Dear Temple's Researchers:

Yesterday, we had the absolute pleasure of visiting with Joyce Temple
Barnet, noted author of the "Temple People".  In some respects, it felt
more like visiting your grandmother's house where she shares family
stories, feeds you lots of food and cookies.  Without a doubt, this
woman characterizes all the grace and charm of the south.  The reason it
also felt like a family visit was the presence of my family.   My
daughter played with her grand daughter and my wife the real genealogist
in our family assisted Joyce and myself as we danced through hundreds of
Temple's.
We felt much like students in the presence of the master.  This lady has
researched her Temple lines from Virginia to Mississippi for over thirty
years and now she is working on her second book.  With all her work is
fresh in her mind she recalls these people like they are still among
us!  Her dedication and hard work to produce everything so far has been
done with little or no aid of the computer.  Pen, paper, copy machines,
and years of hard work have been her tools.  So, the most noticeable
difference between our research is our use of technology to document
everything into a database for cross-referencing and sorting data.  My
wife found well-respected software several years ago call "The Master
Genealogist".  It allows us multi-assign family notes and assurity
levels of data.  At this point, most of our "Temples" data is on my
lines.  We are starting to incorporate connected lines with Joyce's as
we find them.  We are hoping to help where we can on her new book.
The focus of the meeting was to address questions of others to us and to
try to establish any links in our lines.  It appears that we need to
glean as much as we can now from the Virginia and North Carolina lines
that migrate after the Revolutionary War.  It is our suspicion that the
southern lines originated from the Prince George County group out of
Virginia.  From 1660 to 1770, the migration was fairly local to VA, NC,
TN, and KY.  After the Revolutionary War, that all changed with bounty
lands and land lotteries opening up "the west".  Our biggest challenge
is the verification of these connections.  So many records of the south
were distorted at various times that just finding records at all is
difficult to impossible.
What we did agree on was that the three sons, Frederick, John, and James
c. 1750 of a Frederick Temple born c. 1720, most likely in Virginia,
lived in Anson Co., NC before and during the Revolutionary War from
approximately 1760 to 1803.  
Then Frederick c. 1750 moved to Montgomery Co, GA in 1805, to join his
son, Frederick c. 1774, who was already living there. Frederick c. 1774
then moves to Early County, GA in about the same time to raise his
family.  That is the origin of the Early Co. Temple's.
John Temples c. 1755 moved to Richland Co., SC with very little to his
name.  He was deaf and defective in his sight and weak in body,
(probably war injuries) and apparently "dirt poor".  In the 1820 census,
he is shown with a hoe, skillet, and an old horse and little else.  He
would live there until 1830 when he moves to Montgomery Co., AL. 
James Temples Sr. c. 1754, moved to Burke Co. (Jefferson County area
later) in 1788 when Georgia got statehood.  They lived there until 1815,
when they moved back to Edgefield Co., SC until his death in 1829.  In
1815, Georgia levied a head tax that may be why James left.  Joyce has
document her "Jesse" lines and now she is looking closer, as are we, to
the Jacob, Jones, and John lines that arrive in Ga. around 1790.  Most
of these came from VA or NC and are most likely related to the Prince
George County group out of Virginia.   We have not yet established which
Frederick Temple form VA c. 1720 is connected to the three sons.  We
think he was the one killed in the Revolutionary War as stated by Lucy
Temple in her book.  We suspect that Burwell may have been his father,
but this needs clarifying and verification.  

To all those who contributed so much of your time and effort to these
lines, a personal thank you each and every one of you!   Every effort to
piece together our shared past will bring more of us to the common
knowledge that we are "Temple's" and the descendants of a thousand more
related lines. 

Robert and Louise Temples