:: The Marsh King's Daughter ::

:: Sunday, October 16, 2005 ::

Getting In Touch With My Roots

I spent the weekend visiting relatives in Kentucky. As an unexpected bonus, my mother, her two surviving siblings, my eldest cousin and I spent Saturday afternoon in the county where Mom's ancestors have lived for centuries. Now, I've been out to the family farm a number of times; my mom spent the first six years of her life there, and even after her family moved a half-hour away to the "big city" her father continued to farm and keep horses and cattle there. On this trip, though, we also visited the log cabin where Mom's mother was born, which I'd never seen. That farm was sold to the Girl Scouts in the 1950s, and they've maintained the original cabin. The main part of the cabin is perhaps as big as my living room and dining room, plus there is a small loft, reachable by ladder. When my grandmother was a girl, she and her three sisters slept in the loft, while their parents and three brothers slept downstairs. The kitchen was apparently in a separate structure off the porch. My aunt and uncle still remember visiting their cousins there as kids. Since the Girl Scouts have taken over the land, the floor and ceiling have been rebuilt and the "chinking" filled in with concrete to keep critters from slithering in between the logs; but the exterior walls and the stone chimney all survive from the original structure, like something straight outta "Little House On The Prairie" -- except less prairie and more mountains.

We capped off the trip with a visit to the cemetery where many of my grandmother's relatives are buried. My mother likes cemeteries as much as I do, and it's extra-fun visiting them when she knows half the people buried there. I got to see the obelisk-like headstone marking the graves of my great-great-grandparents, the Reverend Nelson T. Burchett and his wife Clarinda McCormick Burchett; as well as Nelson's grandmother Susannah Hearne (or Herron) Burchett, born in 1777.

I totally understand why none of Mom's siblings can bear the idea of selling the farm.
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:: Karen | 10:07 PM | | [+] ::
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