About

As much as anything, maintaining a site like this is for the writer as the reader.  I hope that we can both enjoy and get something out of this effort.

Starting out, I have some ideas as to what I might like to write about, but I am sure that things will change as we go along.  So, let’s go along for the ride.

 Who am I?

I’m Scott Dickson.  I’ve been interested in my family and my family history since the late 1980s.  In all of that time, I have found out a lot and come to a lot of brick walls.  I’ve sort of become the archivist (and chief hoarder) for my family.  I maintain my own family tree at my personal site, wrenacres.com.

By profession, I am a tech guy, a sales engineer with Oracle, specializing in private cloud management, OpenStack, operating systems, virtualization, and system management.  I am a product specialist and travel extensively around North America, working with a variety of large and small companies.  If you want to know more about this, check my LinkedIn profile.

I have been married to Kathleen, my wonderful wife since 1997.  She is the sweetest, most caring, most creative and boldest person I have ever met.  She is a fabulous cook, teaching classes at our local Whole Foods Market.  She helped establish and oversees the food pantry at her church. She has been very involved with The Global Soap Project, working to recruit new hotels to save their leftover soap to be used in impoverished areas to provide basic sanitation.  This is really a cool organization.  She also manages volunteers and recruits new providers to share their leftover food with Feeding America, formerly Second Harvest.  As you can tell, I’m pretty proud to be Kathleen’s husband.

Kathleen and I are crazy about Hawaii, especially Kauai and travel there as often as we can.  So, that will tend to crop up from time to time.

What’s Wrenacres?

I am sure that this will come up again in more detail, but here’s the basics.  My grandfather,  Hudson Wren, was a farmer in northeast Arkansas, around the town of Wilson.  He was farm manager and Executive Vice President of Lee Wilson & Company, one of the largest privately held cotton farms in the nation.  In addition to running the Wilson farm, he had his own farming interests, part of which he named Wrenacres.

So, I’ve used Wrenacres as my web site and as my blog address as a tribute to my grandfather.

What will we cover here?

Some of the things that you might find here over time could be:

• My family lines and stories
• Artifacts and stuff that I have collected from the family
• Pictures, letters, documents about my family
• Research topics that I am working on
• Dead ends where I wish I could find some help breaking through
• Whatever else strikes my fancy

Families and Lines

Just to get things started, here are some of my main lines:

• Dickson – I know the least here.  Tennessee to Alabama to Mississippi to Arkansas, 1820-present.  It took me 25 years to be able connect John H. Dickson, my great-great-grandfather to any family at all.
• Wren – George Wren, George Washington Wren, Alonzo Dossey Wren, and their descendants.  Virginia to South Carolina to Georgia to Louisiana to Arkansas, 1770-present.
• Cason – Jeremiah H. Cason and his ancestors and descendants.  J.H. Cason is one of my favorites – missionary to Africa, Captain in the CSA, preacher in west Texas
• Hudson – Wesley Hudson, who lived primarily around Atlanta from 1830, has been one of the great mysteries to me.
• Bailey – The Bailey line goes all the way back to Jamestown in 1610 and is a fascinating story.   Francis Baker Bailey came from Virginia to Kentucky to Arkansas prior to Arkansas statehood.
• Lots of others.  Check my tree at wrenacres.com for details.

So, let’s get on with the show!  Thanks for stopping by!