March 4, 2015
I thought about Charles and Edna Townsend today – they were pillars of the genealogical community.
I first met them in the 1960s when they stopped by the library where I worked. Charles Delmar Townsend (1911-2009) and his wife Edna Carolyn Waugh (1908-1989) were prolific genealogists, writers and publishers. They were good people dedicated to family history research.
They are best remembered for their two journals: Ancestral Notes from CHEDWATO (1954-1968) and the Car-Del Scribe (1964-1988).
The name of their publishing company – CHEDWATO – is an acronym from their names.
CH – Charles
ED – Edna
WA – Waugh
TO – Townsend
They had deep New England ancestral roots. We were distant cousins, so I decided to look up their online family trees to remind myself of our mutual ancestors.
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I quickly realized that they had never created an online family tree. Digging deeper I located Charles’s obituary in GenealogyBank in the Sarasota Herald-Tribune (Sarasota, Florida). Within minutes I started pulling together his family tree running back several generations, and found that I am related to both him and his wife multiple times over.
Here were two of America’s important genealogists, but their time was mostly before the current era of instant family history online. I took the time and added their details to several of the online family tree sites.
Don’t let your story be lost.
Find and document your family in GenealogyBank and put your family history permanently online.
Do it now.
Related Articles:
- Best Family Tree Software & Websites to Share Your Genealogy
- Genealogist Obituaries – 12 Genealogists in 7 States have passed away.
- Genealogy Advice from Charles K. Bolton: Go Beyond Names & Dates
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