After some weeks of effort, I have managed to restore my “Askew Family Website” more or less to the condition it was in when I lost my Florida International University site hosting in late 2015.  This website depicts the history of my mother’s Askew family, including marriages into the Alford, Hancock, Hearn and Beach families.  In addition, it provides a place to show off some of the fantastic collection of very old family photographs passed down to us via Beach family descendants.

For those of you who have never visited our “Askew Family Website,” we welcome you “aboard” and trust that you will enjoy some fascinating histories as well as narratives on just how we developed the histories.

For those who have looked at this website prior to 2015, please note that I have already done some much needed updating and I plan to do more.   For example, I can now present fairly convincing evidence that my earliest known Askew ancestor was Casey Askew of Virginia.  That evidence was collected over some ten years — including on-site visits and studies in Hancock and Morgan Counties, Georgia.  Most revealing in those ventures was a day-long visit to Sparta, GA and the beautiful Hancock County Courthouse pictured above.

Also, much to our surprise we discovered via cousin Keith Miller that my gg-grandfather Hilliard Judge Askew (1838-1898) fought in many of the significant battles of the Civil War and was wounded and  (fortunately for us!) temporarily withdrawn from the battle lines the second day at Gettysburg.  Heretofore, we had assumed that Confederate enlistment/battle records were referring to our gg-grandfather’s uncle, who had exactly the same name as his nephew.  On close inspection, we found the older Hilliard Judge was actually pro-Union and sat out the War in Marengo Co., AL.

For some future updates at “Askew Family Website,” be looking for the following:

Complementing the research we’ve done on our own particular Askew family, I’ve compiled detailed information on all Askew families (15+) that had residence in, or origins in, pre-1850 Georgia.   This work was done to better understand the true origins of our own Joshua Askew family and to exclude other possible origins by the process of elimination.

Although it is currently in various states of archiving and usability, I likely have amassed and organized more Georgia Askew genealogical data than anyone else on the planet. In just two of the lines we have best archived, for example, I have identified over 3500 individuals related to each other and/or to Askews.  Over time, I hope to make some of this information available to others in at least brief descendant tree form like what we prepared for our Joshua.  In the meantime, if you are a Georgia Askew and would like a trace on a relative, or you have family information you would like to share, I would like to hear from you.

In September 2013,  we were astounded to find, digitized on-line, the complete 183-page Henry Co., AL  Probate Court file of my ggg-grandfather Spire Warren Alford Askew who died in the Spring of  1858— this courtesy of the LDS Church at familysearch.org .  Considering that widower Spire died intestate, and that we previously knew virtually nothing about him, this was a major, major find about which we will be writing up a summary report.  By reading through the very detailed probate documents, among other things,  I found  Spire’s slaves’ names, exactly how his orphan children were supported and adopted, and, from digitized bills & debt receipts, pretty much what the family was eating for breakfast in 1858.We even turned up his long missing brother Robert G. Askew (ca.1819-  ca. 1859), who was apparently farming with Spire in Henry Co., AL when he died.

On the Hearn Family side (my mothers’ mother’s people), we conducted several quite lengthy inquiries that turned up detailed information on two of the oldest missing relatives we had been seeking.  Those were James Hearn (ca. 1835 – ca. 1865), brother of my gg-grandfather George Washington Hearn (1834 -1882) and Mary Hearn (ca. 1856 – aft. 1933), first child of George Washington Hearn.  Those studies in turn led us to establish very detailed family histories for Georgia families related to James and Mary by marriage – namely those of Elizabeth Curlee (1845-1924), John W.Hall (1843-1912), and William Augustus Parks (1852-1933).