In the Beginning

Those Early Years

I have been researching my family tree for many years now.

It first started when I was 16 when my Grandmother and Grandfather Neal gave me a bible for my birthday. Forty six years later I am still adding to my tree.

In the center part of this bible was a place to fill out your family tree. I began by asking my grandparents about their side of the family and they gladly gave me what they knew. As I asked more question and went further back my Grandma finally shut me off saying, "Why do you want to know that stuff for anyway?"

Hummmm. So glad she asked that question cause it threw up a red flag! What was it she knew that she no longer wanted to talk about? And being the nosy kid I was began to wonder how I could find out. Later on I was to find out about those "skeletons in the closet" that people don't want to talk about or sometimes even want to know about.

Not me....I want to know everything about where I came from and who I really am.

I Discover More

When You are young and cannot drive during my period of adolescence, you are pretty limited to what you can find out about your linage. I asked all the older generation about who their parents and grandparents were and recorded everything I could

Short of being able to drive myself to the places where my grandparents were born, I pretty much had all I could put down on paper. So my next thing was to wait until I could drive to do such things. Back in the 1970's we did not have internet like we do today, or Family Tree Maker and Ancestry.

Life in general got in the way of my "hobby" and it was not until I was 18 when I was staying at my Grandmother's that it picked back up again.

My grandmother opened the spare bedroom closet to get me some blankets and pillow and low and behold I spied a large rectangular portrait of a man in a Civil War uniform posing with his gun. It was a full standing portrait and I was struck by how proud he looked. I asked my Grandmother who it was and she replied that it was her father.

I was very shocked to see it was a Union uniform and told her so since I knew her family was from south central Kentucky.

Although Kentucky was a neutral state during the period of the Civil War, their area of origin was right on the Tennessee border. Later on I was to find that this person in the portrait, my great grandfather's grandfather, was a slave owner.

My grandmother quickly shut the door of the closet, ending my view of the portrait. I did not think about this portrait until many, many years later after she was gone and the picture never surfaced again.

There were two more portraits she must have been pleased with as they hung over the bed on their farm for many years. As a very young child I was afraid of the stern faced man in the main portrait. After finding out from my Grandmother who he was (her dad and the other her mother) I was not afraid anymore and admired the pictures more and more.

One day when I was visiting after I was divorced from my first husband, she asked me what I wanted from her possessions as she was making out her will. I asked for the portrait of her dad on the wall. What an idiot I was. Why I did not ask for the others as well, I do not know. I got the one I asked for but I never found out where the other one of her mother went. Nor did anybody ever know about or see the one in the closet of the Civil War soldier that I had seen. When I asked about it no one knew what I was talking about. I was so sad as the house and what possessions she had after passing at the age of 104, were auctioned off. I figured that portrait she had was auctioned off or left up in the attic or that closet. So sad and what a waste.

I Become Computerized

and I Dig Up a Skeleton

Once I remarried and became proficient on the computer I discovered Family Tree Maker software and the Ancestry website.

My interest in genealogy became almost an obsession after that. This was about 1998 and I then wanted to also visit the areas where my ancestors once called home.

Since then I have been to Cumberland, Adair and Barron County, Kentucky several times to research my father's side of the family and also been to Washington County, Virginia to work on my mother's side. I found out many things and solved the mystery of the "skeleton in my Grandmother's closet". No not the portrait one, but the one of why she did not want me asking anymore questions in a manner of speaking, about her family ancestry.

Her grandfather, father to the Cilvil War soldier, had gotten a divorce in 1855 from the second wife, stepmother to my Grandmother's dad. The persons in the divorce case were James Alexander Butler and Susan Martin Butler. They had married in 1848 in Barren Co., Kentucky.

Yep. Found the papers and everything as well as why. It seems the wife was accusing her husband of being a very mean and cruel person. Being as she was afraid for herself and three children, she had moved back home with her father in the next county. Must have been something to this story as back then a judge would not grant a divorce lightly let alone let the woman keep the kids. She was able to get the divorce, keep the kids and restore her maiden name as well as change the children's last name to her maiden name. WOW! And this was in the year of 1855.

So my Grandmother thought this was better left buried and none of the family need know about it. She and her family were Southern Baptist and very religious so it's no wonder she wanted nothing to do with any research further than her parents.

This is just one of the stories I have to tell about my family history. Many more to come so stay tuned and check back often for more of the saga of me "Digging Up Dead People"!

Meanwhile here is that picture of my Great Grandfather, Alfred Alexander Butler.