History of Paschall Family Genealogical Research

by Clarence McDaniel, June 6, 2013

I will briefly relate some background history of the research of the PASCHAL(L) family done in the past.

The first notable account was the book, "Ninety-four years", published in 1872 by George W Paschal,F24. This book mostly concerned his mother but he gave some infomation about his father. He made an error however in confusing his grandfather and uncles names. This error continues to plague modern casual inquirers. See F-line biography by author.

Next, the Philadelphia society became interested about 1880 in their ancestors and several persons there made attempts to interview and record some information. Notable among these was the Quaker, Gilbert Cope. He made notes and even went to England to find information. He recorded quite a bit of information about the local Paschall family. However, he had limited access to paper documents.

The next great effort was begun about 1920 by Edward Early Paschal, K536. He was born in NC in 1865 and became curious about his origins. Since his occupation as a fire insurance saleman required traveling a great deal and he was a single man he met many people and soon found others named Paschal. One of these shared a 1905 letter with him that spoke of a rather dubious origin for the Paschals in America. Edward soon became active but had limited means of pursuing the information. He then met Walter Bearden Paschall, H14443, who had the means and an agreement was established between them. Walter provided the funds and Edward did the leg-work and writing. By 1924 the effort was in full swing; Edward made a mailing list and printed a small Paschal pamphlet. This was mailed out requesting the recipients to send info and to add names and addresses of interested persons. This effort caused a great deal of interest with Edward reporting his list was 500 names or more. At this time nome of the people involved realized the numbers of families that existed and assumed anyone with the name was closely related. Edward, however, was a good genealogist and did not make such assumptions but asked for evidence of relationships. Most of these people did not have personal access to papers, Bibles, so the work was very slow. Edward even went to Washington, DC, to view one particular census page. A tiresome trip at this time. Nevertheless, Edward had gathered up quite a file and was able to see the enormous job ahead. He was careful to have the letters typed with "skin" duplicates. It is due to this that we have today a great many of those letters.

Edward suffered from poor health and went west for the sun and died in El Paso, TX, in 1930. His papers were shipped by his sister to Walter in Oklahoma. Walter later turned the papers over to the Rev. Jacob C Paschal of Kansas.

The reverend had no genealogical training and was very busy with churchwork. He did however come up with a family form sheet and using the list made up by Edward mailed out another Paschal newsletter. His son, Rev. Paul Paschal also was involved and they went to Paschal family reunions. These two, father and son, tried to correlate the info but made horrible errors of assumpion, errors that persist to this day and likely will always be with us. They also received bad assumpsions,passed these on up until very recently in time. Some persons submitting info simply 'picked' out an ancestor that was desirable and submitted this as their line. One even added a son where no son of the name ever existed! One, when pestered, simply picked a grandfathers name. A lot of this involved connecting the NC line to the desirable Philadelphia line. Today we know there never was a connection on this side of the Atlantic.

When Rev. Jacob died his son, Rev. Paul, contined the effort somewhat but he had little time for it. He gave some of the papers concerning Elisha Paschal, H-line, to Allen and Mary Johnston of Dime Box, TX. They made an effort on this line and published a large volume on Elisha in 1972. This volume consisted mostly of submittals by individuals on family sheets; little research was done in civil documents. There are many errors in the work but it is a very valuable nonetheless.

Also, in 1969, Rosa Price Paschal published a Paschal book, mostly on the D-line of Georgia. This work is not very well edited but has a great deal of information.

When Rev. Paul died he passed on the work of Edward to Donna Cooper of Des Moines, IA. It is from her gracious help that I was able to obtain copies of most of the documents and have these in my possession today.

I began my own work on Paschal in 1972 with a trip to the downtown Los Angeles library on a Saturday; found a far off parking place and walked blocks. There I viewed my first microfilm. The librarian suggested I should go to the LDS Temple genealogy library in Santa Monica. The next Saturday I did so and the new world of genealogy was opened to me. I once accepted a temporary job in Salt Lake so I could visit the library evenings and Saturdays.

Today I have all of the above named sources and thousands more that were donated to form a Paschal History Library.

Eventually I undertook to gather census information for Paschals born before 1901. Also, all of the other databases that can be accessed as they become available. The census was a job too big for one person so I organized a dozen or so volunteers, made out indexes and mailed them out. This was prior to the internet and home PC's. The response was really great. I correlated the time and places and assigned ID's to each name. This took about 30 years, partime of course. A great number of those that helped have now passed on but the work remains. It is impossible to cite the names of all the persons over the years that have so generously contributed to this effort.

The result is that the current Paschal-Paschall genealogy has more detailed source documents and personal information listed than any other I have seen. It is the source documents that make a genealogy; without them it is just a collection of names.