My family lines in Wilkinson County are Thompson and Wynne. Elizabeth Bina "Lizzie" Thompson married William David Jordan Sumner. They are my great-grandparents. She is the daughter of James Russell Thompson and Martha Patricia "Patsy" Wynn and the granddaughter of Solomon Thompson and Rachael Mitchell and William "Bill" Wynn and Susannah "Susan" Hinson. The following is the preface that I use when I print my genealogy: Dad was always interested in the origins of his family, but he didn’t have time to do any serious research until he was able to retire in 1982. After he retired, he started visiting libraries and courthouses and corresponding with others doing research. He would talk about what he had learned about our family’s ancestors, where they had lived, and what had happened to them. I enjoyed listening to him, but I have to admit that I wasn’t interested enough to want to get involved. When Dad died in 1985, part of the work that I did to help settle his affairs was to go through his genealogy files. I scanned the family folders and the pedigree charts and saw some of the family names and locations that he had talked about. I still wasn’t interested in continuing the research, so I put it all away. Then, in June 1988, my son, Jay (Joshua Wren Harris III), applied for his first appointment as a Methodist Minister. He was assigned a circuit of three small churches in middle Georgia. Two of these churches were in the towns of Irwinton and Toomsboro in Wilkinson County, Georgia. The third church, named Salem, was also in Wilkinson County but was located out in the county. We visited the churches in the towns first and then went to find Salem. We found it on a dirt road and saw that it was a small wooden church, painted white, well cared for, with an old cemetery beside it. We walked among the graves, reading the inscriptions. The names Wynn and Thompson on several of the tombstones seemed faintly familiar to me, but I couldn’t really place them. We wrote down as many of the names and dates as we could make out on the old, worn stones. When we got home, I pulled out Dad’s old pedigree charts and found that among the people buried there were my great-great-great-grandparents, James Russell Thompson and his wife, the former Martha Patricia Wynn. Several members of their families were also buried at that cemetery. They were all early members of Salem Methodist Church – the very same church where my son was to begin his ministry. I started looking for information about these families. Who were they? Where did they live? Where did they come from? What was it like when they were alive? While trying to find answers to these questions, I realized that I had become hooked on this thing called genealogy. I’m still hooked. I discovered that genealogy is a jigsaw puzzle that you can never finish because you keep finding more pieces. It’s a never-ending story full of brave and wonderful people (and a few scoundrels) who lived, worked, and raised families in circumstances that we can only try to imagine. It’s history that grabs you because it was members of your very own family who were involved when the history was happening. And, hopefully, it’s a legacy that you leave for people not yet born. J. Wren Harris, Jr. Researching my families: Calvert, Clifton, Cowart, Duke, Epps, Flanders, Garnto, Harris, Hollingsworth, Kelly, McLain, McLean, Monk, Parrish, Register, Riser, Schenk, Skinner, Sumner, Thompson, Wren, Wynn, and others.