Day 77, Year 11: Reconnecting
Date: Thursday, January 7, 2016
Weather: Sunny, High 51 degrees F
Location: Ramada Inn, Strasburg, Virginia
Today was dedicated to reconnecting with the past . . . with family members I haven’t seen for way too many years and with places family members lived long ago. We started at Aunt Ethel’s. By the time we got up, she had the dining table set with china and silver and was ready to serve a breakfast featuring her ‘famous’ stewed apples. She also served bacon and eggs with grits. What a way to break the fast. After breakfast, I made calls to phone numbers Aunt Ethel and I had searched out last night for two cousins who we hoped still lived in the Roanoke area. Aunt Ethel used to communicate with one of them but had lost contact. So I matched phone numbers I found on the internet against a very old phone book Aunt Ethel had. Unfortunately no one answered at either number. So we said our farewells to Aunt Ethel and drove to the first address. No one home. I walked to the neighbors on either side of the house and again found no one home. Then I spotted a woman walking to her mailbox. I ran to catch her to tell her my plight. She didn’t recognize my cousin’s name, but when I mentioned her son’s name, she said a man by that name used to live there, had divorced, and left the wife in that home. So close, but no cousin there. We then drove to Salem, which is the town next to Roanoke, to the second address. Again, no one home. Again, I knocked on neighbors’ doors and found no one home. I walked across the street and finally found someone home who confirmed that my 85 year-old cousin still lives in that home. So I returned and knocked on the side door. Still no answer. Then a car drove into the drive-way and I felt like I had hit the jackpot. Both cousins were in the car. We spent the next two and a half talking with Louvena Anderson and Ama Lowe Reid, the oldest daughters of my father’s brother. Louvena’s son has done an amazing job of documenting much of the Martin family history on Ancestry.com, so hopefully on my next trip through that area I will get to meet with him. By this time it was mid-afternoon and time to move on. We had to backtrack a bit as I wanted to drive through an area called Clover Hollow one more time. This is where my grandmother was born. We didn’t have time yesterday to finish the complete circuit of the area and I wanted to give one more try at finding some clue to just where in the hollow she might have lived. This time we ended up at the top of the mountain at Mountain Lake Lodge and we drove on a logging road down the north side of the mountain where my father’s father might have been born. That was an interesting drive on a dirt road barely wide enough for one car and with a few wicked hairpin turns and ice and snow. Not sure when it snowed, but obviously it doesn’t melt very quickly on the north side of the mountain. This road led us down the mountain and through a valley along Pott’s Creek and passed the house where my father and his brother grew up. As I continue my family research, I now have real pictures in my head of the places where the people I’m researching lived. It gives a whole different dimension that will eventually help me reconstruct stories from the past.
Tomorrow morning we will make a stop in Martinsburg, West Virginia, to have breakfast with a cousin from my mother’s side of the family. In 2000, Sidney Jane and I worked together to publish a booklet of the Biggs family history for a reunion. I haven’t seen Sidney Jane since then, so it will be fun to catch up after so many years. Then Mark and I will make a beeline for Nyack, New York, to visit with friends Lynne and Ed Kirwin. On Saturday morning we’ll leave Nyack and head to Cape Cod, ending eight weeks on the road. It’s time for a couple of days of rest.
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| 160107 Day 77 Nashville Trip–Leaving Aunt Ethel's, Meeting Cousins, Clover Hollow |
