As I write this genealogy episode, my hands are still shaking! An accident on I-81. Southbound lanes. On a curve. In the driving rain. Pitch black except for vehicle headlights. Mist swirling around three full lanes of traffic, most of it long-haul trucks. Without warning, police officers in emergency garb, forced truck one to move right and truck three to move left, sandwiching our Grand Caravan in between them! I slowed, they passed on either side, with less than 6 inches to spare.
How blessed we are!
Here are some interesting genealogy research picks from the Virginia Library where we researched for three days:
1. Chesapeake and Ohio Canal Lock-Houses and Lock-Keepers, 1828-1924. Thomas Swiftwater Hahn. (Don’t you just love his name?) Institute of History and Technology and Industrial Archeology Monograph Series, P.O. Box 6305, Morgantown WV 26506. Includes a descriptive list of lock-keepers and an excellent bibliography.
2. “Common Whores, Vertuous Women, and Loveing Wives”–Free Will Christian Women in Colonial Maryland. 2003. Debra Meyers. Indiana University Press, 601 N Morton St, Bloomington IN 47404-3797. Very interesting conclusion–more Free Will women got real estate bequeathed to them from their husbands’ estates with full control during their lifetimes, than pre-Destinarian women. This links religious belief to practical family application.
3. The 1774 List of Tithables and Wheel Carriages, Berkeley County Virginia. 2006. William H. Rice. McClain Printing Company, Parsons WV 26287. This is a unique record now available for research in an easy to use format. Rice’s thorough research identifies those not included in the lists, but known to have lived in Berkeley County in 1774. The author discovered the original tax lists in the James Wood Collection in the Stewart Bell Jr. Archives Room, Handley Regional Library, Winchester VA. Names on this 1774 list include many men who later become residents of Southwest Virginia and East Tennessee.
Virginia has launched a new Revolutionary War Project–the Preservation of Revolutionary War Veteran Gravesites in Virginia. The preliminary survey determined that there are 560 sites with 750 grave markers eligible for the state-funded and -monitored maintenance program as historic sites. The legislative report includes a list of the cemeteries where Rev War Vets are buried and an Index of Veterans with names, birth and death dates, city or county of burial. Unmarked graves will receive memorial stones. See House Document #42, Commonwealth of Virginia, 2001.
And you and I will benefit from the research and the genealogy. Your favorite genealogist, Arlene Eakle.
PS It is still raining buckets in Virginia–and they could use bathtubs full. So could California.