Library Day
We spent the whole day (9:30 am to 6 pm) in the library. Now I know to some of you that may sound terribly dull. But imagine that you've been searching for gold and all of a sudden you find the mother lode. Do you walk away? No... you keep digging. There was so much information in the Iredell County Library about the McKnight, Thomas, Jetton and Brevard lines... too much. These families are so intertwined I don't rightly know who's who at the moment. I spent all day scanning in documents to study later. We spent lots of time reading interesting stories to each other.
Now, I know that most all of the information there has already been gleaned by other families, but until you read it then it's all new. Just because someone knew it before you doesn't mean it's old news. One of the things that we came here to do was go out to the burial site of John Thomas (my 5th great grandfather). We thought there might be other burials there, but found a detailed description of the site that indicates only the one burial. At least only one marker, anyway... and no other graves evident. AND we found out that there had been a push some years ago (back in the 1980's) to move the marker to Tennessee. AND I learned that the current marker was placed by the DAR. And there's another stone that somewhat mirrors it that could be a footstone, could be the original stone, or could be John's father Jacob's stone. So... learned lots, but still have lots of questions.
Bad news, though: We're not going to be able to make it out to the site. Torrential rains today (and others recently) have made it too muddy to navigate the road we would have to take. It is very steep. Good news: Ann Adell, who has organized much of our visit, went out there in 2016 and has shared some very detailed pictures and walked us through them so that we can almost feel as if we were there.
Tomorrow, rather than go out to the grave site, we will go back to the library to finish what we didn't finish today. Then we'll drive through the land to get a feel for it, and drive up to Stony Point to get a feel for the McKnight land, still being farmed today.
Hopefully there won't be quite so much rain tomorrow. But, all the same, a rainy day is a perfect one to spend inside the library.
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| Jeanie reads an anecdote to us (see what she's reading below)... |
Now, I know that most all of the information there has already been gleaned by other families, but until you read it then it's all new. Just because someone knew it before you doesn't mean it's old news. One of the things that we came here to do was go out to the burial site of John Thomas (my 5th great grandfather). We thought there might be other burials there, but found a detailed description of the site that indicates only the one burial. At least only one marker, anyway... and no other graves evident. AND we found out that there had been a push some years ago (back in the 1980's) to move the marker to Tennessee. AND I learned that the current marker was placed by the DAR. And there's another stone that somewhat mirrors it that could be a footstone, could be the original stone, or could be John's father Jacob's stone. So... learned lots, but still have lots of questions.
Bad news, though: We're not going to be able to make it out to the site. Torrential rains today (and others recently) have made it too muddy to navigate the road we would have to take. It is very steep. Good news: Ann Adell, who has organized much of our visit, went out there in 2016 and has shared some very detailed pictures and walked us through them so that we can almost feel as if we were there.
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SACRED
TO THE
memory of
JOHN THOMAS
who died May 15, 1829
in his 75th year
Firm and unmoved are they
That rest their souls on God
Firm as the mount where David dwelt
And where the Ark abode.
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| Ann Adell's family visit to the gravesite back in 2016 |
Hopefully there won't be quite so much rain tomorrow. But, all the same, a rainy day is a perfect one to spend inside the library.
Ok. I'll take your word for it :-)
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