This website is intended to provide an easy and narrative-based introduction to the Lingo families in Georgia. It does cover some of the Lingos who moved from Georgia to Texas as well as looking at other significant communities of Lingos in other places. However, the focus is intended to be Georgia.
Since this website is intended to be narrative, not everything that is mentioned here is also documented here. All documentation gathered or discovered is placed on familysearch.org. This is a trusted repository run by the Mormon church and is expected to be about as permanent as any website you will find on the Internet. Where appropriate, information such as books and videos may be placed on archive.org, another trusted repository website.
Links to other websites will open up into a new tab on your web browser, so that you do not lose your place in your family story. Once you have finished reading the information on the external site, you can either close that tab or just change back to this website’s tab.
You need a Family Search account
Since much of the documentation that is placed on familysearch.org is behind password and not public on the Internet, you will need to set up a free account on familysearch.org. By logging in to that website you will have a seamless transition from this website to that documentation that on familysearch.org.
Why Family Search?
FamilySearch is a unique website in that it does not have paid access levels and there is only one family tree which we all collaborate on. This is unlike ancestry.com where everyone builds their own individual sometimes private trees, sometimes importing information from other people’s trees that are either public or have been shared between individuals. A large problem with ancestry.com is that once an error gets introduced into a tree it is very common for that error to be copied by others into their trees. Correcting the error in the initial tree does nothing to correct the error that has been copied to someone else’s tree. There’s no notification or update or synchronization of information to prevent these errors from being kept around indefinitely.
On Family Search, since everyone works on a shared common tree, errors can be corrected by whoever finds them. This of course means that anyone can introduce an error into that shared common tree. Everything you see on Family Search should be verified with trusted sources!
Fortunately, all changes made to that shared common tree are tracked on familysearch.org, and there are some mechanisms for correcting mistakes. The shared community on familysearch.org includes individuals with widely varying levels of skill and doing genealogical research, but for the most part it is a good, healthy community of well-meaning earnest people.
Limitations and considerations
Historical records are a product of their times, times that are patriarchal and white supremacist. European culture placed a much higher value on white males than on any other group, such as women or people of color.
Women are generally difficult to research in historical records. Prior to the mid-20th century, women are often referred to as “Mrs Husband’s Name.” The stories that were included rarely portrayed women’s accomplishments or anything that challenged the patriarchal order. Women are less likely to show up in their father’s wills or to be mentioned in newspaper articles. They are less likely to have owned land or fought in wars, two rich sources of genealogical records. Prior to 1850, women were not named in Census records unless they were head of the household.
People of African American heritage present an even greater challenge in the historical research materials. There are scant records, none conclusive, that connect formerly enslaved persons to the white people who are frequently biologically related because of rape. Last names were fluid, generally assigned by the white people who held enslaved persons, and after emancipation, chosen by the persons using those names.
When newspapers did print stories about people of African descent in the 19th century, they were fastidious about labeling people as “negro,” and the stories are overwhelmingly negative. It is not uncommon to see “negros” referred to by only their first names or by the name of the person holding them enslaved.
There are more considerations about how to move forward on the “Research yet to be done” page