Lives Between the Dimensions

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...

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 establi...

THE MURDER OF ALEXANDER CRAIG TARLTON BY SOUTHERN BUSHWHACKERS by KEITH WAYNE RAGAN · Our Tarlton Story--Part Six Foreword In documents first rescued from Grandma Bessie Wilson’s “burning party” many years ago, Clarence Madison Wilson, JR., my uncle, saved a considerable number of “papers” mostly pertaining to Daniel Moore’s estate and passed them down to son Ronnie Lynn Wilson . Ronnie entrusted them to my care sometime back when I was in the throes of ten years research on the least known of our immediate ancestry--the Tarltons. And, as I went through each piece of paper I came upon the original enrollment records for Alexander. They are important in that the Missouri Data Base for Civil War Soldiers does not include my Great-Great Grandfather Alexander Tarlton. The state’s copies were probably among those stolen in 1866. And these records show that on September 29, 1862, Alexander C. Tarlton was enrolled in the service of the state and that he was assigned to Co....