1999

•  Alexandria, Baton Rouge, LA, Pensacola, FL 
• Baton Rouge, New Roads, LA, Pensacola, FL 
• Oklahoma City, OK Moselle, MS
• Lampasas, TX
• Tucson,  Tombstone, Madera, AZ 
• Mounds, OK, Poplar Bluff, Qulin, Rolla, Jefferson City, Mountain Grove, MO
• Shreveport, LA, Ellisville,  Moselle,  Magee,  Laurel, Jackson, MS, Montgomery, AL, Atlanta, GA, Monroe, LA

Having a debilitating physical problem didn't stop my desire to learn more about our ancestors. (My husband and I can't believe we really did all this that year!) I traveled reclining in one of the front seats, got up for a few hours to do research and got back in the seat.

May
My mother-in-laws 50th high school class reunion took us a hotel in Alexandria that we traveled out of for the next few days. The high school was in Lecompte and is now a museum that holds artifacts of those that lived and live in the area. Some of the items are from my mother-in-laws family. (Don't forget the museums!)

While my in-laws attended her reunion, my husband and I went to the Louisiana archives in Baton Rouge. We pulled many death certificates of his Shows relatives and some of the Erath ones, too.

We had dinner with cousins in Boyce and followed some of them to cemeteries in Lottie (Cottonwood), Melville (Methodist) and Jonesboro (Ebenezer). We saw some of the old family homes, too. We traveled to the court house in Harrisonburg to search for more information on the Hawthorns and Tauntons. It was a frustrating experience at the court house. The records are being maintained, but not in a very orderly manner. The court house stop in New Roads was delightful and we didn't have enough time to reap its benefits. There we found records on the Raby, Sellars, and Shows lines.

The four of us went to New Iberia for lunch and picture scanning with an aunt. The trip in all was successful, but tiring.

Late August and early September found my husband and I on the road again! This trip was planned to get us both away from the monotony that we had fallen prey too with my disability and my husband's high stress job. We planned the trip to make a big circle, looking for ancestors and sight seeing along the way. Some of the places, though, there, just aren't too many places to see!

The trip started in Clinton, AR looking for records on the Rollins and Mitchell lines. We found marriage records for all the Mitchell great uncles and grandfather in three different counties! We managed to get a picture of the elusive one that was in a partially burned, water damaged book from the Van Buren County Historical Society Museum. We visited the Cleburne County Historical Society and found out about some of the cemeteries in the area. A trip to one large one where several had been relocated because of water control proved fruitful as many of the Nicholson and Rollins stones and bodies had been relocated there.

We left Arkansas for Tennessee. There were many short stops at court houses and libraries in Dyer, Dyerburg, and Obion, before we reached our hotel destination in Martin. We stayed in the area a few days and visited the court house and library in Dresden looking for information on the Mitchell and Hendrix before heading on to Clarksville. In Clarksville we looked for the surnames of Council and Nicholson. We found a very helpful genealogy librarian as well as records at the courthouse. We found the Customs House Museum and Cultural Center. We went to Lewisville to check out their library and for me to get marriage records of some of my Wilson ancestors, then we went on to Jasper to check out their library for Chambers and Dunham information. We spent the night in Chattanooga and did some sight seeing of Ruby Falls and Rock City in Lookout Mountain and the incline railway. Then we headed for Scottsboro, AL and more looking for Chambers and Dunham information. I found some land and marriage records that confirmed some of the census work I had done.

The last leg of the trip took us to Laurel and Ellisville, MS. Jones Co, MS has two court houses! We visited them both. Laurel has a great genealogy section in its library. There we met a Shows cousin and learned of more we should contact while we were there. We found out there is a Shows reunion in Moselle, MS every year the first Saturday of August.