My great grandfather was James L. Tidwell. I'm not sure where he was born, perhaps in Georgia or Alabama; and he lived in the rural vicinity of Lanet, Chambers County, Alabama. There he was a cotton farmer. He was married to Mitie Jane Scott, and they were raising five boys together, when I was told that he died. I have a picture of this family at the turn of the century, around 1906 perhaps. My grandfather was sitting on the lap of his father James, when he was a small child. The boys were all barefoot in the picture. Mittie Jane was dressed in black. I was told that James L. Tidwell died of kidney failure or something to that effect.

Their sons were Harvey E., Henry Lee whom they called Lee, Albert E, Crawford M. who I believed died in WWII when the Japanese captured him and took him from some island, transporting him to Japan and received the purple heart, and his younger brother Robert Wesley, who was my grandfather whom they called Slim, and Andrew, whom they called Andy who was in Vaudville, and could play the piano quite well.

My grandfather told me that his mother, Mittie Jane Scott had come from a more well to do family. The Tidwells supposedly came up to Alabama from Texas, and from all my examinations of the Tidwell stories, before that they came from South Carolina, Virginia, and were one of the first settlers in America from England in the 1600's.

Mittie Jane Scott re-married a Mr. Powell, who was a baptist minister, and had already had a large family of children of his own. I guess the two families amalgamated into one, and lived a spartan existance. My grandfather went to work in a cotton mill when he was five years old, and had bad memories of his childhood. Some time later on, this family moved to California, some lived in Orange County, and others in diverse areas. During the depression, everyone moved to California looking for work. This is where some of the letters we found came from when my grandfather had to get his papers in order so he could get married in Canada. He had his mother, Mittie Jane Scott Powell write a letter stating he was her son, etc.
born in the United States.

Her son, and my grandfather, Robert Wesley Tidwell, eventually joined the U.S. navy, and jumped ship, deserted the U.S. navy some time in the 1920's, and came to Windsor Ontario, and married in 1925 to a school teacher named Rose Boudreau. There he had an Uncle George M. Tidwell, who was born in Alabama in 1883, and who died in Windsor, Ontario October 3, 1967. The funeral home was Anderson Funeral Home at 895 Ouellette Avenue and the funeral was held Friday October 6, 1967. Great Uncle George had a daughter, Mrs. Thelma Deumon, of Orville, California, and a step family, Donald, Harry, and Carl Peterson, of I believe, a Mrs. George Herdman named Margerite. Through this family connection, he probably met and married my grandmother Rose Vitaline Boudreau, from the Sudbury area of Ontario. Her family had originally lived in Renfrew County, Ontario, and she came from a long line of Boudreau families that can trace their history back to the first French Canadian families in North America.

My father was born outside of this marriage, as Rose was unable to have children. His birth mother was Gertrude Green, of Renfrew, Ontario. She came from a few generations of a Prussian/Polish group, and her family changed their name from Greznia to Green. I think her mother was Anna Kreftka from Romania.

My father was Robert John Tidwell, born August 21, 1930 in Ottawa, Ontario. He was taken up and cared for by the Catholic Children's Aid Society in Ottawa, under the secrecy act. When he was four or five years old, due to the nature of my grandmother Rose's infertility which ran in her family; my grandfather, Robert Wesley Tidwell adopted his own child, and he and his wife Rose raised him, until he left home around 18 years of age. He later joined the Canadian Navy, eventually becoming an officer. He married my mother Eileen Vivien Higgins of Truro, Nova Scotia, February 24, 1956. I was born in Halifax Nova Scotia in 1958.

I am interested in finding out more about the Tidwell and Scott ancestry, and would appreciate any information about either of them.