Florey Family of Shelby, AL
Dead ends while researching family in early Alabama and the Antebellum South are common. Burned records can leave gaps that are impossible to bridge. But, sometimes all it takes a family story to help set you down the right path. When using family history stories all facts should be suspect until proven through records. This sometimes means you have to bend the story a bit and ignore claims on the internet to find the true facts. While tracking down ancestors in Alabama from the 1830's I had to rely on a few the these techniques that I will share in this post. Edward Florey I first identified Edward Florey as a direct ancestor in the 1850 US census in Shelby County, Alabama. He and his wife, Susan, were both born in Maryland. There children: John, Henry, Adaline, and Catharine, were all born in Virginia. He is also listed in the slave schedules that year, with five people enslaved, no names given. In 1860, Edward is listed in the Harpersville, Shelby, Alabama census with his wife,