Thomas Riley Higgs times Two and Spikes Black and White
Thomas Riley Higgs was born 1 Aug 1892 in the small town of Millwood, Ware, GA.
Thomas Riley Higgs was born 8 Sep 1892 in the small town of Millwood, Ware, GA.
Yes, two boys with the same name born about a month apart. The birth records clearly show the two sets of parents. Then the census records reflect the two families with their parents.
The challenge for the family histories is that the marriage records for the two men do not include their birth months or the names of the parents. That means you do not know which wife goes with which Thomas. And you do not know which children go with each. If you cannot find sources for grandparents of the children or parents in law for the wives, how else might you do so?
I checked the WW1 draft records for the two men using a search based on the index that included the different birth months. Draft records tend to be fairly accurate with full names, birth dates and places. Then I looked at the images of the draft records to see information not in the index - occupation, address, height, build, eyes, hair, etc and whether they were single or married.
The draft records were both in June 1917. The Thomas born in August was married. The Thomas born in September was single. So the Thomas born in August fit with the 1916 marriage record. The other Thomas was married in 1922.
This allowed me to correct the linkage in FamilySearch where the Thomas born in September was incorrectly shown as being married to two women at the same time with overlapping dates for the children. It also shows a marriage in the 1960s to Hellen Kite after his first wife died.
See the links above for these records. The first Thomas is my wife’s second second cousin and the second Thomas is my first wife's fifth cousin. More research may discover how the two Thomas's are related. See also that the first Thomas was severely wounded in the war. He was in the infantry at St Mihiel and the Argonne Forest. The other was in the cavalry. You could look up these battles and WW1 service to add memories and notes.
The first Thomas was in the Coffee County Jail in the 1930, 1940 and 1950 census. So along with his war wounds he had a rough life. He was married to Susie Spikes so I researched and added to FamilySearch for this Spikes family shown as White for their race. Coincidentally we have a great grandson named Atlas Spikes born 10 September 2023. His Spikes family is African-American and I am researching Black families related to the Spikes in Georgia and North Carolina.
FamilySearch shows Hellen Kite as my distant cousin through the Kites who were Quakers (Friends) that came from England to Pennsylvania in the 1600’s. However, I am not likely related to them as John Windle Kite is my first Kite ancestor who came to Pennsylvania in the early 1700’s. He is likely Dutch or German. See my blog in the link below. We do not know who John Windle’s parents are, but FamilySearch users kept linking him to the English Kites so I have let it be for now.
A different Susie Spikes than noted above:
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