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ELIZA BERRY AND FAMILY ORIGINS/SOLVING THE ANCESTRY  KEITH RAGAN·WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 14, 2018·  FOR ALL MY FAMILY, AND ESPECIALLY FOR AUNT MARY, UNCLE JUNIOR, AND MY BROTHER KEN   It felt like my heart jumped a few inches upward in my chest the first time I was able to make out the defining characters on Eliza Berry Moore’s crude sandstone grave marker. Buried underneath almost 125 years of forest debris, appearing for all practical purposes like just another rock littering the glade where the mortal remains of my Moore ancestors now lay; weathered and barely legible, I made sure it now stood upright once more in the shadowed recesses of the Woolard Cemetery in Wayne County, Missouri.   Just as my brother Ken Ragan and I had felt compelled to find the final resting place of Great-Grandmother Leoto Gardelia Toller Wilson several years before, we were on a quest on this day to find the final resting place of Great-Great Grandparents John Moore and Eliza Berry, and of course, Civil War a
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WHO WILL REMEMBER?

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WHO WILL REMEMBER? Cherish the Storytellers When the giggles and whispers of the teen-age girls at the spring house with their milk jars become but an echo and rhapsody of fable… Who will remember? When the grave of a grandfather without a marker--- save for the stone gathered from the oak and hickory clad hill--- is covered by the humus of the decomposing garment of summer majesty… Who will remember? When the loving hands of a father fashioning a marker of concrete in the shadows of a barn for the tiny corpse of his infant son-- are stilled, and the tears but ancient vapor in the winter mists… Who will remember? When backward glances from wagons and ancient truck windows say goodbye to land owned since Delaware and Shawnee Indians were neighbors and elk and bear denizens of the deep forests;  fathers and mothers and children and blood kin by the hundreds, original pioneers of the land, buried in the rocky hillsides… Who will remember? When the old swimming ho
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BUSHWHACKERS/THE MORNING OF DECEMBER 18, 1864 /A Historical Interpretation Based Upon the Murder of Alexander Tarlton

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T he five men stood beside their horses, reins in hand, staring without spoken word down the rock rubble of the road. Puddles in potholes were frozen with a crisp, hollow layer of ice. The road disappeared from their intense study a few hundred yards up around a curve among the sturdy trunks of a dense stand of hickory and oak. But, they stared intently nevertheless. As if the forests and hillsides did not impede their view at all of the community and homesteads a mile or so up the way. It was just after daylight and a bitter cold morning. There had been a heavy frost the night before and every mile they had covered since leaving the relative security of Mingo Swamp seemed to drain their bodies of what precious little warmth they had left. Their breaths exhaled through the woolen scarves tied around their heads, over their ears and mouths leaving clouds of steam in the stillness of the December morning in Wayne County, Missouri. Actually they weren’t scarves at all. Not anym
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JOSIAH WILSON (1787-1851) AND SARAH MCBRIDE (1801-Bef. 1851) /Early Wayne County, Missouri Pioneers

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Josiah Wilson (1787-1851) and Sarah McBride (1801-Bef. 1851) / Early Wayne County Missouri Pioneers Family Origins and Legacies Based on early descriptions of homesteads in this era, we can suppose the first of Josiah Wilson and Sarah McBride in Wayne County, Missouri did not look too different from this modern-day reproduction.  Josiah Wilson was born  in the year 1787   on Craig's Creek, located today within the borders of Botetourt County, Virginia.  Situated in the mountainous portion of the state, Botetourt County is bordered by two major ranges, the Blue Ridge Mountains and the Appalachian Mountains.  Botetourt County was created in 1770 from part of Augusta County and was named for Norborne Berkeley, known as Lord Botetourt. It originally comprised a vast area, which included the southern portion of present-day West Virginia and all of Kentucky. Portions were set off to form new counties beginning in 1772, until the current borders were established in 1851. All re
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