Names repeated across probate records corroborated Lanier’s family oral history

Evidence

As I combed through documents that Chris sent me, trying to decipher the tiny script handwriting, I saw all my family names repeating: Renty, George, Sarah, and “Fed”—not even Fred, but Fed! That really stood out, since that was the same name my grandfather went by. Several years before my mom died, she told me his given name was Frederick Douglass Thompson. All I had ever known was he was Fed Thompson. Seeing a Fed listed in both Benjamin Franklin Taylor’s will, and in Thomas Taylor’s will, was all the proof I needed. — Tamara Lanier, From These Roots, 379