Amanda Ingram to tell of Tarvin-Creek Indian connection

Amanda Ingram will speak on Friday evening at the Mobile reunion.

Amanda Ingram, a native of Alabama, is a descendant of William (I) Tarvin and, more specifically, his son Richard (I) Tarvin. She was born in Dothan, Houston County, Alabama, to Ron Ingram and Cheryl Bailey. Dothan is in the southeastern corner of the state.
 
Although the family moved to Birmingham, Jefferson County, Alabama when she was 5 years old, she and her sister spent many summers with her great-grandparents in Brundidge, Pike County, Alabama. Brundidge is a very small, country town just south of Troy, Pike County, Alabama, with a population of about 2,300. It is such a small town that everybody knows everybody. In fact, almost everyone is related in some way or another.
 
Ingram’s great-grandparents were H.B. Galloway and Oramae Turvin, no the name isn’t misspelled. Turvin, or Tervin, is the surname of those Tarvin descendants living in and around south Alabama and northwest Florida.
 
H.B. Galloway worked many years paving highways for the Alabama Department of Transportation, while Oramae Turvin spent her time watching children. As they got older, they spent their time harvesting the crops they had planted during the season (e.g., squash, field greens, butterbeans, field peas, okra, watermelon, tomatoes, etc.). Any family that came to visit would be expected to shell butterbeans and peas alongside them.      
 
These Turvin and Galloway families have been a very close-knit group. In fact, they hold an annual family reunion every June for members of this particular branch. It is held every year at Shady Grove Baptist Church in Brundidge, the church of Ingram’s great-grandparents.
 
In 2001, Ingram graduated from the University of Alabama (UA) with a major in Biology and a minor in Anthropology. This is where interest was sparked in history and other cultures. While at UA, she spent a lot of time cataloguing Native American remains, as well as participating in an archaeological dig at Moundville Archaeological Park.
 
In the fall of 2002, she graduated with a Master’s of Public Health, with a focus on Epidemiology, from the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Upon graduation, she moved to Nashville, Davidson County, Tennessee, where she is a foodborne epidemiologist for the Tennessee Department of Health. She spends most of her time investigating foodborne outbreaks. However, in her spare time she likes to do genealogy research.
 
At the behest of her grandmother, Nadine (Galloway) Bailey, Ingram started doing research into her great-grandmother’s family, the Turvins. A lot of research had already been done on her great-grandfather’s side of the family (Galloway), but little was known about her great-grandmother’s side (Turvin). It wasn’t until she started digging further into records that she realized that this branch of Tarvins were of Creek Indian descent.
 
To hear more about this branch and their connections to the Creek Indians of Alabama, Georgia and Florida, Amanda Ingram will be speaking at the 2009 Tarvin Family Reunion Dinner on Friday, October 2nd.