Meandering Through Our Roots

What a great week!!

Meandering Through Our Roots — Sun, 06 Nov 2011 03:05:40 +0000

This week I met new Internet friends. I was on Ancestry.com working when I noticed a new message. It was from a lady wondering if my John Naggas was the person who had married her great aunt. She asked if he had ever lived in Montana. I knew that he had spent a little time in Montana, so I told her that it was a possibility. I asked her to go to this blog where I had pictures posted of him.

My grandpa had been married before he met my grandmother, but we did not know much about it, and thought that it had been for a short amount of time. In fact, we had no pictures of my grandpa before he married my grandma. He was about 32 when he married my grandma.

Well, in a few minutes I received a new message saying that it was the same person! This lady had a wedding picture of my grandpa and her great aunt, Minnie Scott! He was 22 when he married her. From what I can tell, they were married for eight or nine years. She sent me the pictures and also introduced me to the lady that she got the pictures from. I am so lucky to have met these two ladies and am so grateful for their generosity in sharing these pictures with me. Here they are:

Here are some snapshots that I also received:

High Point Cemetery

Meandering Through Our Roots — Sun, 31 Jul 2011 21:55:00 +0000

On our trip to Missouri this year Albert and Alice took us on another tour of Callaway County. They are so patient and willing to do whatever we wanted. Albert showed us where he grew up in Callaway County, Missouri, and then we went to the High Point Church and cemetery where his grandparents are buried. We love visiting Albert and Alice, they have such good stories to share and they are always so hospitable. Here are some pictures of the church and cemetery.

View across the road from the church. It was a beautiful day!

Beautiful Church!

Albert standing next to his grandparent's headstone

William Dutton and Sophia Love Dutton

Interesting Observation

Meandering Through Our Roots — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 03:23:39 +0000

When I was in Missouri I took a lot of photographs for find-a-grave. Today, I received a picture from a find-a-grave contributor for me! It was pictures of the headstones of my grandparents. I had never seen their graves, so I really appreciated it. I looked at my grandma’s headstone for a minute and couldn’t recall my grandma living until she was 97 years old. Then I realized that her birth year was wrong. Her headstone says that she was born in 1904, and in reality she was born in 1909. Well, she had a pretty good sense of humor – she probably had a good laugh about it.

Bowling Green and Augusta Cemetery

Meandering Through Our Roots — Sun, 19 Jun 2011 04:06:17 +0000

We started out today at the Pike County Historical Society in Bowling Green, Missouri. We didn’t have a lot of luck there, but the ladies in there were so helpful. We went to Walmart where I saw something that I had never seen before. Amish parking stalls!

Parking stall for horse and buggy

Waiting patiently for his owners to return

It was so fun to see the horse and buggies there. We saw some young Amish families too. There was a young couple with a little boy and girl that I would have loved to take a picture of, but I didn’t want to be rude. I have a lot of respect for the Amish and their lifestyle. Here is a couple of pictures of the horse and buggies. After we left Bowling Green, we headed down to Audrain County to their historical society. They had closed for the day, so we decided to go to Augusta Cemetery where my great grandparents are buried. We had been there before, so we knew that many of the gravestones were in bad shape. So, we stopped at a store and bought chalk to rub over the stones so that we could read them. We got to the cemetery, and the noise from the cicadas was loud! Cicadas, I understand, only get bad once every thirteen years. Well, this was the year! We spent over three hours in the hot muggy weather, chalking and photographing the gravestones there. So many were so bad that you couldn’t even read them. But when David put the chalk on them it was magical! Here are the headstones of my great grandparents that we didn’t even know were there last year.

John K. Payton

Nancy wife of J. K. Payton

Each one was like we were opening a package to see who was in it. We felt good about what we accomplished today. We are now at a motel near the airport ready to fly home in the morning.

Back to Louisiana

Meandering Through Our Roots — Sat, 18 Jun 2011 01:51:10 +0000

Louisiana Public Library

Today we went back to the Louisiana Public Library. It rained all morning, so we spent our time at the library. We didn’t have much luck, but we have found bits and pieces. When the weather cleared, we walked around town and went to lunch. Here are some pictures from our day.

Bank of Louisiana

The water is still high.

Small towns are great!

Jordan Buffalo Cemetery and Bowling Green Missouri

Meandering Through Our Roots — Thu, 16 Jun 2011 23:32:13 +0000

We came back a little earlier tonight. I am sitting here in our room with the door open and enjoying the view. This is what I am looking at.

It’s pretty calm and peaceful.

This morning when we set out, we went looking for the Jordan Buffalo Cemetery to take some more pictures for find-a-grave. We had a little bit of a hard time finding it. We knew we were close when we saw this monument.

It was about a mile away from here. This was the site of Buffalo Fort. A fort built to protect the people from the Indians. Eventually there was a massacre here. I think that I heard that it was in 1812. Remember Sarah Allison that I was looking for a few days ago? Well there were a lot of Allison family members that lived at this fort. We took pictures of several Allison graves while we were here. We finally found the cemetery. It was so beautiful and peaceful. There are rumors that it is haunted, but during the day, I didn’t see how that could be.

People in Missouri are really worried about flooding right now. We drive by the Mississippi River everyday, and it gets higher and higher. We drive through the town of Louisiana on our way to where we are staying. Then we drive on a little two lane road that runs next to the Mississippi River. Today when we were leaving Louisiana, this is what we saw.

Well, it’s time to organize what we have found and plan out tomorrow!

A Day in Audrain and Callaway Counties

Meandering Through Our Roots — Thu, 16 Jun 2011 03:13:38 +0000

Today we went to visit my mother’s cousin and his wife, Albert and Alice. We had met them last year when we came to Missouri and it was so fun to visit them again. They cooked us a delicious lunch and we visited for the afternoon. Then we went to the Auxvasse Cemetery and took some pictures. Albert asked us if we would like to see where he grew up and we jumped at the chance! It was beautiful up there. We took some more pictures of headstones up at the church there in a place called High Point there was a pretty little church and a cemetery. It was pretty close to Shamrock where my grandma, Effie Woodson grew up. It was a beautiful day and we had a wonderful time.

Albert at his grandparent's headstone

High Point church and cemetery

The view from High Point church

Searching for roots in Hannibal, Missouri.

Meandering Through Our Roots — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 02:41:23 +0000

Today we went to Palmyra, Missouri and Hannibal, Missouri. My third great grandfather, Shadrach Woodson is said to have lived there. We were hoping to find his grave, but did not have any luck. We did find an obituary for him, a reference to his will, and his family living in Mason, which is very close to Hannibal, in 1844 in a census. It is funny how some of your biggest clues come from actually talking to people. We first went to Greenwood Cemetery in Palmyra and found the oldest section. It was near the office, so we went over to the office to see if Shadrach was buried there. The man was very helpful. He looked and looked through his records, but since Shadrach died in 1853, he didn’t have a lot of hope. He said that he was probably buried on a farm somewhere. Next we went to the library in Palmyra to see if we could find more information. As we were sitting there, a man came in and started talking to the librarian about the pictures that he was taking for find-a-grave. David started talking to him and he and the librarian produced a letter from a lady that was also looking for Shadrach, and it mentioned where his farm was! Now if we could just find land records! We also know that this man will go take a picture of the grave if we can pinpoint where it is. After that we went to the Hannibal Public Library to look in their genealogical section. It is probably one of the worst and least helpful libraries that we had been to. We could not take anything in the locked room with us except for a pen, paper and a laptop. I was a little disappointed in Hannibal overall. I imagined a quaint little town on the Mississippi river. I think at one time it was. But now it is kind of run down. We did take a hike up a couple of hundred stairs to get to an overlook of the Mississippi river. It was beautiful!

An addendum to yesterday’s blog post: When we were at the very top of the cemetery, we met a couple up there from Minnesota. We talked for a few minutes and then went on with what we were doing. Today as we left the condo for our daily adventure, that couple was moving in next door to us! How weird is that? The cemetery is ten miles from here!

Here are some pictures from today.

This is the bridge that goes from Hannibal over to Illinois.

Louisiana, Missouri and the Riverview Cemetery

Meandering Through Our Roots — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 03:22:48 +0000

We are back in Missouri doing family history research. Louisiana is a quaint little town on the Mississippi River. I will have to get a picture of it when we go back. We started out at the Louisiana Public Library. I am trying to find the parents of Sarah Allison who married Robert Callison. I found out that her mother was named Martha, but have not found out what her father’s name was. So we did make a little progress. Then we went to the Riverview Cemetery in Louisiana, Missouri. We found some headstones for people on Find-a-Grave. This cemetery was really big, and hilly. When you get to the top, there is a beautiful view of the Mississippi river. Here is a picture that we took. Tomorrow we will go to Hannibal and find their historical society.

Picture of my grandparent’s headstones

Meandering Through Our Roots — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 03:12:15 +0000

Wow, it is hard to believe that a month has passed since I have blogged. Since I haven’t been to California for a long time, I am not able to visit the graves of my grandparents. In fact, I have been to the graves of my two grandpas, but I have never been to the grave of my grandmas, since I have not been home since they passed away. Once again, Find A Grave comes to the rescue. The other day, a Find A Grave contributor in California took a picture of my grandparents graves and sent them to me. Here they are, along with a picture of John and Effie Naggas. If you haven’t visited Find A Grave in your search for your ancestors, you should!