Your Name




Image from the internet, source unknown.  The Poem from my Mother's sister,
Mary Louise Wilson Bazzell, author also unknown.  Keith Ragan 
                   

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Brother Against Brother

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BILL, BUDDY, AND ELISHA RAGAN Of Hardeman County, Tennessee and Tippah County, Mississippi By Keith Wayne Ragan ESCAPE FROM FORT DONELSON by John Paul Strain William W. (Bill) Ragan (1843-1864), Paul S. (Buddy) Ragan (1844-1864) [i] , and Elisha W. Ragan (1845-1918) have been a part of our family lore forever.   The boys were all sons of my great-great grandparents Nathaniel Simpson Ragan, (1820-1907) and Mary “Polly” Vincent Ragan (1825-1908), born in Hardeman County, Tennessee, but living just across the state line in Tippah County, Mississippi at the outbreak of the Civil War.   Nearby was the farm of their uncle, Samuel Young Ragan and his family. My grandfather Jacob William Ragan (1894-1972) was the son of Nathaniel Francis Ragan (1863-1926), who in turn was the younger brother of the boys mentioned.   My grandfather had told my father Robert Nathaniel Ragan (1914-2003), the story many times of the brothers differing affiliations and the choosing of differ...
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Mahala C. Ward Tarlton of Wayne County Missouri

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For Our Courageous Grandmother, Mahala If you had asked me who Mahala Ward Tarlton was 20 years ago, I would have had no idea.  Once, when we had a family reunion in the Old Greenville, Missouri historic park, I remember my brother and I walking through the old cemetery by the St. Francis River and one of my aunts mentioning we had some Carltons or something similar in our family tree, and that we might find one of their headstones as we strolled through the repository of remains of Wayne County's early citizenry.  It was not to be, of course. My mother had told me, several times, the story of one of one of my grandfathers being murdered during the Civil War.  The story and the details of the cowardly act upon my ancestor remained vivid throughout all the years of my adolescence  but a busy career and a family that included three sons kept the name in obscurity until well into my late 40's when my fascination began with with my ancestry in earnest.. B...
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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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