Tag: Taylor

Me

Posted on by Kathleen

I realized again today, that I’ve been horrible about giving equal blog time to both sides of my family tree. It seems I am writing more about my father’s New Jersey roots and am completely ignoring my Mom’s side! I’m rectifying that right now though!

Today I posted some old pictures of my Mom’s family on my Facebook. That side of my family is just getting into the computer world, so that was the easiest way to share the photos. It was fun to discuss with my Mom and Aunt who the babies in the photos were. In fact, they’re all still posting about the pictures and their memories of them. It’s definitely a great way to share between family members that you usually don’t get to see.

While I was going through the original Taylor-Webb tree, I got a little nostalgic about my Grandma. I started to go through the book of photographs she put together and the tree, matching photos with names in the book. She actually went through and labeled people with their number from the tree, so it was as simple as having the tree and the photos side by side.

Front page from Taylor-Webb Family Tree

When I was closing the tree, I took another look at the front page of the tree. I remember when my grandma was telling me about the tree. She showed me where she was, she explained to me the whole thing and then she told me about how the Taylors came from England in 1680. Just like the page says. Of course, I was only in the eighth grade at the time, and to me, this tree was all the proof I needed! Now I know different, but it still gives me warm, fuzzy feelings of Grandma to look at this tree.

For the first time though, I noticed something. In my young mind, I always assumed this tree was the complete work of my grandmother. Of course, a longer look and it was obvious that someone else made the tree because their name was all over it. Still, I don’t know who I thought might have done the pedigree you see above. I guess I always assumed it was the same person who did the rest of the tree.

Today a light bulb went off. I noticed that right next to Ol’ Kirby Taylor is ‘Me’. I never noticed that ‘Me’ before! Then I quickly scanned through the book to remember who came after Kirby. I thought at first it was Irene Taylor, because I thought that was her generation. Then I noticed Irene on the generation below. Unfortunately the Taylor-Webb tree only starts the Taylor line with George Thomas Taylor and Mollie Jane Webb’s children. So I didn’t have an instant answer. I had to wait until I could get to my computer.

Turns out ‘Me’ is Maude Taylor-Mefford. I’m unsure of when Maude died, so I don’t know if she wrote this out for someone, whether it be my Grandma or the person who did the tree originally. I do know her husband died in 1948 and Maude was still living when he died[1. Kentucky Death Record, Bracken County KY, Certificate: 9206]. When I get to Maude in my family tree rehab, I’ll pay extra attention to her now, knowing that she might have been the knowledgeable one in the family on this stuff.

I’ll probably never know the sequence of events that led to the family tree that I was given. It’s kind of cool to think of Maude sitting down and sketching out that tree for her family though! I’ve personally found records to at least Bartholomew. He’s the Revolutionary War veteran. Kentucky records are very difficult to find for that far back. Whether it be courthouse disasters or just plain rural conditions that didn’t promote official records. There are parish records in Somerset County, Maryland though, I’ve seen them! I just have to go back and record the source information and get a second go through. I’m pretty positive there is more there than I first thought.

So you see, it’s always a great idea to constantly revisit your sources! Just a second look could bring new information!

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun – Birth Order

Posted on by Kathleen

Randy Seaver puts up a fun genealogy mission every Saturday night at his blog, Genea-Musings. Here is this week’s challenge!

1)  Pick one of your ancestral lines – any one – patrilineal, matrilineal, zigzag, from a famous ancestor, etc.  Pick a long one if you can.

2)  Tell us which position in the birth order that your ancestor was in each generation.  For example “third child, first son.”  Also list how many children were born to these parents.

3)  Share your Birth Order work with us on your own blog post, in a comment to this blog post, in a comment on Facebook, etc.

I chose my Taylor line because it’s the one that goes back the farthest. These are coming straight from the tree my Grandma gave me in eighth grade so I haven’t gotten solid proof on the farther back generations yet.

1. Kathleen Moore (1983- ) third child, second daughter of William and Georgia (Mays) Moore (1 son, 2 daughters)
2. Georgia Mays (1959- ) sixth child, fourth daughter of Stanley and Emogene (Taylor) Mays (5 daughters, 2 sons)
3. Emogene Taylor (1929-2005) sixth child, second daughter of Marshall and Lula (Applegate) Taylor (5 sons, 3 daughters)
4. Marshall Taylor (1892-1958) second child, first son of George and Mollie (Webb) Taylor (4 daughters, 7 sons)
5. George Taylor (1862-1913) fourth child, second son of Marshall and Cecilia (Heaverin) Taylor (6 sons, 5 daughters)
6. Marshall Taylor (1823-1899) first child, first son of William and Nancy (Matthews) Taylor (3 sons, 2 daughters)
7. William Taylor (1797-1849) fourth child, fourth son of Bartholomew and Leah (Staton) Taylor (5 sons)
8. Bartholomew Taylor (1756-1847) first child, first son of Abraham and Mary (Walker) Taylor (4 sons, 5 daughters)
9. Abraham Taylor (1726-1792) second child, second son of William and Sarah (Cooper) Taylor (3 sons, 3 daughters)
10. William Taylor (?-1773?) (4 sons, 2 daughters)
11. John Taylor (?-1748?)

Bartholomew is really the farthest I’ve researched back. He’s the Revolutionary War veteran. What I’ve been trying to do is get the birth, marriage, and death records for these main ancestors before I move on. That hasn’t exactly happened the way I wanted. I had the best of intentions, really I did! William and John, numbers 10 and 11 respectively, didn’t get birth order numbers so I guess they don’t count. I found their siblings names in wills of the parents so I don’t have birthdates for the siblings, therefore I can’t determine where everyone is in the birth order yet.

Thanks Randy for yet another fun little challenge!

Treasure Chest Thursday: The Original

Posted on by Kathleen

The last week, I’ve been slowly entering my mother’s side of the family into my new family file. It’s a little slower going because there are more of them than Dad’s side. I also had a master list of birthdays I made at the family reunion last year for Dad’s side. So I was able to put them in quickly and use the source I titled, “2009 Family Reunion Master List”. I’m new to citing Personal Family sources, so I was a bit baffled at first on how to really cite it. Then I realized I was once again over-analyzing something. So I gave the title as stated above, I’m listed as the other, and in the description I wrote that I compiled the list by going around to everyone at the family reunion and getting their birth dates and marriage dates where needed. It turned out to be a big project for me that year!

On my Mom’s side I now have the original copy of the Family Tree. This is the one my Grandma brought when I was in the eighth grade. I ended up photocopying it at my Mom’s work, and I later reproduced it in Excel and re-printed it. In that time though, I think I might have tried to “fix” it. I think things got a little turned around. I’ve decided to no longer use my photocopy version. I am lucky that my Aunt sent Grandma’s copy to Maryland for me.

Taylor-Webb Family Tree. This has been missing the letters for as long as I can remember!

This has the most complete list I’ve ever seen of the current Taylor family. I don’t communicate much with this side of the family so I don’t know if I would ever had completed this much of it without Grandma’s tree.

Taylor-Webb Family Tree. Page 2A.

It’s a great resource for quite a few generations  back. If you can see, Reuben Vincent Webb is listed as Family Member 2-1 in this tree. This tree counts forward from the earliest known Webb relative. So Reuben is actually my 2nd Great Grand Uncle. It’s his sister Mollie Jane Webb who marries into the Taylor family. My index number in this tree is listed as 6-54. Just to show you how it counts forward in time.

Taylor-Webb Family Tree

What my photocopy version was missing is what you see above. I was in 8th grade around 1997. My Grandmother didn’t pass away until January 2005. So in that time, not only had I been making changes to the family tree, so had my Grandmother! I found little handwritten notes all over the tree. Notes that weren’t there in 1997 when we photocopied it.

Taylor-Webb Family Tree. Living person information blurred for privacy.

Not only did I find notes in my Grandma’s handwriting, there were notes from another person too! This could have been from my Aunt. It could have been from someone who was just visiting and they were discussing the tree. It doesn’t really matter, what I do know is that even though this tree has some errors in it, it’s a wealth of information in other ways.

Treasure Chest Thursday is a daily blogging topic from GeneaBloggers.

Things I’ve Learned

Posted on by Kathleen

I am halfway through a 7 day free trial with Footnote.com. I’m trying to make the most of the collections that aren’t free since I can’t afford right now to have a second subscription website. These are the things I’ve learned so far:

City Directories aka The reason I get up early every morning this week.

  • William Wallace Love was not still living in Newark at the time of his wife’s death in 1890. They had to have moved to Roseland at the time.
  • I have listings for William W Love, grocer, for 1875 through 1884.
  • Some years there is a listing for Love Bros grocery. There was never an ad, but that would have been interesting!
  • William H Moore was not listed in Brooklyn in 1865. His daughter is born in New York in 1865, so they must have lived in another borough before their move to Chicago.
  • William H Moore has always been very consistent with the use of his middle initial. This is made funnier because I know how insistent my Dad is on using his. They wouldn’t have to do that if they’d stop naming their boys William! 🙂
  • William H Moore lived at 56 Foster for the majority of his time in Chicago, which was from 1866 to 1870.
  • I couldn’t find a listing for him in 1871 Chicago. This could be why Cook County couldn’t find a birth record for Robert James Moore in 1871. Maybe they moved out of the city? I’m going to try lining up his location with the Chicago fire and see if he would have been effected, though now I see he might have already left Chicago.
William H Moore, 1869. Chicago.

Military Records

  • I was able to find out what happened to Marguerite Wambough’s husband, Lt. Frank A Greene. I found a newspaper article on him and talk about it in this post.
  • I was able to get a much clearer copy of Bartholomew Taylor’s Revolutionary War Pension Request, which I transcribed here.
1st Lt Arnold Mullins account of Lt Frank A Greene being shot down
Batholomew Taylor Rev War Pension Request

Google Searching

Posted on by Kathleen

Since I spent so much time transcribing and adding Bartholomew Taylor things into my family file, I’ve decided to go ahead and research him for fun. One of the things I do randomly when I research is I plug the ancestors name into Google and see what comes up. It’s pretty interesting to see what comes up.

I make sure to put the name in quotes. That just helps to cut out a lot of the wrong things. I added Maryland for good measure, since the Taylors are most often associated with Maryland.

Once the search is done, I check out the main results but then I go into my favorite part of Google searches… Books! This will search through a database of books that Google has online. These are all with the cooperation of the publishers so no need to feel like you’re sneaking something.

This is what was in the Marylanders to Kentucky book. I just wanted to show you what type of things are in here. That is definitely my Bartholomew Taylor, and you can see that it gives a whole bunch of Reference numbers. You can line those up with the sources. I actually found this exact book in my local library a few months back. So I’ve already been through it. 🙂 I have photocopies around here somewhere, including what all those numbers mean. I’m pretty sure it’s easy to figure out though, like KPR:1835 is the 1835 Kentucky Pension Roll. I think all the things listed as reference to him have to do with the Revolutionary War, which I believe all those sources were created from his pension request.

The next result was The Wright Ancestry. The Wright family married into the Taylors a few times so I wasn’t surprised that Bartholomew acted as a witness to this Wright family member’s will.

Looking further into the will, you can see that once again a Wright has married a Taylor. Immediately I set about seeing if I have these particular Wright/Taylor ancestors in my file already.

It turns out that the “Sary Wright” is actually the wife of Bartholomew’s first cousin. My Maryland ancestors are a mess in my file though, so I don’t want to leap before I check everything out. Everything here would have come from those descendant reports from my Grandma.  So we’ll see how this turns out!

Bartholomew Taylor: Record Transcription

Posted on by Kathleen

State of Kentucky Bracken County St?

On the 19th day of May in the year 1834 personally appeared in open court before the Justices of the County Court in and for the County of Bracken in the State of Kentucky.

Bartholomew Taylor resident of the county and the state aforesaid aged seventy nine years on the 17th day of February last past who being first duly sworn according to law, doth on his oath make the following declaration in order to obtain the benefit of the Act of Congress passed June 7th 1832.

That he entered the service of the United States a volunteer private militiaman in the latter part of the Summer in the year 1778 to the best of his recollection in the County of Smmersett and State of Maryland in which last named county he then resided under the following named officers Joseph Venabler Captain, Benjamin Venabler Lieutenant, Isma Baily Major, and was marched to Nanticoke River in said County of Sommersett, the object of which as the declarant understood was to prevent the enemy from passing up said River and destroying the cattle of the inhabitants on and adjacent to said river. The British and Tories as the declarant understood had a short time previous been at a town on said River called Viana and took grain there deposited and killed by cannon shot one American, this declarant then remained in actual service at least one month.

The next spring following the declarant again volunteered in the service aforesaid in the County of Sommersett was then marched to the Town of Princess Ann, the County Seat of said County of Sommersett and commanded by the above named Captain Baily, and Col George Deshield, the object of the last named service was to disperse the Tories who had at that time occasioned considerable alarm  and guard such of them as was and should be taken. The declarant then remained in actual service not less than three weeks.

The next year following the declarant again volunteered in the service as aforesaid as a Militiaman in said County of Sommersett and was then marched upon Wicommico River in said County below the town of Salsberry. The object of which was to prevent the enemy from passing up said River to said Town. He was then commanded by Major William Stewart, no other office recollected, and remained in actual service at that time not less than two weeks. Soon after some Militia were surrounded and taken by the British or Tories or both at a place called the Lower Terry on said River in said County of Sommersett, but were not retained as prisoners.

The declarant was the next year to the best of his recollection a volunteer in the Militia of said last named County and marched to the said Town of Salsberry to reell Tories that were there said to be embodied, many of whom were taken. He was then commanded by Lieutenant John Weatherly no other officer recollected, and remained in actual service at that time not less than two weeks.

The declarant further states that after the period last named he volunteered in the service aforesaid every year during the War, and some years more than once but to state how long he was in actual service each time and to what point he was marched, except that he was not marched out of said County of Sommersett in which his services were altogether required upon the aforesaid Rivers and to oppose the British and Tories, or to name the officers by whom he was commanded, is altogether impracticable, owing the laps of time since those services were rendered, the multi foresaid times the declarant volunteered and rendered services as a Militia Man, the various officers by who he was commanded, and his having kept no account or memorandum thereof, together with his loss of memory resulting from old age, the declarant can in truth say and doth say that he actually rendered service as Volunteer Militia Man in the County of Sommersett, State of Maryland in the United States Troops during the Revolutionary War, for a period of not less than six months. He further declares he has no documentory evidence of his said services nor does he now know of any person now by whom he can prove said services many part thereof.

He hereby relinquishes every claim whatever to a pension or anuity except the present and declares that his name is not on the pension roll of the agency of any state.

Questions proposed by the Court and the answers to them.

1st Where and in what year were you born?

Answer: I was born in Sommersett County, State of Maryland on the 17th Feby 1755

2nd Have you any record of your age, and if so where is it?

Ans: I had a record of my age, but do not know where it is at present. My children have married and left me, and suppose some one of them has the record.

3rd Where were you living when called into service, where have you lived since the Revolutionary War, and where do you now live?

Answer: I lived in the County of Sommersett aforesaid when called in to the service and lived in said County until the year 1796 and until I moved to Bracken County Kentucky where I have lived ever since and where I now live.

4th How were you called into service, were you drafted, did you volunteer or were you a substitue, and if a substitute for whom?

Answer: I volunteered my service at all times when in the service and served as a private soldier.

5th State the names of some of the regular officers who were with the troops where you served, such continental and militia regiments as you can recollect, and the general circumstances of your service?

Answer: I am inable at this time to name more of the officers or more of the general circumstances of my service than already stated in the body of my declaration.

6th Did you receive a discharge from the service, and if so by whom was it give, and what has become of it?

Answer: I have no recollection of having received a discharge from the service.

7th State the names of persons to whom you are known in your present neighborhood, and who can testify as to your character for varacity and their belief of your services as a Soldier of the Revolution

Answer: I am known in my present neighborhood to the Reverend Thomas P Thomas and John King who can testify to my character for varacity and to their belief of my serves as a Soldier of the Revolution

Sworn to and subscribed this day and year first aforesaid

Personally appeared in open court before the Justices of the County Court in and for the County of Bracken aforesaid Bartholomew Taylor who being sworn deposeth and saith that by reason of od age, the laps of memory and other causes as stated in the body of this his declaration, he cannot swear positively as to the precise length of his service, but according to the best of his recollection he served not less than six months as stated in the body of his declaration, as a volunteer and private soldier and for such services I claim a pension. Sworn to and subscribed the day and year first aforesaid.

The reverand Thoms P Thomas and John King ministers of the gospel of the Baptist denomination, residing in the County of Bracken, Kentucky hereby certify that we are well acquainted with Bartholomew Taylor, who has subscribed and sworn to the above declaration. That we believe him to be seventy nine years of age, that he is reputed and believed in the neighborhood where he resides to have been a Soldier of the Revolution and that we concis????

This is a transcription and I may have made a few mistakes. I didn’t correct the spelling in the declaration, so anything that is in the declaration is as exact as I could make it.

Bartholomew Taylor: The Big One

Posted on by Kathleen

One week ago, I teased about what I found on Bartholomew Taylor when I was using Heritage Quest. I didn’t forget about it!

To tell you the significance of this find, I have to tell you a little bit about my history with Bartholomew. The picture above is of the Taylor side of the family tree I was given. The pretty excel version was for the Webb family. The Taylor family was just a big descendant report. It was actually two reports. One for John Taylor the first Taylor we know of (though not documented yet), and then branching off on Bartholomew’s line, which is where I’m descended from.

I inputed this all into whatever program I was using at the time and it’s been in my Original file ever since. I keep these original pages though. You can even see where I’ve made notes on the side. I would have gotten those notes from the MD GenWeb transcriptions for later use.

Anyway, the point is, these pages are the extent of my Taylor documentations. Except for what I’ve collected since then. Which for the Taylors is a mess and not much. Anyway, it was from these papers where I learned that the Taylors originated from the Maryland Eastern Shore! That was very exciting for me since I live in Maryland. I always thought I didn’t have any Maryland roots except for what we’ve put down. I’ve made a couple of trips over to the Knabb Research Center, but at the time I was nowhere near ready for the abundance of Taylor history they have there. I want to verify what I have before I go back, just so I can properly associate records with people. The papers I have show that many of the Taylors migrated from Somerset County, Maryland to Bracken County, Kentucky. I don’t know why since they were very prosperous in Maryland. My mom remembers reading an article about one of the Taylor boys “absconding from justice” and the family sold his belongings and followed him out of state. I don’t have the article though, so no proof.

I’ve never had any way of being 100% sure that the Taylors in Maryland and the Taylors in Kentucky were the same family. Sure I found them in Census records and they show the right birth dates and places, but we all know census takers made mistakes. So I couldn’t put it down as 100% fact.

That is until I found this record. The quality of the images aren’t that great, so I can’t put them on the blog and have them still be legible. So I’ll transcribe it for you tomorrow in an entry. This record though is where Bartholomew Taylor gives his first person account of his involvement in the Revolutionary War. He has great details for being almost eighty years old at the time. Not only are the details about his involvement in the War but also details the dates that he moved from Somerset County, Maryland to Bracken County, Kentucky. This is my first proof of this happening besides census records! I can’t wait to show you what a great find this is tomorrow!

Free Resources pay off!

Posted on by Kathleen

I’ll be the first person in line to admit I don’t ever want to give up my Ancestry.com membership. It’s so convenient for searching. I know the downfalls and dangers but I just don’t care. It’s like my fluffy pajamas, they’re my security blankets.

I think sometimes it’s easy to forget all those other great resources out there in the shadow of Ancestry though. Just waiting to be found and utilized sometimes. I’m definitely making a trip to the National Archives this summer, I’m pretty sure the local historical and genealogy societies do day trip shuttles. Why shouldn’t I take advantage! I’m also thinking about volunteering at the local historical society. I used to know some people there and I think I could be some help. Especially if there are forms to fill out, I love forms.

Yesterday I posted about my chagrin at being denied access to NewspaperArchive.com from my home. I’m so spoiled you see, that I felt slighted. Well, I felt slighted for about 30 seconds when I decided I was going to play with that Heritage Quest thingy. Just for fun.

heritagequest-01

Unlike other things I won’t name, this one allowed me to enter my library card number and away I went.

heritagequest-02

Where to start? Where to start? I decided to start with something I already knew, just to see how easy it would be to search things. I’ve been having a little trouble with Census searching on Ancestry the last few days, so I decided to see what it was like here.

heritagequest-03

So I picked someone from my family file that I hadn’t really researched a lot, but that I knew the basics about. Sort of. I also wanted an easy to interpret last name. After all my frustrations and weirdness of the last few days I didn’t want to mess with spelling things too.

heritagequest-04

Oh look, we have three matches! My guy is on the bottom of course, but don’t be fooled all those yahoos are in my tree.

heritagequest-05

For some reason, I thought this would just be an index. Imagine my pleasant surprise when it also showed the actual image! They don’t have all the censuses online, but boy do they have a lot and this is all FREE to me through my library card. You can bet I’m going to be utilizing this a lot more now that I’m aware it’s there.

heritagequest-06

Just wait until I show you what I found on John K Taylor’s father and my 5th Great Grandfather Bartholomew Taylor.

Madness Monday: You can kill yourself with Insanity

Posted on by Kathleen

I never thought I’d have anything to contribute to Madness Monday at GeneaBloggers. Sure I have plenty of dementia in the family but I doubted I’d ever have any good stories about this subject. A while back (meaning I can’t remember when), I got the death certificate for my Great-Great Grandfather. I got quite a surprise when looking at his cause of death.

GeorgeThomasTaylor-DR

That’s right folks. It reads “Acute Insanity” as his cause of death.  The Contributory causes seem to say: “Worry over sickness of the other 3 ???  family.” This certificate was the Ancestry.com copy, I’m going to order a certified copy and see if the writing is clearer. I have reason to believe it will be. 😉

Now looking into his family situation I can’t really blame him. By the time of his death, four of his eleven children had died as infants. 1913 is still a little early for the “Super Flu of 1918,”  unless there was a very localized epidemic I’m not aware of. I will probably spend a day going through the newspaper archives on my first Kentucky genealogy trip. 🙂

I’m sure it wasn’t worry that was his downfall but maybe stress induced heart attack? Stroke? Brain Hemorrhage? Who knows, but I’ll always be able to say he died of Acute Insanity.

Madness Monday is Daily Blogging Topic I got from GeneaBloggers. To participate in Madness Monday simply create a post with the main focus being an ancestor who may have suffered from some form of mental illness or an ancestor who drives you “mad” because you have trouble locating them or locating more information about them.

GEA: Kentucky Cemeteries

Posted on by Kathleen

The first Google Earth Adventure was so much fun, I’m back to do it again! This time it will be taking you on one of my first Genealogy trips. It took place around 2003 or 2004? I’m not exactly sure. It was this trip when I got the majority of my Tombstone pictures. We were in Ohio for a reunion and I convinced Grandma to take us to Kentucky to visit the cemetery. Actually, it might have been her idea. Like I said, who can remember. This was when I was just getting into putting all my gathered information together. It was right before Grandma insisted on putting herself in the nursing home and the dementia set in. I even recorded her telling me a story from her childhood. I might have to attach that to the end of this post!

So here’s where we began our adventure. Let me be up front with you. This was our first time visiting Kentucky. Grandma grew up in this area, but it had been awhile since she last visited. This was before GPS navigators also. So we were taking all our directions from Grandma…. That was foreshadowing if you didn’t recognize it. So to the left is where Grandma said her old “homestead” was located, and to the right was the cemetery we were planning to visit. So we headed left first.

This is what we saw for the majority of the trip to left. It was a long windy road that eventually lead back to the river, and when I say river I mean the Ohio River. The big one.

To once again practice full disclosure, I can’t quite remember where the old homestead was located. It’s possible it’s no longer there. The Google Earth photos aren’t really great. Then again, it’s a very tree lined road, so I doubt that better pictures would help anyway.

As you can see the road goes through that heavily forested area. So somewhere in those trees is where my Grandma lived as a girl.

So now we backtrack and cross the road. This side had many more houses and not as many trees. It’s known as Johnsville, KY.

Just under a mile down the road we ran across this small cemetery. This is where Grandma told us “the babies are buried.” Her Grandmother, Mollie Jane Webb-Taylor had three sets of twins, many of which never made it past infancy. This little cemetery is where they were buried, most likely in unmarked graves.

Here is the family listing in my family file. The “babies” aren’t the only ones buried in this cemetery. One of my ancestors buried his first wife here, and I even feel a little guilty that the first wife is resting here, while he rests over in the big cemetery with his second wife. It doesn’t seem fair to the wife who died so young. If I had a time machine, I’d really love to look back at some of the hidden stories in my family’s history.

Here is the two cemeteries in relation to each other on the map. Unfortunately the big cemetery doesn’t have street view. So I can’t show you how big that cemetery really is. Trust me it’s bigger than it looks.

I have many relatives in this cemetery. Many of those relatives I’ve yet to identify. Sometimes I wonder if bigger cemeteries can actually be “family” cemeteries. I mean if you think about it in these rural areas, most everyone ended up related anyway right? So it almost gives it a family feel.

It is after we left Johnsville Cemetery that day that things got… dicey. There was a cousin of my Mom’s that lives right past the cemetery, so we tried to stop by and see him. He’s got a bunch of Webb family photos that I’m dying to see! Unfortunately, he wasn’t at home that day. He got called into work. After we left the cemetery, I imagine we spent the next hour or so driving around aimlessly. Somehow we got turned around. Or maybe we went right instead of going left, the way we’d come. We’ll never know now. Needless to say, we were lost. Lost in Kentucky without a GPS unit to tell us it was “recalculating” to get us the heck home!

We were all getting quite cranky. We were tired, hungry, and just plain ready to be done. We’d been gone most of the day and it was still a long drive back to Dillsboro, IN where Grandma lived. Just when I was about to throw myself on the ground and start kicking my feet around, we drove up to this.

In the interest of once again practicing full disclosure; When we pulled up to this cemetery, we pulled up from the road on the right you see now. I couldn’t show you that though, because it doesn’t have street view. We were really excited to see the yellow lines on the road when we pulled up too. Nothing like good old yellow lines to show that you’re actually on a road that goes somewhere!

This cemetery took us by complete surprise. We weren’t looking for it, we just found it. In fact it would be many years until I could find it again on a map.  There were two sections. The one by the church, and then this older section across the street. This section is my “family cemetery.” I can’t even list the amount of Taylors and Webbs I found in this cemetery. I was completely taken by surprise.

Once I found a certain Webb family, I knew where I was. I had no idea how to get back to Indiana, but I knew where we were. We had somehow found Lenoxburg Cemetery. The cemetery I most wanted to visit. In fact, it’s still on the top of my list. Now that I’m more aware of how many relatives are buried there, I’ve got to go back and document a lot more tombstones. Next time I’m taking my GPS with me though.

Download Google Earth

Credit: All credit for these images goes to Google Earth. I did not take any of these pictures. I only visited Kentucky from the comfort of my home, in my fluffy pajamas. Please do not sue me, I have nothing except for my fluffy pajamas and a GPS unit.