Donation leads family to its roots

A Virginia family found out much more about their past last month when they made a trip to Franklin County in search of their ancestor’s whereabouts.

An Internet search led them to Russellville thanks to one local man whose uncanny knack for taking care of things over many years preserved a precious clue in their search.

Linda and Charles Ferguson, of Alexandria, Va., have taken a deep interest in researching their ancestry since Linda’s retirement a few years ago. Now living in Virginia, Linda Ferguson had been looking to a find a long lost relative by the name of Absalom Smith Wood, who had lived in Minnesota in the late 1800s.

After some research, the family learned that Wood moved south sometime between 1865 and 1870.

After some digging, they learned that Wood changed his name to Robert Wardlaw and he settled in what is now the Mountain Star community in Franklin County.

“It was said that he had an altercation with some outlaws in Iowa and he was allowed to change his name,” said Linda Ferguson.

While searching for information on Wardlaw, Ferguson came across a 2007 column written by former Franklin County Times publisher Jason Cannon that appeared on the Franklin County Times’ website, www.fct.wpengine.com.

In that column, Cannon wrote that Newburg resident Orland Britnell was hoping someone could identify the people in a photograph that had been placed in an old accounting ledger that he bought some 65 years ago.

“I bought it an auction with a pile of books when I was about 10 years old and just kept it all these years,” Britnell said.

The ledger contained old receipts, the photo and a mystery that Britnell always hoped to solve.

“I always wondered about the people in the photo and the book and wanted to know more about them, that’s why I brought it by the Franklin County Times in 2007.”

When Ferguson came across that column during an Internet search about Wardlaw, she thought she had finally found the missing piece to the family puzzle.

“It was like it just dropped right out of the sky,” she said.

Britnell said he was shocked to hear that someone from Virginia had been looking for information on the man who the book originally belonged to.

“They found it online and contacted me,” Britnell said. “They literally found me and the book.”

In late March, the Fergusons traveled to Russellville to meet Britnell to receive the ledger and to continue the search into their family’s past.

Britnell presented the ledger and a schoolbook owned by the Wardlaws to the family.

Chris Ozbirn, director of the Franklin County Archives and Research Center, and local history buff and archives volunteer Faye Mansell helped the family by preparing information they had compiled on Wardlaw as well.

But the surprise of the trip was seeing Wardlaw’s burial site and land where he was once lived.

“Everything about this has been just amazing,” Ferguson said.

“It is unbelievable that we are here holding this ledger that belonged to him 150 years ago. It really is like it just fell out of the sky and was meant for us to find.”