A Headstone For Ruby

     I want to reach out to my Albea / Waters family to help me fulfill a promise that mom and I made to Grandmama.

     When I first got started researching my family tree, I set out to find their graves. It took a long time to find my Great-Grandmoter, Ruby Waters Huyler's, grave, as my Grandmother, Betty, was very upset by her mother's death and had blocked her burial location from her mind. When we did find Ruby's grave, we were surprised to find it unmarked - as was my Grandmother, who remembered picking out a stone for placement. She was very distraught to hear the news.

     My mom, also named Ruby, promised to one day place a headstone on her namesakes' grave. It's been ten years since then, and it's time to do something to fullfill that promise.

     Ruby Waters Huyler is buried at Greenwood Cemetery, just a little South West of Atlanta. For $600, we can purchase and install a granite marker for her grave. Please pitch in what you can, be it $10 or $50, and help us fullfill our promise to Grandmama.

     Click here to donate.  If you can't do it now, that's fine.  I have set the goal at three months and hope everyone can pitch in a bit.

St Michael's Lutheran Church Cemetery

     When on vacation earlier this month in Columbia, South Carolina, I re-visted the St Michael's Lutheran Church Cemetery.  I'd visited the cemetery before, but it was the last stop on a long trip and I really didn't give it the attention it deserved.

     This visit was on an early, rainy and cold morning.  I was looking for the graves of my Hyler and Meetze/Metz families, which were documented online already at FindAGrave.com.  Even when there are photos of my ancestor's graves online, I really prefer to visit myself and get my own photos (partly for copyright issues, partly to take a better photo) and get a sense of where they lived.

      While I was there, I took some video on my phone, which you can check out below:

Surprises at the Lexington County Library

   After leaving the South Carolina Archive, my mom and I went to the Lexington County Library's Main Branch location.  From their website, I knew that they had a South Carolina Room for genealogy research, which included local newspapers on microfilm.  Unfortunately, their website doesn't really provide any more information on what resources they had available.  From their Obit Index, I knew that there was at least one obituary that I needed.  I also wanted to see what else they had available.

     When we arrived, we headed straight for the microfilm, a list of which was available in a small folder.  To my surprise, the list started with church records.  There were numerous rolls of records, and on roll seven I saw the names of two of the churches my ancestors had attended: St Michael's and Mt Pleasant.

     I was extremely excited and sat down to the microfilm reader... which didn't work!  I started getting anxious, but luckily the other machine did work.  Whew!

     I found the St Michael's Lutheran Church records first, which contained birth, marriage, death and membership records.  I first found records for many-times-great aunts and uncles births, then found one for my 3rd Great Grandmother, Elizabeth Rachel Metz, who was born in 1826!  This was an amazing find.  South Carolina didn't start issuing birth and death certificates until 1915, so church or bible records are the only source before that date.  I also found records showing that my 4th and 5th Great Grandfathers, Gabriel and Barnet Hyler, had attended the church.

     The second set of church records were for Mt Pleasant Lutheran Church, which was lost when Lake Murray was damed up.  I found a plot map of their cemetery, listing the exact location of my 3rd Great-Grandparents' burial - except for the fact that they were moved when the lake water rose.  Luckily, I do know where they were moved to.  I found some funny records too; it seems that my 2nd Great Grandfather, John W Hyler, had "gone astray," while his brother had "gone to the Methodists."

     After browsing through these records, I didn't have a lot of spare time to browse newspapers.  I did find the obituary I'd located in the index, but didn't spend much time on them otherwise.  These papers are all slated to be added to Chronicling America sometime this year or next, so I'll have another chance to search them from the comfort of my home.

     The library also had a number of books of interest that my mom found, as well as vertical files with newspaper articles.  It's too bad that I don't live closer and could spend more time exploring their collection.  But I'm extremely happy with what I did find.

Counterfactuals: WWI

     I was listening to NPR the other day and heard a story on All Things Considered in which the host exploring a counterfactual history of World War I, in which the Archduke was not killed, WWI did not take place... and a ton of other stuff didn't happen.  Listen to the story or at least read the article to find out what all they theorize might have changed, from politics, to science to social issues (which is just about everything).

     They challenged listeners to send in their ideas on what might have been different.  I tried to thing about how this might have directly impacted my ancestors, which was somewhat difficult, but here are a few things:

• No WWI means that there would be no unstable, resentful and vulnerable Germany, thus no WWII.  So my grandfather wouldn't have gone overseas and his crops wouldn't have been stolen while he was there.  He would have stayed home and farmed, and not have given it all up and moved to Atlanta for different work.  My parents would never have met and I would never have been born.  
• WWII means that women wouldn't have entered the workforce to make up for the men going overseas, or taken certain positions in the army.  Women like my Great-Aunt Ollie wouldn't have gone to California to build airplanes and fill other jobs around the country.  Without this experience, the women's liberation movement would be delayed and we could today remain in a society where women, especially in the middle and upper classes, are expected to be homemakers. 

     It's hard to come up with things!  I didn't have any post-war immigrant ancestors or World War deaths in the family.  I bet others can come up with more.