Tennessee

June 25, 2010

We took a day trip from Pigeon Forge northwest along the Davy Crockett/Cumberland Gap Highway. This is beautiful country, to be sure, but not the purpose of our trip. Russell's maternal grandfather grew up in this region. Our biggest question: Why did he ever leave?

But he left along with his family in the early part of 1910's. Russell remembers him talking about being tired of the coal mines. Very understandable, but Crosbyton, TX? The 2 areas could not be more different. For those who don't automatically get a mental image of Crosbyton, think "Lubbock." We know that this is where he met the future Mrs. Ellison. We have discovered that he arrived prior to WWI, in which he served. But he took trips back to visit Tennessee, Betty, Russell's mom, remembers one trip with her and her brothers, I'm guessing in the 30's. He also talked about Speedwell, TN with his grandkids.

Anyway, we started exploring at the library of the county seat of Tazewell and then the courthouse. Russell found a registration for his great-granddad's purchase of land in 1899. We had the legal description of the property, metes and bounds, and the luck of being there at the same time as a local lawyer who knew where we could find the place. He also gave us the name of a current Speedwell Ellison, Billy Mack.

Off we went with lunch from the Frostee Freeze and a map. We tromped through a number of cemeteries and definitely located the property in question. We found a number of buried Ellison's, and one who was driving a tractor, Billy Mack! He directed us to another cemetery and the house of Franklin Russell.

Mr. Russell, a 77 year old widower, was most happy to visit with us and detected a strong family resemblance between himself and Russell. It seems that the Ausmus's intermarried with Russell's and Ellison's, creating the link. We had a wonderful visit and got a lot of information to boot. We talked about how very many Tennesseeans settled Texas to make it full of such good people. But Mr. Franklin had been in Texas enough to know that he doesn't ever want to live there, too hot!

We completely enjoyed our day in the back-country of NE Tennessee. You are looking at the Cumberland Plateau in the distance and winding through foothills that are green with trees and crops. We answered the original question, however. Only economic factors could have driven folks to leave all of this beauty.

Vicksburg, MS, Memories Before Our Time

Genealogy is addicting. When we began to unearth the family history a flurry of emails and phone calls created more links and got more people involved. Each new discovery cleared the way for a new question or theory about past events. Some of the answers are coming together. It's amazing how those answers touch on much more current events, circles are completed, and those long ago events actually become part of the current generation's memories. Time Travel....in an RV!

My great-great grandfather and his brother were two of the engineers who planned the trenches laid in the Vicksburg battlefield. We walked there yesterday morning, a day much like during the siege 150 years ago, getting warmer, muggier as the sun rose. However, we wore cotton clothes, high-tech tennies, sun screen and insect repellent as we walked between sun and shade. An hour in we got in the car, cranked up the A/C and came home for showers and lunch. Great-great grandfather MS Hasie wore a wool uniform and crummy shoes, stayed in battle for 2 months, had no trees for shade, ate what the army gave him and when possible, snuck off to see the beautiful southern girl he had met when a battle skirted near her plantation(the home was used as a hospital, like so many were) a few miles away. His experience of Vicksburg was beyond anything we can really imagine, and his team won! The poor Confederates had no relief from the elements or 2 months of starvation that eventually cost them the city and the war.

For the last 2 days I have been working through archives with the current good folks in Vicksburg, reminiscent of sitting in Texas courthouses while Dad ran title searches for lease property for Humble Oil(more summer days with no air conditioning). We found death certificates from 1878, but no bodies in the cemetery. I then found those same names on census roles in Dallas in 1900. Conflicting, yes, but proof of family lore that they escaped the city quarantine during the yellow fever epidemic. These were hardy folks!

The intrigue continues, bones rattle, and secrets are revealed. But I won't go on any more here, i have work to do on Ancestry.com!