I just returned from a trip to Alabama to visit my mother and kinfolks for Thanksgiving. I did some genealogical digging and will write a few things down to share with you. This all relates to the southern Hadley line from Benjamin Hadley, son of Thomas and Mary Thompson Hadley. First, the day after Thanksgiving, I met with John Dean, his grandson, Nip Hadley, and Bob Hadley with his nephew. We all went to the old Hadley graveyard at Seven Miles Springs. We had "found" this site 2 years ago and promised to return and clean it up. We all brought tools and cut out small trees, cleaned out brush and weeds and paid respects to our ancestors. None of the graves are marked, but we know it to be the resting place of Ben and Betty Hadley, as well as my great grand father John Benjamin Hadley. After we had driven the vehicles back to the road, (it is rather deep in the back woods), John Dean pulled out some maps and we looked over a lot of the work he has been doing, regarding the placement of the old town of Hadley and some of the lands owned and sold by our ancestors. John has located the long defunct town of Hadley, which he and I have been working on for some months. We have also been trying to identify a parcel named in Ben's will of 1830 called Hadley's Improvement. John Dean had found an application by Jesse Hadley in 1831 for a tract of land on the Alabama River, not too far from the Seven Miles Springs cemetery. We have an old Navy survey from 1819 in which they travel the Alabama River and have an interview with Ben Hadley. The final piece of the puzzle was a document found by John Dean that completely identifies the section, range and township of this parcel. It was then owned by Mary Weatherford. What pulls this together was that Mary Weatherford was the daughter of Ben Hadley's eldest daughter Jane Hadley who married Alexander McGillivrey Weatherford, nephew of the Creek Indian chief, Red Eagle. John Dean has promised to send all of the details, maps, and documents when he is finished studying all of these recent finds, and they will be added to our photo gallery and database. The next day, I drove to Orange Beach AL with my sister Carol and my mother Polly Hadley. My aunt Duck Hadley had died 2 months earlier and the lady who inherited their beach home invited us there to look through all of the old photos and documents. I was hoping to find a photo of my great grandmother, Sarah Cruit Hadley, the only great grand parent for whom I do not have a photograph. No luck there. There used to be one in an old trunk but much had already disappeared. One good piece of fortune was that my only Hadley first cousin Joseph Hadley was there with his wife Pat. They own the beach house next door, but are rarely there. I did find an old box with about 100 or more photos in it. We sat around on the porch looking through all of these photos and talking about the family and old times. Two photos of importance were found. One of my grandfather, Joseph William Hadley, as a youth, and one of my grandmother (Joe's wife), Pauline Elizabeth Simmons Hadley, as a teen-ager with her two sisters. We did not have any photos of these Hadley grandparents except as adults. Many other photos were identified that would mean a lot to other non-Hadley cousins and we made sure family members got these photos before I left. Two days later we drove to Pensacola Florida and met Earlene Porter. Her husband is a Hadley descendent and she has done some excellent work on the family history. Of particular interest were some applications for Indian monies from applications made in 1906-7. We have the applications of 5 of Simon and Caroline Stewart Hadley's children. All of these were denied by the government because our family has Creek Indian ancestors, not Cherokee. There is much work yet to be done before we can clarify the meaning of these documents, but the bottom line is that the Hadley Indian genetics come via the Stewart girls. This is very significant in that three Hadley sons of Ben and Betty Hadley married three Stewart girls. Simon Hadley married Caroline Stewart, William Hadley married Sallie Stewart, and James M Hadley married Elizabeth (Betty) Stewart. All of these Hadley lines have ancestors in our research group today. They all have stories about Indian blood in the lineage, but no one has really been able to pin it down. Well, now we are a lot closer. All of Caroline Stewart's children listed their mother as the Indian connection. Interestingly, they all gave her maiden name as Hollinger. These were all what was then called "half-blood" families. The reason the name was Hollinger, not Stewart, was that the Creek Indians were matrilineal and often used their mother's name when dealing with other Indians, but used their father's name when dealing with the whites. When Caroline Hollinger Stewart married Simon Hadley, she used the name Caroline Stewart, not Hollinger. Earlene Porter also provided copies of the marriage certificate, and many other documents as well. It will take some time to go through all of this material and add it to our database but it is certainly a break through for those in our family who have been working to prove their Indian heritage. We owe John Dean and Earlene Porter a great big THANK YOU and a few attaboys for the fine work. As we get all of this better organized and figured out, it will be added to the HS database. As the Christmas season nears, many of us will travel to visit our families. Please remember to talk to the elder members of your family and ask them to talk about the ancestors that are now gone that only they would remember. Get some stories about their lives. Ask if there are any old photos that may exist. Write down the stories, scan the photos and send these in to the HS so we can add these to the database and photo gallery. We have been making some real progress with these. A special thanks to Terry McLean and Jean Hadley, and especially to Sherri Hadley Rice who has done a super job on the photo gallery and as web master. While you are with your loved ones this holiday season, I would ask you to think about one other thing. If there are any youngsters in the family who show interest in our ancestors, take some special time with them to culture and develop this interest. We need a next generation of family researchers to carry on the work we are doing today. It's also a lot of fun and a good way to get everyone in the family involved. But most of all have a great time and make it lots of fun for the kids. Have a Merry Christmas and God bless you. John Hadley President, Hadley Society