preface

Glen Ethier originally volunteered to index the books; Glen had done this professionally before he retired. We acquired 8 other volunteers (I have their names somewhere and will post them here when I find them again) including Bob Ed and Sue O'Connell. They each took a section of a volume and followed Glen and Bob's instructions to list each name mentioned.
It was decided to list the name first then the birthday. The reason for this was to distinguish people who have same name over the years. For instance, there are thousands of people named after John C. Calhoun, especially the first 100 years after the Civil War. The Roman Numeral after each entry is the volume (I through IV), then the page.

Copies of the books are mostly held by individuals. There are many copies in libraries and The Church Of The Latter Day Saints have all four volumes.

If I remember Orval's story correctly, he retired in the mid 1970's and took up researching his own family tree.

The search ended in Ireland; like many others he couldn't cross the Irish Sea to find out who originally came from Scotland. Like many of us he was seriously bit by the Genealogy Bug. He started attending Calhoun family reunions and Scottish games in the US and Canada and started collecting everyone else's genealogy. To prepare the first volume he typed out these genealogies on a manual typewriter (something readers under 50 years old have probably never experienced). The pages look like this:


The first volume was an immense success and people started voluntarily sending him their genealogies. One thing everyone should remember is everything in these books are only as accurate as what was submitted to him.

I know there are a few mistakes in the books. Corrections were published in later books when possible. Orval organized a "family reunion" at Clemson University in South Carolina (site of John C. Calhoun's home), but he died just before that happened. It was well attended and we were able to meet his widow, Glad. I feel the Clemson reunion and indexing of these books were a tribute to Orval and the Herculean effort it took to make these four volumes of Our Calhoun History.


I donated a pair of the index discs to my old library I spent a lot of time in growing up.

WWII Veteran Remembers The Sinking Of USS Colhoun

Thanks to Skeets Cahoon for sending this in. Click on any picture to make it larger.

Charleston Sept 2009

Andrew Farish Colhoun, his wife Natalie, Sue Gilbert, A. Calhoun Witham (Callie).

Sue Gilbert Acquires A Publisher For Alice Calhoun Book

Sue sent us an e mail recently saying she's made the next big step in the publication of her book about her cousin Silent Screen Actress Alice Calhoun: Alice in Hollywoodland The Life and Times of a Silent Screen Star

Sue was also featured in an article in her local newspaper recently:




"What if you could watch a 1920s video of your grandmother or other relative and see the way she was, but at 25?
Susann Gilbert can, almost. One of her relatives lives on in silent films, and her voice is in some clips.
Tracing her family roots, Gilbert found some interesting sparks in hunks of tedious research. But a member of her family tree who especially caught her attention was a first cousin of her grandfather: actress Alice Calhoun. Naturally, Gilbert, a former performer, was interested in learning more about the silent star born in 1900. But she couldn't find much. "In Hollywood, people come and go. People get very forgotten," Gilbert said.
When the Mount Pleasant resident searched for information on the Web, she kept finding the same biography repeated on different sites and with mistakes, including eight different birth dates.
To set the story straight, Gilbert launched her own Web site to tell her relative's story.
The site is part of a larger movement to preserve America's 20th-century film and theater history here in the Lowcountry. Gilbert and three other Mount Pleasant residents maintain Web sites dedicated to the history of motion pictures and the state's single-screen theaters.
If our family trees tell us who we are, then maybe films tell us what America was. You can see how people dressed, how they lived and what they thought was funny, Gilbert said. "

Announcement from the Calhoun DNA project

Friends and relatives if you have never used the YSearch function of FTDNA you should. It is very easy to add your data to our Calhoun Project. As you log in look at the paragraph that has the Ysearch info in the lower body of your log in. In the paragraph is highlighted text that says add your info to Ysearch. If you have upgraded your DNA count please go back and update your information by clicking on the highlighted text. If you have not used YSearch it does not cost a thing and it is a great way to compare DNA findings with the group. Thanks so much for your support on our Calhoun Project.
(From Dan Calhoun)