I got up at 7 a.m. and got to Fayetteville by 9-ish to visit Mr. Henry Clark, who directed me to the Judson Church Cemetery and the McDaniel Family Cemetery right behind it. McDaniel was a mess, to say the least, but I'll have to talk about that later. I talked to Mr. Clark a few weeks ago and he told me just to show up at his house when I got here - he'd be home. He and his wife were very helpful and directed me to Carolina Goldman, a distant cousin of mine, and her husband, Earl. I headed there and talked to Earl and their son, Randy, and will, hopefully, connect with them later this week. They had an extremely friendly cat named "Mischief," by the way. He enjoyed licking my ankles and biting me to which Randy admonished the young boy cat, "Don't eat him, Mischief, he's family."
In all, I visited 8 cemeteries today:
Judson Church
McDaniel Family
Lafayette Memorial Park
Cross Creek
Hope Mills
Johnson Family
McRae I
McRae II
I took 203 photos of gravestones. I've included a super awesome photo of a gravestone from Judson Church Cemetery and, no, this person is NOT related to me. (But I wish they were...)
Then...
I don't remember which cousin it was (Don, Janet or Joni) who said that Hope Mills, North Carolina was going to roll out the red carpet for me, but they were right. I've never been anywhere where people are so nice, helpful and trusting.
First, I went to the Hope Mills Town Hall, where Bruce McLaurin, the Director of Public Works was very friendly and helpful. He told me about a book that the mayor, Eddie Dees, had written about the history of Hope Mills and that they had some for sale. They also told me about a few people in town who might be able to help me.
It turns out that they were out of them, but thought that Eddie would still have a few in his office. They told me that Eddie teaches at South View High School, so since it was around 2:30, I went there to try to find him. He was already gone, so I looked him up on whitepages.com, found his home number and called him. He was busy preparing for a town hall meeting tonight, but said he had an hour and told me to meet him at the Highland Baptist Church and he'd give me a quick tour of Hope Mills. Yes, the mayor of Hope Mills drove me all over town to several cemeteries and told me about some maps he had at his house he wanted to show me. So we went to the mayor's house, where I met his wife and twin 6 year-old daughters. I saw his book collection of North Carolina history, including Hope Mills and also found out that he's a huge baseball fan, specifically a Don Mattingly fan. He had a shrine to Donnie Baseball too. Then he showed me about 30 maps, letters, etc. that he found in a wall of a mill building that was being torn down - stuff from as early as 1796! He's making me copies and I'm taking him to lunch on Friday!
After that, I went back to Fayetteville and spent 4 hours at the library.
God, I'm a dork. I'm too tired to post the photos, but I'll get to it.
In all, I visited 8 cemeteries today:
Judson Church
McDaniel Family
Lafayette Memorial Park
Cross Creek
Hope Mills
Johnson Family
McRae I
McRae II
I took 203 photos of gravestones. I've included a super awesome photo of a gravestone from Judson Church Cemetery and, no, this person is NOT related to me. (But I wish they were...)
Then...I don't remember which cousin it was (Don, Janet or Joni) who said that Hope Mills, North Carolina was going to roll out the red carpet for me, but they were right. I've never been anywhere where people are so nice, helpful and trusting.
First, I went to the Hope Mills Town Hall, where Bruce McLaurin, the Director of Public Works was very friendly and helpful. He told me about a book that the mayor, Eddie Dees, had written about the history of Hope Mills and that they had some for sale. They also told me about a few people in town who might be able to help me.
It turns out that they were out of them, but thought that Eddie would still have a few in his office. They told me that Eddie teaches at South View High School, so since it was around 2:30, I went there to try to find him. He was already gone, so I looked him up on whitepages.com, found his home number and called him. He was busy preparing for a town hall meeting tonight, but said he had an hour and told me to meet him at the Highland Baptist Church and he'd give me a quick tour of Hope Mills. Yes, the mayor of Hope Mills drove me all over town to several cemeteries and told me about some maps he had at his house he wanted to show me. So we went to the mayor's house, where I met his wife and twin 6 year-old daughters. I saw his book collection of North Carolina history, including Hope Mills and also found out that he's a huge baseball fan, specifically a Don Mattingly fan. He had a shrine to Donnie Baseball too. Then he showed me about 30 maps, letters, etc. that he found in a wall of a mill building that was being torn down - stuff from as early as 1796! He's making me copies and I'm taking him to lunch on Friday!
After that, I went back to Fayetteville and spent 4 hours at the library.
God, I'm a dork. I'm too tired to post the photos, but I'll get to it.
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