Voices of the Past
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| The Headstone of my GGG Grandparents |
Y’all know that I’m into charting the genealogies of my family. I’ve been working on some lines for as long as twenty years, maybe even more. With a few, I got lucky, or rather, blessed. There were people who did the foot work long before I became interested. And when I say foot work, I mean literal walking through courthouses, libraries, and cemeteries, not to mention, vacant fields where old homesteads once sat. I imagine they spent hours rummaging through dusty, old documents in search of that one paper that would tell them this is who you are.
To me, the people who researched these lines in days gone by, before the days of quick access via computers and sites such as Ancestry, My Heritage, and others, are the heroes of genealogical research. Believe me when I tell you how easy we have things these days.
When my sister and I set out to try to prove any and all of our family lines, we had no idea of where all we would go. Our DuPree line was easy, thanks to Emimae Pritchard Langley. This lady went to every county in Virginia where DuPrees ever lived. She also went to surrounding states, following the trail they left behind. Her two books, full of the records of the lives of my ancestors, are called The DuPre Trail. They were compiled in 1965 when I was still a young woman.
I came about having these books because of my Uncle Bill, my daddy’s twin brother, a Presbyterian minister who took groups of people to Europe over the course of many years. When I was sixteen I went along on one of his tours. It was an amazing time. This girl from south Alabama, who’d never even seen Birmingham, let alone Europe, had her eyes opened to a whole new world. I only wish that I had been mature enough to appreciate all the things I saw on that trip.
Watermelon in Italy
A day that stands out is one spent in Italy. Rome? Maybe. The city hardly matters. It was the memory, forever in my heart, that’s important. My uncle has a daughter who is my age. She and a few of her friends and their families were on this particular trip. On this day, we visited an open-air market place where we purchased a watermelon. Can you imagine what we must have been thinking? We’re on a bus all day, in hotels all night, yet, we purchased a watermelon. We were not to be defeated by that green orb. No. We took it into our room, procured a knife from some place, stepped into the bathtub, and cut and ate our juicy, red treasure. I’ll never forget that day.
I returned home with not only treasured memories, but with the books cited above by Mrs. Langley. When I opened its pages, it all looked like a foreign language to me. It made absolutely no sense. Why would I care one little bit about a bunch of people whose names I didn’t know and who lived in the 1600s?
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| Bill and Bob DuPree at Parents’ Headstone |
Finally, A Treasure
Those two books sat in my room for many years. When I got married, I took them and my other books, to my new home with my husband. Needless to say, they languished on bookshelves in a few houses and in two different states before one day I realized what a treasure I had. My ancestors would now come alive for me. I could see where they lived, read about their lives in the records they left behind.
In the late nineties and early two-thousands, my sister and I loaded up our Daddy and my youngest son and headed from our homes in Ft. Myers and Tampa, to south Alabama, the Dothan area, to be exact. For five years, during one week each summer, we poured through every courthouse, library, and cemetery we could find in search of our ancestors. But not just our DuPrees. We were in search of anyone related to us. It was summer time and hot, but we pressed on, taking breaks by going into a cool library or courthouse.
Lost and Found
We found the final resting places for many of our ancestors, but we, to this day, have not found our great-grandmother, Josephine Dell DuPree, our Granddaddy’s mother. She isn’t buried next to her husband who died at age twenty-eight. Many of the family are in the cemetery in which he lies, but Grandma Josie, as she was called, isn’t there. We’ve searched high and low. But we haven’t forgotten.
This missing grave is the source of the idea for the novel I have completed, Grave Consequences, A Charlotte Graves, Digging Up Dirt Mystery, and for which I have won several writing awards. I used a few family names in this story. Somehow, I don’t think they would mind. I’d like to think they would be proud of me and the work I have done.
For this idea and the ones that will follow in this planned series of books, I’d like to say “Thank you,” to all those who have gone before us, the Mrs. Langleys of this world. Those who paved the way for future generations seeking those loved ones whose blood flows within us and whose voices call to us with each beat of our hearts. We haven’t forgotten.
Our ancestors. We honor you.
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