A Better Week

This morning started with hearing laughter in the kitchen while I was still drugged with sleep – even though it was almost nine.   I assumed it was Gerald watching television until I became more awake.  As I gradually began to think more clearly, I realized that it was conversation I was hearing and it must be Mary Ellen and Brianna at the kitchen table with Gerald.

I hopped out of bed as rapidly as I could (which is not very fast since age had made me do everything slowly) and hurried to the kitchen in my flannel pajamas to see our guests.  It was already on my agenda to be sure I saw Brianna today since this evening she is heading to Florida for her spring internship at DisneyWorld.  She and Trent grew up going there, taking Disney cruises, and celebrating at this magical place, and the internship program had been a dream for her.   She has worked so much during her first two years of college that we all are hoping (even though she is going to be working there too) that this will be a spring of fun and relaxation.

Well, finally I think all the Christmas decorations are  hidden away in closets for another year.  I used the word “think” because just like the artificial grass or even  stray jelly beans have  a way of popping up in surprising places weeks after Easter, so do remnants of the Christmas season sometime. 

I still want to look over the Christmas cards and re-read the letters. I used to always do this on New Year’s Day, but I haven’t managed that for a couple of years now.  I also  have a handful of envelopes to check to make sure the address has not changed from what I have recorded on my very worn and messy lists.  The computer lists with addresses that I once knew how to use to print address labels are long gone with long-ago computers.  There are so many things I used to know how to do on older computers that I have never learned to do on this one, which I have had for several years now.

I have always managed to transfer over essays on Elder William “Cedar Billy” Martin that  have been started and stopped for many years. My last  summer project was to update and finalize all I had discovered about my great great great grandfather as a Christmas gift for my children.  That project was abandoned back in October when I had to stop and prepare for a Trail of Tears presentation.  I had planned to finish with Cedar Billy by August 1 and then September 1.  Then I was into October and still working on it when I had brief times to write.

Over and over I was almost done with this grandfather’s story,  but I kept finding details that I needed to check out or questions to try to answer. I was also trying to go through entries on a family Internet group had been  made over many years about our family history.  Completion just kept being delayed.  Finally I had to discipline myself and quit writing and start reviewing what I once knew about the excruciating 1837-38 march that our government forced the Cherokees to make through our region on their way to what later became Oklahoma. 

I feel this historical journey is one that should be known by all Americans in order for us to acknowledge that we too have sometimes acted as brutal terrorists. Only one vote in the Senate caused an illegal treaty to be passed.  Yet in the midst of that sinful federal debauchery, there were many kind souls who refused to bow down to Satan and Andrew Jackson, and those people  ministered to and helped the Cherokee and the other tribes sent west.  It is  important to know some stood up for what was right regardless of the laws passed. Many of our ancestors had no way of understanding what had transpired since prominent citizens and much of the media quoting those self-serving citizens and officials gave misinformation to the masses.  Many, of course, could not read anyway since educational opportunity was scarce back then. 

 I think it is important for us to be aware that we may do terrible things and think we are fighting for righteousness. So back in October I put aside the family information I was working on.  And I struggled to get ready to talk about the terrible trek one group of humans made another group of humans take through Southern Illinois when the two bounding  rivers froze over and the snow on the ground between the rivers was spotted with blood from feet whose moccasins had worn out.  And the aged and the infants were buried in our soil.

The stack of papers and the notebooks on my grandfather has been moved around several times since then, but I have never gotten back to that undertaking, which I assumed I would start up again in November.  But I didn’t.  Now I know that  I must review, sort through all those papers and try my best to wrap up that project. Sometime. But not this weekend.  Family is coming in tonight, and I am happy and excited.  Maybe next week, I will restart.  Reckon I will have it completed for my gift to the children next Christmas? 

Too Hot and Too Busy

There has been a lovely full moon shining in the sky outside our windows this week. Gerald’s garden is growing more beautiful every day. Brian’s soybeans in his new field where our country road turns the corner are a delight to look at. The corn in all the fields around us is higher than the elephant’s eye, and our neighbor Scott harvested the wheat field by our lane this week. We haven’t had anything to eat out of our garden yet, but at church for two Sundays now, there has been a box of sweet yellow squash someone is sharing. I was too late to get any last Sunday, but I picked up the last two in the box today. We keep getting rains, but oh the heat! June has been one of the hottest in the last hundred years, and I stay inside under the air conditioning.

Gerald pretends to come inside more because of the heat, but the truth is that he is hoeing the garden, cutting the phragmites grass beside the lake, working in his shop, or finding something outside to do many more hours than he is inside. Although sometimes he is in the air conditioning of the tractor, his work shirts without a dry spot on them prove he is often in the heat. He has been mowing the creek banks up at the other farm, and the farm looks good. But sometimes he has gotten out of the tractor’s AC to dislodge limbs blocking the flow of the creek. Overall, I think all the outside work is good for him; he is in much better shape than I am. I know very well who he is imitating—my father-in-law didn’t slow down in his 80s either. Yet I like it when Gerald comes in and takes a nap after lunch in his favorite leather recliner and sometimes works with his photography until the evening brings a little cooler air.

When Scott invited us over for lunch next door in his big building (barn, office, kitchen, combine storage—all of these combined), Gerald did take off from his lawn mowing for us to go. Scott’s company was having a field day with people from all over this nation and others to visit their research plots next door and over at Ridgeway. Fans kept the big area where tables were set up very pleasant, and sirloin steak sandwiches with all the fixings were delicious.

I stay too busy, and I cannot even figure out what I have done with a day often times. Partly because everything may take me longer than it used to do. Partly because of many interruptions, I suppose. Then I can’t refocus easily. I have cut out so many things that used to be a part of our daily lives that I should have scads of time to do whatever I please. I let housekeeping standards decline. I don’t talk on the phone as much as I used to do. (Many phone friends have died.)



Yet though I no longer garden or can or even cook very much, now I do write emails and follow friends on Facebook and Red Room. That is where a good many hours are dwindled away. I should not have just used the word “dwindled.” I am investing in following others’ lives through this Internet connection. Obviously, I think it is worthwhile or I would not being using time in this way. Poor Internet service is the greatest time waster—running two rooms away to unplug the computer for a minute or two and then plugging it back in and then returning to my office to try again—sometimes successfully and sometimes not.. Neighbors were by this week talking about a plan to get a new tower in our neighborhood. I hope that happens.



Erin drove up from Georgia Friday morning. She has spent most of the weekend with Johnston City friends since this was her only chance to see them before she leaves for Austria. Toni left this morning for an summer internship in Springfield, and Brooke is leaving tonight. A track coach from junior high, who must be quite a cook, had Erin over with his family—classmates of hers—for supper Friday night and then had the kids come in Saturday for quite a breakfast—pancakes, eggs, bacon, sausage—all sounded wonderful.



She is back at Woodsong and napping now to make up for all the late-night gabbing at the sleep-over the girls had at her friend’s house. Although I am not as close to these buddies as I was able to be with my kids’ friends, I care about them and am always glad to hear good news about them. She will see Brooke and other friends tonight before Brooke heads back to Nashville and her two summer jobs.



Sam is off for a week at church camp in Tennessee, and Katherine said he was so excited about a week with his friends and not the least bit sad to leave them. She and David were thoughtful and somewhat somber with the realization that he is indeed growing up and friends are more and more important to him now.



Leslie is working at Barefoot Republic camp in Kentucky this summer, and Elijah is working at Freeport’s popular ice cream place this summer. He had already been to the annual Vacation Bible School in Kentucky with his youth group. Cecelie ran her first 5K with her daddy yesterday.



Trent and Brianna are busy helping their mom and dad, swimming, and enjoying their first litter of kittens now that they are living a rural life. There has already been one band camp for Brianna with an end celebration at their house after the final parade. This week she has a second camp, which will end with participation in a parade next Sunday. Trent’s activities on the computer and with games long surpassed my understanding years ago, and that and building projects in their garage keep him busy.



Gerry and Vickie and their girls are staying staggeringly busy as always with softball—camps, tourneys, practices, giving lessons. If the heat bothers them, they will never let you know it. Gerald likes telling about suggesting to Geri Ann, when she was a little girl, that they turn on the car AC, and she said, “No, Grandpa, I don’t want to get soft.”



Katherine is withstanding the heat that is so difficult for MS patients, and the Tysabri infusions have helped a bit the last two months after a previous time when she thought the benefit had stopped. We are grateful for that and grateful that everyone else seems to be healthy despite the heat and busyness.



I have been busy reviewing materials to present tomorrow night on the Trail of Tears for the Friends of the Crab Orchard Library. I stayed up much too late last night reading again one of the first books I read years ago when I first after retirement started researching the Trail of Tears--Frances Patton Statham’s 1993 novel titled Trail of Tears. I knew I would understand it better now than I did back when I first read it probably a decade ago. It was indeed more fascinating than the first time I read it. The story is so sad that I hesitate to say I enjoyed it, but Statham did a very good job telling the complex story.



She had John Ross and his 13th detachment going by land until reaching Paducah, which is what people thought back then before some very old records were discovered. She was also evidently mislead as so many people have been by the John Burnett letter written on his 90th birthday with his whopper that he watched Quatie Ross die on the trail and be buried there. (She didn’t. She died in harbor at Little Rock and was buried in a cemetery in that city.) Burnett was not even on the Trail of Tears since he was discharged the year before.



Oddly his emotionally appealing letter is all over the Internet despite it falsity. Every year we are learning more accurately the history and location of the places where the Cherokee marched through dust, mud, and snow. Someone said there are literally thousands of documents in the National Archives waiting for someone to have time to study, digest, and disseminate the information contained there.

Beating the Drums

A beating of tom toms (plastic buckets turned upside down) filled the St. John’s School gymnasium, where a single row of youngsters circled the gym wall and sat cross legged this afternoon.

Joe Crabb had enlisted Dr. Vann\ Burgess and me to help him present information to these children (kindergarten through eighth grade) who had been studying about the Trail of Tears.

After we arrived, the teachers called all the children together to sit on the floor in front of us and warned them to be quiet and encouraged them to be polite. They certainly were.

Joe told them about the arrival of probably 11,000 or more Cherokee to our end of the state, where more died on the Trail of Tears than any other segment. Why? Because of the unusual intensely cold winter that trapped the travelers between the two border rivers that meet at the tip of Illinois at Cairo.

On a large map of Pope County, Joe showed the kids where he lived and told how the Cherokee used a creek’s rock bottom on his farm to ford Sugar Creek.

In good weather, as Joe also explained, it took days to move a thousand people load by load across a river. With the record-breaking bad weather, such movement became impossible until the chunks of ice floating downstream finally diminished enough to allow the ferries to start their slow journey.

Thus, the detachments, each with around thousand people, bumped into each other’s camp sites and piled up. Food became more and more scarce as game disappeared and rations were used up.

Many families passed down the story to their children of sitting on their front porches and watching hundreds of Cherokee pass in front of them day after day. One such family was that of Theophilus Scott of rural Pope County. His great great grandson Dr. Burgess was a tiny child when his grandfather died at 96. However, by then younger family members knew the story and passed it on to him. Professor Emerius of Education from the University of San Francisco, Burgess shared a time line with the children and reviewed that early 19th century history with them as he told about his family and his own exploration of nearby Allen's Spring.

Because they were stranded, there was more time and need for interaction between the curious often illiterate white pioneers living here and the bedraggled, dispirited and depressed Indians sleeping on the frozen ground with their one blanket if it had not already been destroyed by the mountainous terrain, rough creek rocks, or snagging thorns. Moccasins too had often worn out, and bare feet bled on the snow.

Local men who had grist mills ground corn meal for the Cherokees. Some traded pumpkin pies for the Indians’ ration of coffee. Some whites took babes from their mothers’ arms to keep the infants from freezing. These local families promised to nurse them back to health and raise them as their own. And they did. When possible, they often kept the Cherokee ancestry a secret to help the child avoid the terrible prejudice against the people with whom the whites had broken treaties as they stole more and more of their land. Some whites, however, helped when they could and even let the Cherokee cut down their woods in order to have fires for warmth.

As Joe finished up the travel through Pope County, young inquiring minds started waving hands wanting their questions answered about what they had heard. They asked good questions and Joe gave good answers.

He had asked me to review briefly the trek through Johnson and Union Counties and ultimately over the Mississippi River into Missouri. He wanted me to finish with the story of Priscilla, the Hollyhock Girl of Mulkeytown, freed from slavery by Brazilla Silkwood who arranged her release from the Cherokee who had purchased her, we think, from the Borders plantation in Northern Georgia.

I was thrilled to be able to pass around a copy of the recently found photograph of Priscilla with the Harrison family that Betty Baker had received from her grandmother. Then it was dismissal time and parents were in the parking lot to pick up their children.

I hope some remembered to ask their parent if they could stay up to watch the third segment of We Shall Remain, which I am now stopping writing to watch. Next week we will learn about Geronimo.

Priscilla's Photo Keeps Me Busy

Odd how a life in the 19th Century that ended in 1892 has kept me so busy recently in 2009.

Although I surfed a bit (okay a lot) last night, I completely forgot it was Wednesday night--my appointed night to write. Never mind that I had a Wednesday doctor appointment and Wednesday evening meeting, I still forgot that it was Wednesday. That is okay. I was obviously too tired to write although I did write a paragraph on Facebook since some of my kids and grandkids congregate there and I like to see what they are up to just as I do all the wonderful bloggers that I follow.

Anyhow let me tell you why my schedule has been overfull. Codell Rodriquez, an area newspaper reporter, who was covering a program that the Trail of Tears Association board participated in at the John A. Logan Museum at Murphysoboro, heard me say I was looking for a photograph of Priscilla, the young girl freed from slavery on the Trail of Tears and who lived the rest of her life as a member of the Silkwood family in Mulkeytown.

As a result of putting my request in his story, Betty Baker, who descended from the Harrison family with whom Priscilla lived the last 16 years of her life after Mr. Silkwood died, phoned to say she had a photo. The photo taken in 1891 was a large gathering of the adult children and some grandchildren of Isham and Laura (Annear) Harrison. Betty's grandmother said the third adult from the left was Priscilla, who was considered a family member.

Codell wanted to do a follow-up story about our finding a photo, and I agreed since I was glad to help the TOTA with publicity before our April 26 meeting at the Southern Illinois University Carbondale Morris Library, which is holding its rededication today of the remodeled library. Then Codell's paper moved his deadline up on him, and suddenly when I was supposed to be preparing for trip to Freeport, I was going to town for the interview and also passing photos on to Dr. Herman Peterson at the SIUC library, who made a special trip to our village to pick them up. (There were other photos of many members of Harrison family--unfortunately no individual picture of Priscilla.)

When I wandered into the kitchen Monday morning after our triip and Easter Sunday activities, I was somewhat shocked to see Codell's story on the front page. I have been covered up with emails and phone calls ever since. Some who phoned or wrote also descended from the Harrisons, some have Priscilla's hollyhocks growing in their yards, and some had been just been thrilled with memories stirred about Mulkeytown, and so forth.

I have Writers Guild tonight and it is a Critique Night, our first in 2009, and I don't think I have anything to share. Maybe I will find something. Anyhow I decided I better blog before I leave home for INR reading and trip to Carterville.

If you are interested in more about Priscilla, check the Southern Illinoisan story: http://thesouthern.com/articles/2009/04/13/front_page/28866350.txt.

Spring Breaks and the Western Part of the Trail of Tears through Southern Illinois

Spring breaks have started for our grandchildren. Samuel like all the kids here in Williamson County has been off school this week. And so has Geri Ann down in Georgia, which allowed her to go with her mother to see Erin play softball in Boca Raton. Her sister Tara, husband Bryan, and the two little boys also took a vacation there. Leslie was in Puerto Rico with her church group since Belmont was having spring break.

The Eilers up at Freeport will be off next week, so Jeannie is bringing Cecelie thorough here on their way to visit Les at Belmont while Elijah goes to Mount Rushmore and that region with his high school choir performing most of Showtime at various venues. They’ll be well rehearsed when they get back to perform at Freeport. Trent and Brianna will be off that week also and are going to Florida to see their Grandma Dot.

I wanted to grab some time with Samuel while he was on vacation, so we planned a day trip down to Union County to see the western part of the Trail of Tears through Southern Illinois. We first stopped at the Trail of Tears rest stop on Interstate 57. Oddly, that rest stop has pictures of Cairo but no mention of the Trail of Tears. Our Illinois Chapter of the Trail of Tears Association finally got permission to place brochures there—something Sandy Boaz, Illinois TOTA president, had tried to do for years but wasn’t allowed. But the brochures were all taken the day Sam and I stopped by. We obtained an Illinois road map there, and Sam was able to follow our journey to the west where we were to cross the Mississippi River.

The Trail of Tears rest stop is actually on top of the trail. When I-57 was built, that spot on the highway goes over a short tunnel on the road beneath it, where the Cherokee actually walked. To see that, Sam and I exited I-57 less than a mile down the highway and were on State Route 146, Illinois Designated TOT highway and also the National Park Service’s TOT auto route.

Next we took the first country road to the right and were driving through beautiful rural land, which has been built up with many fine homes in recent years. Soon we were down below I-57 and drove through the tunnel and down the actual Trail. It was chilly enough that we weren’t tempted to get out and hike, and we turned around and went back to the cemetery where Southern Illinois University Carbondale geologist Harvey Henson and his students have located at least 19 graves in the area that oral tradition had always indicated the Cherokee had buried their dead during the bitter cold of December 1838 and January 1839.

Since there had been perhaps as many as 3,000 camping there at one time and more before and after those weeks, it is a sign of land owner George Hileman’s kindness that there were so few deaths. He allowed them to cut down the woods to obtain firewood for warmth, and he sold them corn meal from his grist meal for sustenance to go with the wild game they foraged. He approved their graves in his pasture where he and his wife had buried two small children a few years earlier. Later he was to donate land for the church established there, and he donated more land for the cemetery.

Sandy Boaz, a descendant of Hileman, has been searching for what roads went from Camp Ground over to Jonesboro in the first half of the 19th Century. As a favor, she recently was helping someone with their genealogy questions, and serendipitously found some good hints about the road, which she intends to investigate. She has often talked about Dog Walk Road, and since Sam and I were not on schedule, we decided not to return to Route 146 but to leave on the Camp Ground Road going west until we came to Dog Walk, which we took over to the Lick Creek Road and finally back to Route 146. It took a little longer than it should have since I have no sense of direction, and I turned in the wrong direction on the familiar Lick Creek Road. I turned around when I noticed on the dash we were headed east. On 146 in Anna, we soon were passing the Trail of Tears Junction, the elaborate gas and more station owned by Ron and Deb Charles, who both descended from Cherokee families around Elco.

We were hungry by then, and we stopped at the Country Cupboard, more often called The Potato Barn, created in the old Goddard Feed Store, where county farmers always headed to buy garden seed, tools, and bib overalls as well as feed. As always, the food there was absolutely delicious. I had a bowl of creamy potato soup and a Reuben while Sam had a shrimp basket. I should have ordered either soup or a sandwich since both turned out to be over-sized. I had fun explaining to Sam the complicated family connections to the Bridgeman daughters who own the restaurant now. His great Grandma Ada’s Aunt Ollie Bridgeman is seen holding Sam’s mother in the first baby photo we have of Katherine. Part of the pleasure of going to the Potato Barn is wandering around looking at the antiques and artifacts, so we took time for that before we got back on the Trail.

We left Anna by Heacock Street and down Boettner Hill, and I was able to tell Sam how folks used to block off traffic on a few nights when the snow made that hill a perfect place for sledding. I took him out to the Old Fair Grounds, where Lincoln and Douglas gave one of their 1858 debates while running for the Senate. Sam enjoyed the new statues there of the two famous debaters.

And then it was up to the Jonesboro Square, where the bank stands on the storehouse site of Winstead Davie. Behind the store was his and Anna (Willard) Davie’s home, where the Davies invited Rev. Jesse Bushyhead and his pregnant wife Eliza and another “chief” and his wife and baby to stay with them. The name for this second so-called chief has been confusing, but I am convinced this was native preacher Rev. Stephen Foreman and his wife Sarah and baby boy Jeremiah Evarts Foreman. Darrel Dexter tells us that Davie applied for a license to keep boarders the very day that little Jeremiah was born, and Davie family tradition tells of the Cherokee baby and parents who stayed with them.

On the west side of Davie’s store on the other side of the road from the Old Fair
Grounds was where Davie’s brother-in-law and competitor William Willard had his store. Sadly William never married but died of tuberculosis at age 31 in 1843. His two brothers, Elijah and Willis, ran the two ferries near Willard’s Landing on the Mississippi River. (Some folks still called the Landing by its earlier name—Green’s Landing.)

Sam and I drove down Cook Avenue past the school , and I showed Sam where I grew up. Then we drove as far as the road went to the top of Bauer’s Hill where some Cherokee crossed over and down to the other side to camp at the southern end of Dutch Creek. We came back and got back on Route 146, now also called Willard’s Ferry Road.

Because of the swamps in The Bottoms by the river, the Cherokee were backed up in the Dutch Creek-Clear Creek area. Perhaps as many as 5,000 or more were waiting for the ice floes to melt or float away. We turned at the Lockard Chapel sign onto Berryville Road and explored one of the many routes some of the 11,000 took. As usual I got lost and took a wrong turn before we reached Hamburg Hill and Atwood Tower, but eventually we were back on Route 146 and continued to the village of Ware.

Directly west of Ware was the road that took early travelers to Willard’s Landing, where there was a storehouse and some homes to greet the boats bringing merchandise from Pennsylvania for Davie and Willard’s Jonesboro stores. (The eastern boats came down the Ohio River to Cairo and then up the Mississippi.) Since the river has changed and been changed so radically by levies and flood control since 1838, we have never discovered any residue of Willard’s Landing.. Several Cherokee detachments crossed here including Jesse Bushyhead and his wife Eliza Wilkerson Bushyhead, who gave birth on January 3, 1839, to Eliza Missouri Bushyhead at what is now called Moccasins Springs. There Bushyhead’s sister Nancy Bushyhead Walker Hildebrand died and was buried.

We drove on south now on Route 146 past Ware Baptist Church, where Sam’s mother was enrolled in Sunday School as an infant, We continued on the TOT Auto Route past the fine goose-hunting and corn-growing farms there in The Bottoms. At Reynoldsville, we noted the road crossing called The Old Cape Road, but we kept on the new highway to the Flea Market, where the Route 146 turns back west to cross the bridge to Missouri. In Cape Girardeau, we enjoyed the beautiful murals on the river flood walls u before we turned to go back across the stunning Bill Emerson Bridge into Illinois.


We did take the Old Cape Road on our way back to Jonesboro because no doubt some of the Cherokee detachments went to the ferries at Hamburg Landing through there. Either there or further south, some Cherokee found themselves crossing on the Smith Ferry and going to Cape Girardeau. We got Sam back to his house, so he could get to bed early for the spring vacation trip his dad had planned for him on Friday to Saint Louis sites.

Yesterday I went to Sam’s last Upward basketball game and found out that son-in-law Brian and daughter Brianna had come down late the night before from Lake Saint Louis to their camper up at Wayside Farm. So in between watching softball games for Georgia and Texas A&M, Gerald and I had Samuel with his new puppy Scooter and Brianna .with Fifi to play here at the farm on Saturday afternoon.

That was a good diversion because Gerald is still at a painfully red and quite ugly stage of his skin peel treatment and has been reluctant to get off the farm much. He did take neighbor Scott to Carbondale to catch a train, but they went through the drive-in for breakfast rather than going inside. We hope by his birthday next Sunday, he will have skin as soft as a baby’s. Reckon?

Weekend Isolation and Wanderings

Gerald has been in self-induced isolation this weekend, and I think he has enjoyed it. He also enjoyed getting out and digging a little in the dirt yesterday after the recent winds have dried up the ground sufficiently that he could do some tractor work. Why has he avoided other people—except on the phone where he has been quite active? (He’s also been having fun checking Facebook.) If you saw him, you would understand.

The dermatologist gave him “mean cream” to treat his sun-damaged ears from all the years he spent working in the sun. After that somewhat painful treatment was over, she suggested he use the cream on his face to treat it. Frankly, we had never noticed any damage there, but with her trained eye, she could see it. And once he started using the “mean cream,” it became more and more apparent that his skin had many places changed by the years in the sun despite the caps he always wore.

On Monday, when he went to the funeral of a friend of his youth, he definitely had some red spots on his face, but I truthfully assured him that I was not offended by them. I would not even think about them as I would look at him. No one would mind sitting by him, I said.

By this weekend, however, the cream is completing its job, and I think more of his face is bright red than not. Many spots and splotches of red and then great circles of red on both cheeks. He looks as if he has some terrible disease rather than remediation. I understood why he wanted to stay home and avoid answering everyone’s questions. Does it hurt? He has never complained, but when I asked him outright, he assured me that yes it is painful.

I let him fix himself a frozen entrée in the microwave yesterday when I went up to Mount Vernon to the Brehm Memorial Library, where the Jefferson County Genealogical Society was meeting. The meeting started at 1, but I had hoped to get there in time to lunch with some of the officers who’d invited me to meet them at the DQ. I ran late and did not know Mt. Vernon enough to find Main Street soon enough, so I ate a solitary quick lunch at Taco Belle.

On the way up, I ran by the Mulkeytown School Museum to pick up more brochures since I’d given out my last on Monday night. At the school, Jim Jones gave me a tour of all the wonderful work that is being done there since I last visited. They are going to be in great shape for the annual Memorial Day barbecue and observance on that Saturday and Sunday in May. The former gym is already completed, and it is absolutely beautiful and a long ramp to allow those in wheelchairs or with bad knees to avoid all stairs to enter there. A stage is almost done, and a local musician has already promised to give concerts there. The kitchen and dining room are near completion, and the volunteer crew was hard at work. The military room is close to being finished with a beautiful huge built-in glass fronted cabinet awaiting the collected treasures to be displayed.

I was glad I took the time to obtain more brochures because this will be a great Memorial Day venue to visit. That weekend someone will take you up to tour Silkwood Inn if you request it. On January 26, a vote was taken, and the Mulkeytown Area Historical Society (which rescued Silkwood Inn from destruction) and the West Franklin Historical District and Genealogical Society (which saved the Mulkeytown school building and created a wonderful collection of artifacts and historical information for genealogists) officially united. The school building is open every Saturday morning, so drop by. Call ahead and you can probably be given a tour of Silkwood Inn also.

It has been astounding that a community as small as the Mulkeytown area could do so much preservation of history with volunteers—many of whom worked in both organizations. So it is logical for the two organizations to unite. Now we need local history teachers to get their students interested and ready to take over the volunteer work in the decades ahead as the oldsters have to retire from all this active physical work.

It was pleasant to meet up with old friends and to meet new ones at the Jefferson County Genealogical Society where I was able to tell again the wonderful story of Priscilla, the slave girl who was freed from the Trail of Tears by Solomon Silkwood.

After I left that meeting, I drove a block off Broadway to slowly drive by St. Mary’s Church where my grandparents attended before that building was built. (If I remember correctly, my grandfather had made a pledge for this building and died before his pledge or the building was completed.) With many childhood visits there, I grew up thinking Mount Vernon was the home place of my mother’s Rockenmeyer-Franklin relatives. Only in recent years have I discovered that much earlier in the 19th century, Jefferson County was also the place where many of my father’s Martin-Garrett relatives had made their homes.

I stopped on the way home at Benton to get some gas and with the intention of visiting Candace Lahr at her book store on the square there. Imagine my shock to discover the store was gone. I walked on around to see if The Buzz was open. Actually its closing time on Saturday is 3 o’clock, but the door was open and I walked in to enjoy meeting Lee Madden, the new owner. After a lifetime in Saint Louis, Lee has come down and already was greeting other store owners by name as she insisted on walking with me back to my car to enjoy the lovely weather. And I left some of my books with her to sell at The Buzz with the other local books she handles. As we were talking, another would-be customer for Candace’s store drove up and was puzzled at the store’s disappearance. I said goodbye to Lee and she went to comfort the young woman desiring the book store. I think Lee’s love for people and books will serve her and her customers well. I know the patrons of The Buzz are grateful to see that gathering place staying open.

I had been keeping in touch with Gerald about the Saturday softball games, so after stopping at Small’s, our favorite place for lunch meat, I headed home with sandwich fixings and went straight to Gerald’s office to join him watching Erin’s game on his computer.

We had a great softball weekend despite Texas A&M’s 8-4 loss to Stephen F. Austin’s Lady Jacks in the final game this afternoon. Vickie was there in the stands at College Station all weekend along with over 1200 other people, so at least she got to see Erin’s great catch against SFA, but they had gotten ahead 5-0 in the first inning, and we never caught up. This ended A&M’s five-game winning streak.

But on Friday night Georgia won against Baylor and A&M won against Utah. Yesterday, Georgia did lose to Washington, rated number one in the nation, but I felt that losing only 2-0 with that team and that pitcher was quite respectable. A&M beat Utah for a second time yesterday and also Kent State. At their first game this afternoon, A&M beat Louisiana Tech with the mercy rule.

The most fun for us, however, was watching on Game Tracker as Georgia played Washington again today. Thjs time, however, things were reversed from yesterday. Georgia got ahead 2-0 early on, and Washington could not catch up. Sophomore Sarah McCloud pitched a complete game shut-out and earned a place on the All Tournament Team along with senior Kristen Schnake, a graduate of Nashville, Illinois, High School. . Georgia’s offense gave Danielle Lawrie her first loss of the season (15-1). Gerald’s phone call with Gerry was useless because Gerry was too hoarse to talk after that exciting game. He had to text his dad instead.

Mid-Winter Mish Mash

One day the weather is Southern Illinois allows us to go coatless; and the next day when we try it, the wind makes us sorry. Today was pretty again although a jacket was in order.


Son-in-law Bryan and Brianna were down from Lake Saint Louis yesterday. Somehow Brianna and Sam ended up at the Illinois Centre Mall, where I spent the day with Southern Illinois Writers Guild members at our fourth annual Winter Book Fair. The mall sets up tables for us in the center section by the fountains, and we sell and sign books and SIWG anthologies while talking to mall strollers. It is always fun to table hop and visit with the other writers as well as talk with past and potential customers. With the economy like it is, no one expects to sell many books.


Brianna had been to the nearby movie theater with the older sister of Sam’s friend Josh. Not only do cousins from afar keep in touch by texting, but they meet and become friends with each other’s friends. Thus, Brianna came from Missouri and ended up at the movies in Illinois with Josh’s sister. Then Sam, who had been under the weather earlier in the day, was feeling better, so son-in-law David brought him out to meet Brianna to explore the mall until we wrapped up the Book Fair at 4 and they could ride out to Woodsong with me.


I needed to buy bananas to give us potassium, and we were out of grapes and getting low on oranges, so we ran by Kroger’s as I had planned and bought sandwiches from the deli there and gas for my near-empty car with our 15 cent discount on the Kroger credit card. Then Brianna, Sam, and I headed out to Woodsong, where Gerald and Brian were finishing up their afternoon projects.


We soon were eating the sandwiches and chips with ice cream and the cookies the kids chose for dessert. (I meant to send the rest of the chocolate milk and those cookies home with one grandchild or the other, so Gerald and I would not be tempted. However, in the concentration to get to Sunday School this morning, I forgot the cookies and milk, so maybe I can take them into Sam’s tomorrow or the next day.)


After helping teach our preschoolers during Sunday School, I stayed on for the extended session during worship. One of our high schoolers came in to help me. It pleases me when teens like Cody come in, because I can remember well many years ago when our son Gerry and his friend Tom were among the boys who helped with the babies and toddlers and preschoolers. Always under the direction of an adult, of course. What real training those sessions were for parenthood.


Worship must have been through hymns today and a little shorter than usual as our interim pastor became ill and had to go home before the service started. Cody said maybe it was a good thing he was not in the choir that long as he was tired. He had not slept well last night, so he got up and texted his friend over in Britain, where the sun was shining. Nevertheless, tired or not, he interacted with the children who keep us hopping.


Preschoolers crave watchful attention, and we give it. One-year-old Caleb delights himself when with intense concentration he learns to manipulate various toys or blocks. Then my heart melts when he looks up to make sure I am watching to admire his achievement. To know my watching means that much to him is as great a reward as our mutual handclapping when he gets the blocks stacked right or places the coin in the slot on the little toy farm barn that he gravitates to every Sunday.


After church, we headed down to the Old Home Place at Goreville to introduce the Taylors and Sam to Patrick and Tina’s new restaurant. Our meal was delicious but plentiful, so three take-home boxes were asked for. Sam left with Brian and Brianna for them to drop him off in Marion on their way back to Missouri.


Gerald wanted to check out an uncommon way back to the farm, so we wandered through country roads like Webb Town road, where we passed the Glen Webb Family Farm established in 1856, and on to roads with names like Wagon Creek Road and Creal Springs Road and finally back to Route 166 where we would turn off onto New Dennison Road and be home to check the softball scores.


The Georgia Dogs had had another good weekend with four shut-out victories in the Black and Red Showcase there at Athens. However, after winning a 14-inning game Wednesday at Huntsville, Texas, against Sam Houston and winning against them again on Friday in the opener at the Easton Tiger Classic at Baton Rouge, Texas A&M had a bad hair day yesterday losing to Ohio State and LSU. Then in bracket play today, they were ahead of LSU until the bottom of the sixth, when LSU rallied with three runs. A&M lost 3 to 4, so I know Vickie and Geri Ann left Louisiana with heavy hearts just as Erin did traveling back to College Station. But Coach Jo Evans was upbeat about all the things the girls did right.


With no church services tonight to allow our pastor to recuperate, we watched some TV, and I am reflecting early on the past week to write this blog. There was the trip up to Rend Lake College to the little restored school house on campus, where Lori Ragsdale had a reception to announce all the life-long learning opportunities coming up. I gave my pitch for our tour through Southern Illinois to revisit the Trail Where the Cherokee Cried. Since it was Lincoln’s birthday, Lori had arranged for Abe and Mary Lincoln performers to give a brief program too. Of course, I was also thinking about granddaughter Geri Ann's 15th birthday.


As always when I am passing by and have time, I pulled off at the Sesser exit at Whittington and visited the Southern Illinois Arts and Artisans Center. It truly is a visual buffet, and although I can’t afford the expensive art objects there, I like looking. I was able to pick up some books and items from the bargain table.


I stayed in Marion to attend Sam’s winter band concert, and before I headed home, I stopped off at Latta Java and was able to hear the last couple SIWG readers there.


Gerald had gone on an Angel Flight with his friend Herman Hood to Arkansas to pick up a patient in route to hospital treatments. I wasn’t sure if he would be at home when I returned or not. He had been playing with going down to Louisville, KY, to the annual farm show after the Angel Flight, but he was back at home asleep in his armchair watching television (ha) when I returned to Woodsong.


The next morning at 3:30 I woke up to see a wide-awake husband with his cap already on and a dance in his step as he scooped his change from the dresser and anticipated his adventure heading to Louisville. I wasn’t surprised, because I knew he really wanted to see all the new stuff that would be on display down there in the acres and acres under roof. I was surprised when he called before 6 that night and instead of staying all night in Louisville as he and his brothers’ custom was for years, he was already back in Illinois and heading home wanting to know if he should pick up supper in Harrisburg or would I like to celebrate with a Valentine’s dinner in Marion. I figured he must be tired, so I let him choose and soon we were eating a lovely dinner at my favorite restaurant in town.


It has been a good week with one afternoon spent studying Gary Hacker’s new book on the Trail of Tears through Johnson County and now several new books from Southern Illinois writers waiting for me to find time to read or at least skim through them. While I sat at the mall yesterday, I was able to read Joanne Blakely’s just published beautiful poetry chapbook. I certainly recommend it and Gary’s book.

The Trail of Tears through Southern Illinois

I just returned to Woodsong after a pleasant trip up to O’Fallon Library for a Trail of Tears Association board meeting. Four of us rode up together, and the others met us there. We laughed a lot going up and coming back, and we laughed in the meeting. Since we had not had a meeting since November, I think we were just glad to see each other.

The work of securing signage along Route 146, an Illinois designated highway; on the actual Trail in Pope County, which Joe Crabb has been able to document; and in the two rest stops on Interstate 57 has been slow and frustrating for the board members doing that important work. So it is good that they were able to laugh tonight.

We hope before 2009 is over, the signs will be up and these board members will know their efforts have been worthwhile. Brochures about the Trail of Tears are now in the rest stops after years of having no information despite being named Trail of Tears rest stops. It emptied our small treasury to do this, but we thought it was worthwhile to the travelers through our area to realize the historical significance of these hallowed grounds.

Although Harvey Henson could not be with us tonight, we received his report of his work with Vickie Devenport, also of Southern Illinois University Carbondale, and Mike Jones at the John A. Logan Museum at Murphysboro. Harvey, Vickie, and Karen Frailey have all worked together to create a traveling map exhibit. It has already been used at St. Anne’s Church in Anna in October and in November at the SIUC Student Center. The exhibit will continue to travel to other regional museums and schools.

Especially exciting is a special afternoon program and reception on Saturday, March 21, to be held at The General John A. Logan Museum in Murphysboro, Illinois. The museum will host the next “Mapping the Trail of Tears through Southern Illinois” from March 6 –April 19. . TOTA Board members will discuss the exhibit and various ongoing research activities related to the Trail of Tears episode. John A Logan Museum director, Mike Jones, will present a brief account of local Jackson County and Native American history related to the Trail of Tears account. Also, a special preview of Trail of Tears episode through our area of the “We Shall Remain” PBS mini-series (pbs.org/weshallremain) will be shown at the March 21st event.

Of course, we were very pleased with the great plans Dr. Herman Peterson has finalized at the newly remodeled SIUC Morris Library on Sunday, April 26. Herman and another librarian Melissa Hubbard from Special Collections will share information on the archived Trail of Tears documents. The “Mapping the Trail through Southern Illinois” exhibit will also be on display at this our first Illinois Chapter Trail of Tears Association meeting for 2009. Possible plans for the other two general meetings this year were also discussed.

Certainly the Trail of Tears Association, The National Park Service, and the upcoming PBS mini-series have been raising awareness of the importance the diaspora had in our national history. I know of three other programs in our area on the Trail of Tears in March in addition to the one at the Murphysboro Museum. (Because I am speaking at them.) And John A. Logan College’s Life Long Learning program is sponsoring a two-week class in March on the Trail taught by Marilyn Schild.

A Nice Fall Day

Fifty years ago today one of my fondest wishes came true. I had a new baby son. So naturally I have thought about Gerry all day today.

After I had put on a roast for our noon meal, I had time read a bit of Charles Frazier’s thirteen moons and regretted having to stop just when I got to the part of the story about the Cherokee Removal.

Being able to leave a clean kitchen to come home to barely gave me time to make it to the optometrist appointment at 2:30 in Marion. But I arrived early even after circling the block to find their beautiful new building, which still did not have an identifying sign since Dr. Power had only moved into it on Monday. Remembering the news account of a car accidentally slamming into his old office and sending patients flying, I knew he was relieved to be in a brick building with a little more space between the building and parking lot.

There I had a couple of concerns taken care of. On Saturday I had received notice from the insurance company that the over $200 left on my bill for glasses last December was not covered. I had already paid $95 in December and assumed the rest was all paid off. Immediately the women in the office assured me that this was properly covered because of its being related to the cataract surgery I had just had. They said the insurance company did this all the time and a simple phone call from them would fix it. (Why do I suspect that the insurance company enjoyed using the doctor’s money all this time?)

Then the doctor himself relieved my concern about the cataract on the other eye. I was afraid that it might have become so much worse that I would need to have the surgery before Christmas, which was exactly what I was planning to do when I had made today’s appointment many weeks ago. He assured me, however, that I could have the surgery safely with the new procedures despite being on coumadin. But also that it would probably not hurt for me to wait the six months until I am off coumadin. We talked politics during and after the exam, so the entire appointment was pleasant and interesting.

Then I was on my way around the block to Dr. Kaarsbery’s office in this newly developed professional park out by our new hospital. She wanted me to have another INR reading today to make sure she is adjusting the coumadin dosage correctly. Last week the reading had been high. A single prick on the finger and the meter assured me I was in the normal range this week.

By now it was getting cool and dark. I had to put on the jacket in the car that I’d avoided wearing. After a quick visit with Katherine, I was back to the Kroger store to pick up the prescriptions I had left there to be filled. I bought as few groceries as I could get by with because it was past supper time and I needed to hurry. With three baked chicken thighs from the deli and fresh fruit, I figured I had sufficient other foods to fill in the blank for Gerald’s supper. We were eating within l0 minutes after I arrived home, and I emptied the car after supper and Obama’s infomercial.

It had turned out to be a good day—just as it was 50 years ago.

Touching Base with Tossie

Traveling north on highways through eastern Georgia, we stopped at a roadside stand of an orchard owner for directions, a bag of apples, and a jar of sugarless Muscatine jelly, which has added the sweet grape flavor to our breakfast toast here at Woodsong. I also couldn’t resist a paper bag of horehound candies, a treat my father used to bring home from Rixlebin Pharmacy in Jonesboro and our mother would have us cough to receive our piece.

We crossed the bridge at Ellijay and continued north into Tennessee, where we passed more villages reminding us of the Cherokee--Ducktown, Turtletown, and Tellico Plains. Somewhere along here we saw a sign pointing to White Path Springs, and I wished we had time to go I thought of the death and burial of the revered elder chief who at my age had to be left behind buried in the foreign soil of Hopkinsville, KY, with a make-shift wooden monument painted to look like marble. A tall pole with white linen flag was placed so the following detachments of displaced Cherokee could mourn his passing.

During this twilight drive, where out road ran through the southern part of the Cherokee National Forrest, I could certainly understand his people’s heartbreak at being forced to leave their homeland in these beautiful mountains. Soon it was dark and the winding road spiraled through the tall green trees. As the night darkened and the curving road was constant, we hoped we wouldn’t meet anyone. We begin to think about the need for a motel. Most of the time, there were no houses and no lodging in sight. Light rain started making the darkness lit by our headlights magically lovely but diminishing driving visibility. We passed the little town Mount Vernon with few houses, and once we enjoyed the delightful scene of small children playing outside in a lit church yard evidently after the evening service while their parents lingered and visited.

As the rain intensified, we were grateful we seldom met a car and were relieved when we found a motel in Madisonville and could pull off the road. After we secured a room by using the phone placed outside the locked office, we went next door for a sandwich before retiring. With the car backed up to our room, we unloaded our bags from the trunk under the cover of the large umbrella we had used for shade at the softball games. We were soon in bed and slept well until almost 6 the next morning.

On up the road, we called our friend Tossie from Shoneys, where we had a great breakfast and abundance of coffee. After driving through the rest of Tennessee, we passed Jellico and entered Kentucky and were soon at Williamsburg. This was our first visit with our long-time dear friend since she moved down from their mountain home and into town. That home on the mountain was one of my all-time favorite houses with two of my very favorite rooms—Chester’s large formal library where he studied and wrote and a dining room built to hold the antique table where wonderful meals and conversations took place. .

After Chester’s long illness and death, Tossie had donated Chester’s library to his alma mater Berea College. She had started giving away furniture before she went to American Samoa to work in a library there, but plans to sell came to a halt. She stayed on top of the mountain by herself for a few years after the Samoa adventure. We visited her there once more and enjoyed the new sunroom and watching the birds as well as eating with her friends at the dining room table. That visit on a drive around town, she even showed us the apartment she thought she might move into someday. However, we knew she had changed her plans. Instead she moved into a house next door to a friend, who had decided to completely redo a small house instead of tearing it down.

We found the yellow house without difficulty and Tossie was outside to greet us. She had once more moved her mother’s iris and mint to a bed in the front yard,. In the large back yard, she had beautiful trees. With plenty of privacy to play her piano as loud as she wants, the house seems just right for her: aesthetically pleasing, comfortable, practical, filled with antiques in use and mementoes of a life well lived. Soon we were hearing stories of how everything worked out perfectly as she gave away her furniture and sold the mountain home to a friend. I loved knowing the antique dining room table was still in place on top of the mountain.

Gerald showed his photo albums, and they reminisced about the Hawaiian children in the church where Chester served as pastor. Tossie was able to bring Gerald up-to-date news of the successes of some of the boys he had coached and driven around the island in the church van while the boys teasingly tried to get him lost. And, of course, we wanted updates on all her children and grandchildren, whose pictures were scattered around.

Since she had a long-scheduled check up with a doctor at Corbin that afternoon, we left behind the yellow house and had lunch in Corbin so we could use every minute talking until time for her appointment and our departure. She had the guest room ready in case we decided to accept her invitation to spend the night, but we were anxious to find if everything were okay after the 60-mile winds left-over from Ike had hit Southern Illinois the previous night.

Before we returned to Woodsong, we drove to the other farm to see if Brian’s corn crop was still standing and it was. Gerald was pleased that Bryce had done some more improvement on the ditch he and the highway people have been working on. Everything looked good there. As we drove up to our house and saw that our crop of sunflowers, which were still blooming beautifully when we left, were now all blown over and comically askew on the ground, we had to laugh. Unlike many homes in our area, our house’s electricity had not gone off, and we settled in for an evening of reading the accumulated newspapers.

Fifi's Loaning Me Her Rubber Chicken

My three-week search for a rubber chicken for VBS has been successful. Brianna told me Sunday afternoon that Fifi has a rubber chicken. I called Mary Ellen the next day to double check and told her to ask Fifi if I could borrow it. Everyone agreed Fifi said yes. Brianna said Fifi didn’t like the old thing anyway. Now if the Taylor household can locate Fifi’s rubber chicken and not forget to bring it down to Woodsong, I have escaped the dreaded thought that I was supposed to spend $l0 on one. (I had decided as a matter of principal that I would not, but I had not been able to think of another way to pull off the on-going gag each day about the safety of the captain’s pet parrot.)

The called-for colorful ten-foot “parachute” was neatly packaged and delivered to my front porch today while I was away. I have never played with a pretend parachute before, so I have to learn how to explain to the children how to rolls balls around on it and flip them off. Kim coached me tonight. (I still better read those suggestions in my leader’s book again.) Probably some of the kids have already done this and can teach me.

In the same box was my copy of The Cherokee Trail of Tears by photographer David Fitzgerald and with text by Duane King. I had just finished reading Marilyn Schild’s copy she loaned me, and it was so beautiful that I had to add it to my TOT books. I wish I had time to sit down and read it again.

Sonja filled the side of our garage with inflated animals yesterday while I was gone, and tonight I hauled them to a storage room at church. My back seat was filled with sharks, whales, a sea horse, a flamingo, and other air-stuffed objects to use in and around the tropical island I am supposed to create for our games. These are joining the stuffed cat that Charlene has loaned me and the monkeys from Samuel’s house.

The dining room table is still covered with boxes, papers, and the things I had laminated yesterday for the children to use. Tomorrow will be my first day at home this week, so I will need to finalize plans and make efforts to clear that table before grandkids start arriving.

We were saddened when our crop of seven ducklings quickly reduced to three. Gerald was somewhat comforted, however, by getting to see a nest full of baby quail make an appearance.

The ducks and geese cross our lane all day long going to the wheat field for the grain left behind after Scott combined it. Something about an approaching car causes them to want to go from whichever side of the lane they are on to the other side. I slow down and talk to them as I wait. I talk sweet when I am feeling patient. When I am not, I tell them to get off the road. They don’t act like they hear me. Reckon they have bird brains?

We received a gentle half inch rain last night and another during the day today while Gerald and I were both off the farm. As I went in and out of stores this afternoon, the rain wasn't good for the new perm I got this morning, but Gerald says this is just the right time for Brian’s pollinating corn.

A Strange and Unscheduled Week

I have not meant to change my writing date from Wednesday to Saturday, even though it seems as if that has happened. Our lives have been in too much turmoil to keep any kind of schedule for several weeks now.

Gerald and I drove to the Crabb-Abbott Farm east of Vienna on Tuesday after stopping for a hamburger at Ned’s Shed. It was raining too hard to walk down to the creek where the Trail is most obvious, but 88 people braved the rain to come out for the unveiling of the sign marking the farm as one segment of the Cherokee’s Trail of Tears.

We stood in Joe and Ethel’s open garage for brief meetings before and after the unveiling. Our Trail of Tears Association president Sandy Boaz told us that when she checked the Daniel Butrick journal, she found it was also raining on January 8, 1839. Then we all headed over to the Dixon Springs State Park kitchen, where Joe and Ethel and their daughters served us all chili, white chili, hot dogs, and all kinds of other extras and goodies including a surprise birthday cake for Joe.

A special treat for me was being able to visit with the Jim and Maybelle Watkins family--who were my Jonesboro neighbors on Cook Avenue when I was growing up. Their son Jim and wife Nancy were also there. Jim had been in my mother’s classroom in the second grade and then again when she was moved to teach fourth grade to his class two years later.

That night we learned the sad news that the bone marrow test for Gerald’s brother Ken showed an abundance of leukemia cells again. We went up to the hospital the next day and intended to stay all night with our daughter’s family in Lake Saint Louis and come home Thursday morning.

Instead Gerald’s sister Ernestine flew in from Rock Springs, Wyoming, and we met her plane Thursday afternoon. Ken and Opal had been told by the doctor that morning that he would receive a transfusion and platelets and be sent home since the chemo had not worked and the doctor could do nothing more for Ken.

Unfortunately and weirdly in all our opinions, the transfusion and platelets did not arrive for Ken until almost midnight. His two daughters were able to take Ken and Opal from the hospital a little before 2 a.m. on Friday morning and they arrived at their Marion home at 4 a.m. It had been a long and exhausting time--over a day and a half for Ken and Opal when they were finally able to go to bed in their own bed Friday morning.

Since then Ken has been rejoicing at being home, and he and Opal have been holding open house to their children, grandchildren, and siblings. Today their son took Ken and Opal on the drive he wanted to Union County and visited with several of Opal’s family who brought him all Ken’s favorite treats they could think of. He went to bed early tired but happy I think.

We have been sharing Ernestine with her other brothers and wives. Consequently, we’ve been treated to dinner at Cracker Barrel last night and at Ryan’s tonight.

The downstairs Christmas tree is back in the closet where it belongs, but some of the ornaments are still spread out on the bed in that room. Upstairs, when we got home with Ernestine, I put away all the holiday accessories that were lying on the bed in the guest bedroom waiting to be put away. Yesterday I took the living room tree down and boxed up those ornaments, but I could not get one part of the tree pulled apart to fit in the box. I must call that to Gerald's attention to finish that job for me.

Yesteday I barely made it to a doctor's appointment made a year ago, and the office was all torn up and being painted. The woman at the desk explained that our answering machine had not worked when they tried to phone and cancel the appointment. Having been told my new glasses would be ready this week, I then fought the after-school traffic and went to get them assuming they too had been unable to leave the message on the non-working answering machine. There after a wait, the right person got off the phone to tell me that they had been mistaken--because of some problem my glasses had to be outsourced and maybe I would get them next week--although she wasn't sure.

As I said, the week has been filled with unscheduled activities as well as ones scheduled.

Chatting About Daily Chit Chat

Gerald and I took the pickup over to the body shop this afternoon. We were finally able to pick up our car today. The twice-replaced back right door looks great. I hope this door lasts longer than the first two.

I drove on to Carbondale as I had a Trail of Tears Association board meeting tonight, and I have been needing the car to claim my re-soled and repaired Birkenstocks from Shawnee Trails. They’ve been ready for a while, but I had no car to go get them. The management there is so accommodating. I apologized for being so long in picking them up, and the man was so nice that I was almost made to feel I’d done them a favor for being so poky! Once again for far less than half price, my returned Birks looked like a new pair. And choosing repair over brand new helps the environment as well.

While I was that close to 710 Book Store, I couldn’t resist the pleasure of going in to look at the books. I was delighted to find a copy of the late Normagene Warner’s Standing on Tiptoe, one of the most beautiful and honest accounts of losing a child that I’ve ever read. You can no longer order it from Amazon, so I was delighted to find a couple of copies there, and I bought one as I think I gave my last one away. Copies of the late Dr. Ben Fox’s two books were also there.

Earlier this week I finished Cinnamon the same day I started it. This account of the trekking the Appalachian Trail was fascinating and enlightening. I am also thoroughly enjoying Rowena McClinton’s translation of the diaries from the Moravian mission in pre-Trail of Tears Georgia. I won’t finish these two hefty volumes in a hurry though.

Diaries and journals are probably my favorite genre because they are composed of such simple day-to-day activities that end up making a life. Yet the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. One of my all-time favorites is The Diary of Helena Morley, which Elizabeth Bishop translated. It is the wonderful diary of a young girl in Brazil telling of the daily life in their village. I used to order it through inter-library loan, but with the Internet, I was able to buy my own second-hand copy.

In much the same way, I have always been attracted to the weekly journalists who write personal columns about the Smith family spending the day at grandma’s house and little Suzie Jones being sick with the flu. There was a time in my life that I read probably 25 or so of these community columns a week--about people I did not know from neighborhoods with names like Possum Hollow or Tool Shed Corner.

One of my weird writing goals was to write such a column, and I did accomplish that for about nine months. It was some of the most difficult writing I ever did.

The Johnson County Genealogical and Historical Society is publishing a book of Harry Nave’s columns from some decades ago, and I am eager to read his book. I find it exciting that he wrote a book without knowing it--one weekly column at a time.

Fall Cookin’

Autumn brings new menus--no more BLT’s with tomatoes from the garden and no more veggies to pick for lunch.

I’ve bought several bags of local apples. The huge sweet potatoes at Small’s Grocery were so attractive that I couldn’t resist one that I baked in the microwave. Gerald and I ate on that one monster potato for two meals. I have made my first big pot of beef-vegetable soup for the season and the first apple cake I have made in over a decade. The cake is so good, but neither Gerald nor I are supposed to be eating such sweets. I used to make these all fall but doubled this recipe to fill up a large pan twice as big as the 13 by 9 inch I used on Wednesday. Of course, in those days I had a houseful of young adults to feed.

In addition to feeding the two of us, I have been reading and, of course, doing some writing. And have had a good many check-ups and doctor appointments to take up time the last couple of months. I delight in days when I do not have to go anywhere and can stay home to enjoy myself. Yesterday on what would have been my mother’s 105th birthday had she lived, Gerald took me to schedule cataract surgery on December 6th.

When we returned home, with dilated eyes and the flare-up of arthritis that is making it painful for me to walk, I had a good excuse to start reading the first of two huge volumes of translations of Anna Gambold’s diaries from Springplace mission to the Indians in Georgia. The books were ordered months ago, but were delayed so they arrived Tuesday from Amazon, where they were cheaper than at the University of Nebraska Press.

Originally written in a tiny hand script of an ancient variation of German, the diaries are now available to the world in English thanks to the painstaking and remarkable work of Dr. Rowena McClinton, who teaches at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville.

I have only read McClinton’s introduction so far and have been amazed and enlightened about the Moravian mission movement as it developed in Europe. Since I have had no world history since grade school, all of her explanations were new to me and I was fascinated with the breadth of her knowledge while wishing for more on my part. In fact, I think I will quit this blog and go read more!

The Story Story from the Trail of Tears

Robin Roberts, photographer and horse woman, had discovered the Story Cemetery in the Shawnee National Forrest some years ago while attending the Nine Day Trail Ride. More recently, she found a new marker where before only the Civil War marker of Ephriam Story had been among the 50 or more graves there--almost all with just a sandstone marker as so many old graveyards have. The new marker was for Ephriam’s wife Caroline (Williford) Story and along with her dates was this: “TSI-TSA-LA-GI (I am Cherokee.)”

Robin began a search to solve the mystery of what descendant of Ephriam and Caroline had added the marker for Caroline. (We assumed it was placed by a descendant.)

Evelyn Hogg, the wife of Vernon Hogg, who is the great grandson of Ephriam and Caroline, was kind enough to write a letter and send a great deal of Trail of Tears information to Robin including the family story that Caroline and her younger sister Mary Williford had indeed been left behind on the Trail of Tears. (Mary's name was Benton when she married, and she died in a nursing home in Indiana.)

Vernon had put up signs pointing to the Story Cemetery around 1999, and at that time there was only Ephriam’s marker. Some three or four years ago they discovered the new marker. Like Robin, they were pleased by it, but had no idea who had put it up.

Among the information Mrs. Hogg sent was the indenture of Caroline and Mary Williford, who at ages 7 and 9 in 1846 were indentured to different families until they were 18. Mrs. Hogg had this indenture record thanks to the work of Ed Annable.

Robin had shared by email beautiful photographs that she had taken of the cemetery and tombstones, and I was fascinated by this story of two little girls left behind on the Trail of Tears. She has continued searching for more descendants and has been corresponding with them.

Just as we had conjectured, Robin was able to confirm today that the two sisters’ parents had died as a result of the Trail of Tears and that a family in Pope County had taken them in. Was this family named Williford? Or was that the original Cherokee family name? Why were the girls indentured in 1846? Did the family who had taken them in die?

As information was passed back and forth among a group of us, new information kept popping up that added new questions to the old ones. So I have deliberately only told you a bit of the story. I hope someday Robin can answer all the mysteries for us and that we will have a complete story of the Williford family members who dropped off the Trail of Tears in 1839.

Maybe by then the Illinois Chapter of the Trail of Tears Association will have a location for an accessible archive for the public. The TOTA is in the process of collecting the heartbreaking stories of broken families left behind in Southern Illinois as Cherokee were forced to relocate in Oklahoma.

If you have any information on the Story family or any other Cherokee left in our region because of the Trail of Tears, please contact anyone in the Illinois Chapter of TOTA, so we can add your information to the archives.

Searching for Trails

When Gerald went to Cape Girardeau for a tractor part on Monday morning, I tagged along.

We had often traversed Route 146 from Jonesboro to Ware when we lived in the Mississippi bottoms. A few summers ago, we had driven slowly, stopped often, and searched ditches diligently for the Trail of Tears marker we both remembered. A photograph of the marker by the late Geneva Wiggs had been on the 2000 summer issue of Saga of Southern Illinois. Carole Watkins, who had grown up in that area, was emailing me directions from California assuring me the marker was there. She had just seen it that summer. Finally, she sent me her photographs to prove it. But the marker was gone. No one seems to know what happened to it.

The identical marker (both put up by the state in 1935) had long before disappeared from the more eastern area on Route 146. When Interstate 57 went in, King Neptune’s grave was moved to the Trail of Tears rest stop on the northbound traffic side; evidently the Trail of Tears marker near it had already been stolen. Sadly (and almost inconceivably), the Trail of Tears rest stops carry no information about the Trail of Tears.

But on Monday, Gerald and I were looking for the Trail of Tear routes that went south of Route 146. Recently we had been studying Marie Exter’s 1994 maps that she had shared with Geneva Wiggs, who had shared copies with me. Learning from Robin Roberts about the Lakota Sundance held in the open area south of the water plant, we wanted to see the trails that evidently led to Hamburg Landing three-and-a-half miles south of Willard’s Landing on the Mississippi River.

The detachments going to Willard’s Landing had used the route we call Route 146 and were stranded in the area of Dutch Creek, Sand Dug Hill (not dug yet), and Clear Creek before the sloughs stopped them from going on over to the Mississippi River where ice floes made getting across the river impossible for three or more weeks.

Darrell Dexter in his Saga article felt the various detachments used all the ferries on the river at that time--the two Willard brother ferries (sometimes called by their predecessor’s name of Green’s Ferry, the ferry at Hamburg Landing with Bainbridge Ferry coming over from the Missouri side to the sandbar there, and finally Smith’s Ferry leading to Cape Girardeau. It would take two or three days to ferry a detachment of l000 people across the Big River.

For Gerald this travel on Berryville Road past Lockard Chapel Church was a trip back to his boyhood. Almost every farmhouse we saw, he could remember visiting there or knowing the people back then. We had actually traveled these same roads with our friends Tom and Lois (Ferrell) Doctor a few years back--but then we were looking for traces of Lois’s ancestors--not traces of the Cherokee.

We could not resist going up to where Atwood Tower used to be. Gerald remembered the days he spent in the tower with his uncle Francis Wenger. They’d leave Uncle Francis’ car or truck at the home of Louie Kelley’s sister and walk the rest of the way when the road was not passable. Gerald said a day spent in the tower watching for smoke could become a very boring day. I bet he or his brothers livened it up for Uncle Francis, who had some sort of instrument that he could use to pinpoint the location of a fire and send word to the firefighters. Fortunately, we did not meet any other vehicles since the gravel road was not built for two cars to pass.

Although we found no traces we could recognize, we were impressed with the breath-taking steepness and beauty of the tree-covered hillsides. It was a stunning wilderness and a beautiful drive with slim but tall leafy trees reaching up trying to find sunlight. Yet I thought how difficult it must have been for the hungry Cherokee to look for game in those steep hillsides.

We went to the dead end of another road searching for a possible passage to Route 146 going south from Ware, but the road turned into a path Gerald’s pickup could not take. We had to go back and across Dutch Creek to Route 146 going south, where we crossed Dutch Creek again. Dutch Creek runs north and under the bridge on 146; and finally up above the old Morgan School area, it runs into Clear Creek, which runs south. (I hope I got that right--Gerald kept trying to explain it to me.)

We came home using the Old Cape Road with a brief side trip through Mission Valley country. From the road signs there, I guess that little village, which is known for producing both brains and musicians, may be called Fair City. I would love to attend the church there some Sunday.

But when we were growing up, we had heard that area referred to as either Ubydam Hollow or Ibedam Hollow. Like most people, I was never sure which dam hollow people were talking about, and I am not sure I had ever visited those hollows before. It was peaceful and lovely.

We continued on by Lyerla Lake and somehow onto Airport Road (which I understand is where Tickie Norris and a friend would light their plane in the old days) and finally came back out by Lockard Chapel and back to Route 146.

A brief visit with Geneva Wiggs’ daughter Billie Kaye to return some photographs made the day complete.

The Trail of Tears from River to River at the GSSI Spring Conference

Genealogists of Southern Illinois spent a beautiful spring day June 9th remembering some of the horrors of a brutal cold winter in this area over 166 years ago. At that time, approximately 11,000 Cherokee trekked from the Ohio River to the Mississippi River on their way to Indian Territory.

The Board of the Illinois Chapter of the Trail of Tears presented a morning-long symposium at the Spring Conference of the Genealogical Society of Southern Illinois at John A. Logan College in Carterville. Conference Chair Mike Brush indicated that the large crowd in attendance was evidence of the interest that has developed in the area for information on the Trail of Tears.

Despite the absence of two panelists due to illness, not a minute was wasted to convey as much information as possible about the tragic story of the forced removal of the Five Civilized Tribes from their homeland. The audience was encouraged to join the Trail of Tears Association and help the Illinois Chapter to discover the exact route of the Trail, collect the stories of the Cherokee who were left behind in this state, and memorialize both the ones who died and the ones who endured the cruel march.

As moderator. after introducing the TOTA Board, I gave a brief background of the attitudes and events leading up to the Indian Removal Act in 1830 and the United States Senate’s ratifying by one vote in 1836 the fraudulent Treaty of New Echota.

Illinois chapter president Sandy Boaz, a charter member of both the national TOTA in 1993 and the Illinois Chapter in 2003, explained the role of the TOTA in helping the National Park Service in the creation, development, and interpretation of the Trail of Tears National Historic Trail established by Congress in 1987.

After a brief break for the audience, Harvey Henson of the Southern Illinois University at Carbondale geology department, gave a power point presentation telling about the ongoing remote sensing project at Camp Ground Cumberland Presbyterian Church Cemetery in Union County. Oral tradition has passed down that a large area of the cemetery was where Mr. George Hileman allowed the Cherokees camping there to bury their dead that dreadful winter. The SIUC work is confirming the exact location of those graves.

Next Joe Crabb told of the Cherokees coming across the Ohio River from Kentucky into Golconda and had the crowd laughing at the evaluation of the Golconda residents found in Rev. Daniel S. Butrick’s journal. Joe gave his educated guess as to where the Trail went through Pope County explaining that he was convinced that some used the roadway through his farm.

Gary Hacker took over to share what is known about the location of the Trail through Johnson County. He talked about sites known as Gillespie, McCorkle Creek, Vienna, Dutchman Creek, West Vienna, Hezekiah West, Cypress, Ferne Clyffe, and Cache Bottoms, He explained how the Illinois Chapter had secured legislation in November to make Route 146 a designated historic trail for the state and his efforts now to obtain appropriate signage. With help from Juanita Whiteside, the Illinois Chapter has succeeded in getting Bridges Tavern (still existing inside a barn on north side of 146) put on the Landmarks Preservation Council of Illinois’ current list of endangered sites.

Sandy Boaz discussed the Trail beginning at the Union County line. Her ancestor George Hileman had allowed the Indians to camp on his farm and chop the woods there for their firewood. He had previously buried two of his small children in the field where they were camping, and they were allowed to bury their dead there too. In was in the 1850s that Mr. Hileman donated land for the church and its cemetery. She talked about the Cherokee going through Jonesboro and onto Dutch Creek where the floes preventing crossing on the Mississippi River caused groups to stop. There were probably 8000 backed up for over a month between the two rivers.

While eating their box lunches, many chose to listen to Marion Mitchell’s power point presentation on the Indians in Illinois during the time when the British encouraged them to make war on pioneer settlers.

The afternoon ended with the powerful historically accurate dramatic portrayal by Tony Girard enacting the service of a common soldier during Cherokee round-up in Georgia. After the fictional soldier’s enlistment was up, he then signed on as a teamster with a contractor traveling with the Cherokee. By the time he reached the Mississippi River, he could take no more of the death and disease he had to observe.

Several audience members stayed on to meet with former GSSI president Phillip Stucker, who was visiting from Texas. He gave another power point rendition of the Trail of Tears Association and answered genealogical questions in the room where there was a display of notebooks and materials on the Trail.

Double Digit Birthday for Sam

A special double digit birthday for Samuel was celebrated today because he reached 10. It was fun at the small family party tonight to hear him tell about all the wondrous things they did this morning in the new kids’ science class he started at John A. Logan College.

I had trouble believing him when he told that they set their hands on fire! His unblemished hands seemed to deny that. But the teacher had them wash their hands in soapy water to which he had added something that got in the bubbles and flamed up and away when the hands were lit. I can’t remember what it was he added but the men all knew and understood. I wouldn’t want to promote this experiment anyway without that teacher there to supervise. And they cut up a cow’s eye. All kinds of such excitement! I liked hearing about it.

His cousin Trent spent the afternoon with him, and they are already anticipating the Star Wars kid party tomorrow afternoon since they are both Star War fans. Big brother Davie’s gift of a Star War chess set was a big hit tonight.

I’d spent the afternoon at Camp Ground Church listening to local people tell their family stories about family members who participated, observed, or dropped off the Trail of Tears through Southern Illinois. These stories also were wondrous but very sad. We cannot imagine the horrors that were forced upon the five civilized tribes--Seminoles, Creeks, Choctaw, Chickasaw, and Cherokees--as treaties were broken with their nations, and whites took over their property and made them march west against their will to a land they feared--and that was already occupied by other tribes.

Trekking from the Ohio River to the Mississippi River, many of the Cherokee were trapped here because of ice floes on the Mississippi. These stranded groups experienced one of the most gruesome times on the Trail of Tears. Their babies sometimes froze in their arms, their bare feet left blood in the snow, and many who died here could not always be properly buried.

Before there was a Camp Ground Church, there was a wooded knoll at that hillside with five nearby springs. Both Native Americans and early pioneers choose to camp there as they traveled the Lusk Trail from east to west or the main trail south to Fort Massac.

George Hileman was an early farmer who acquired that knoll and surrounding farm land. In 1836 during an epidemic of some sort, he and his wife lost two children and buried them near their home.

Some of the first of the eleven Cherokee detachments going through this region during the Forced Removal got across the Big River before the floes. However, perhaps as many as 8000 were stranded here for weeks. Cherokee were spread out from the Ohio River to Dutch Creek and Clear Creek west of Jonesboro, where the sloughs prevented their camping any closer to the Mississippi.

Many were camping at the Hileman farm--some estimate maybe 3000 were there. The freezing Indians cleared the wooded knoll for firewood for their camp fires. The Hilemans gave them permission to bury their dead in the field where their children were buried. In 1850, he gave land for the church when it was established and soon afterward land for the cemetery that exists around the church today. Mr. Hileman's great great great granddaughter, Sandy Boaz and her husband Dwight are members of the Camp Ground congregation. Sandy worked for 20 years accumulating the evidence and documentation that caused the National Park Service to make Camp Ground Church and Cemetery a certified Trail of Tears site. The hospitality shown by this congregation in this beautiful rural church building is always warm and genuine, which must please Mr. Hileman very much. (Yes, I deliberately used a present tense verb. I think he knows about the present congregation following his example.)

The stories told this afternoon made it clear that the suffering was intense and prolonged long after the Trail of Tears. Leaving their beautiful farms and snug cabins behind and starting over from scratch in Indian Territory, a part of which became the state of Oklahoma in 1906, caused continued economic harm that is still felt today. On the other hand, if hardship makes humans tough, the Cherokee who did not die on the Trail of Tears had proof forever after of how strong they were and how deserving they were of the pride they had in themselves.

Yet just as our service people never get over the war-time horrors they live through, James Mooney discovered when he interviewed the Cherokee many decades later that they too were haunted the rest of their lives by the terrible times in Southern Illinois in that dreadful winter of 1838

The Sad Life and Times of Reverend Stephen Foreman and Other Humans

A sad rainy day in our nation with tornadoes killing a seven-year-old girl in Missouri and striking a high school in Alabama with young people still trapped there at dusk. While I did not watch TV a lot today, when I did, I usually ended up in tears.

Gerald was away from the farm all day as he had an appointment in Carbondale to receive a replacement for his new hearing aid that evidently fell out of his ear while on a walk all over the farm and into the woods a few Sundays ago. He also had his eyes checked and made the trip to Union County (where people just west of Jonesboro on the Berryville Road had awful wind damage) to figure out taxes with Doug Hileman. He lunched at the Kroger store in Anna with his brother Keith and nephew Tim. That was a new one to me--that you could sit down and eat a meal at the grocery store.

Here at the farm, it was rainy and overcast all day. I cheered myself up by starting the day sending brightly colored greeting cards to some shut-ins. And I paid a couple of bills. I walked down to the mailbox in pleasant weather to mail them even though puddles were abundant and the air was heavy with the morning’s earlier rain.

Next I went to the office and did some filing--with 20 or 30 more days of it, I would be caught up on my filing. Then I would need to start going through all the old stuff in the filing drawers and pitching out. Ah well.

I read through a couple of magazines in the afternoon and was able to start a give-away pile of them. Again, in 20 or 30 days, I could get ride of all the old magazines in the house.

I did a mite of writing on some small projects already started--thus, managing to avoid the hard stuff that I should really be concentrating on. I tell myself that the minute I get the large table in my office cleared off, I will be ready to go to work. And I think I will be.

I haven’t been completely off track. I have been doing some review reading and have also finished three books about Cherokee--two of them children’s books. One of the children's book was about the TOT but the other about a Cherokee boy in Tennessee in the 1930s. Since it was written by a white writer, who pretended to be part Cherokee, it is perhaps more accurate about a white child living in the mountains than about a Cherokee child. (I may want to review it sometime, but I am still contemplating this book.)

The new The Life and Times of Reverend Stephen Foreman by his great granddaughter Cooleela Faulkner was fascinating. I learned many new things from it and am still digesting what I learned. I find it impossible to understand how this man could accept human slavery with seemingly no fretfulness. At least he expressed no concerns in his dairy about slavery. Because the Cherokee census of 1835 did not show his owning slaves, I had not known he owned slaves, so he is less a hero to me than he once was.

Although his journal about the Trail was burned in a fire of his home, Faulkner’s book publishes his journal writing during the Civil War era in Oklahoma. Of course, I need the early journal for my work. Yet I am very glad to have read this revealing book with the valuable writings of this respected Cherokee leader.

The material in the book was originally submitted by Faulkner to the University of Oklahoma as her thesis for her masters degree in history. Fortunately, the work has finally been published in beautiful hard back book by the Cherokee Heritage Press, a division of the Cherokee National Historical Society. It can be ordered from the Cherokee Heritage Center, P.O. Box 515, Tahlequah, OK 74465. Their phone number is (918) 456-6007.

No one could have had a more difficult life than Foreman--and many other Cherokee. Yet the people in Enterprise, Alabama, tonight know the same human misery. And the people in Iraq and Afgahanistan and so many other places in our world including Walter Reed Hospital filled with brave young men trying to regain a semblance of normal life. There is no escaping the tragedies that cause grief to the human heart. I can keep the TV off, but I still know the misery is there. It is there everyday in many places. I do not want to be uncaring about the misery. Nor do I want to dwell on it so much that I become depressed and a burden to others with self-created misery. Learning to handle one's own pain and the pain of others and yet continue to be aware of all the beauty and goodness also all around us is one of the greatest challenges of human life.