A Genealogical Day Trip
This week’s Genea-Bloggers prompt is to take a genealogical day trip and blog about it.
As it happens, I was lucky enough to take a small road trip last week with my brother. I flew into Houston Hobby and he and I headed to East Texas for a day and a half. As we drove, we reminisced about the last time we’d been to East Texas together. It must have been over 50 years ago as he was a baby and I was about 7. I reminded him that he threw up bacon in the back seat of the car–you know he loves having an older sister with such a good memory. Our great aunt and uncle had a new Mercury (the back window rolled down) and they took our family of five with them to visit relatives in Palestine in Anderson County, Texas, and who knows where else. I do remember stopping at at an artist’s home in Weatherford and meandering through their garden (with real live goldfish in their pond!) while Aunt Eva visited inside. A little surfing reveals that this must have been the Chandor Gardens, recently restored and re-opened in Weatherford. And I also remember the dogwood trees in bloom–my “scorched earth” Texas panhandle eyes had never beheld anything so glorious.
Traveling through East Texas in January isn’t as glorious, but it was still a meaningful journey. Much of our family was in East Texas early. This trip I was chasing Mitchells. I’ve written about my 2nd great-grandfather John B. Cooper who perished in the Civil War, along with 3 of his brothers. My 2nd great-grandmother, his wife, was Mary Mitchell. I knew her father’s name was Ephraim M., and her mother was Rebecca Jones. And I believe I have finally determined that Ephraim’s father was John Mitchell, who died in Mexico during the Mexican War. I’ve recently gone back through some family letters another researcher shared with me and have been able to make some connections that I wanted to explore further.
I had a photocopy of a photograph of Rebecca’s tombstone from Pleasant Grove Cemetery in Shelby County, Texas. It looked huge. When I actually located it, it was a very small stone, only about 18″ high. It was about 5:30 pm when we finally made it to the cemetery, and the sun was setting. The pictures are back lit by the setting sun, but I managed to get decent shots.
R.B.Mitchell 1819-1898
The cemetery is a mixture of really old graves and new ones. It is behind a country church–we passed lots of those in East Texas–and it is evidently still in use. There is contact information posted on the gate.
In a day when people freak out about the lack of privacy because of the Internet, I thought it was interesting that these folks have their names and phone numbers posted right up front.
The church looked well kept–I’d like to know how many folks attend on Sunday morning.
I’d also like to know if this is a church where my family attended. Rebecca is buried here with one of her younger daughters and her family. I don’t know if this means that Rebecca was living with them at the end of her life and so that’s where she was buried, or if they all lived in this neighborhood and that’s the reason she is buried at Pleasant Grove. Another big hole left by the lack of the 1890 census records. Finding a larger “Mitchell” plot was helpful in locating Rebecca’s marker. She is buried near-by–that’s her marker on the right in the foreground.
Laura L. Mitchell and her husband David Holland Mitchell are buried in the Mitchell plot. (Laura L. Mitchell married David Holland Mitchell, creating a little Mitchell confusion for me for a while. I still don’t know if David H. was a distant cousin or not.) Laura is the daughter of Ephraim and Rebecca.
The light was golden and I had to concentrate to remember that it was 2009 and I was in a country cemetery in East Texas. This sense of being transported happens to me in cemeteries–I don’t know what it is. But there’s never enough time to stay and figure out what’s going on.
Before I left, I took some pictures of some Confederate soldiers’ graves. There is some biographical information about William R. Pate and David B. Webb at Findagrave.
James C. Chapman 34 Ala Inf
William R. Pate 5 TX Cav
J. C. Warren 23 AL Inf
David B. Webb 6 Miss Inf
Rest in Peace.
A nice trip down memory lane. If I ever get to my brother’s for a visit I think I’d enjoy Chandor Gardens. I’m glad you were able to see Rebecca’s stone for yourself.
It is nice to visit with our siblings as adults isn’t it? It seems as if my genealogy explorations have openned up some new avenues of communication with my family and friends for me. I enjoyed hearing about your visit and seeing the photos posted. I made a recent trip to a cemetery as well, and the for the first time, I posted the photos on Flickr and Find-a-Grave. It is great to share in the genealogy community, isn’t it?
After reading your very interesting narrative about your recent trip to the Shelby County, Texas cemetery, it occuried to me that I may be able to provide you with additional info in your search. The David Holland “Doc” Mitchell whose gravesite you posted was my Grandfather ….his second wife, Mattie Chapman, was my Grandmother. I know something of his first wife since their children were my half-uncles and aunts. I can tell you that Ephrim Mitchell’s middle name was “Miles” because my own father’s middle name was the same ….taken from Grandpa”s other family side. I do know that Laura Mitchell was born somewhere in Mississippi so its likely that her sister Mary was born there also. What might be of particular interest is about their Mother….Rebecca Jones. She was the daughter of an Indian Chief who took the Americanized name of “Jones”. If you are interested, pleas let me know.
Hi Bob:
About the time I think my blogging is all in vain, I hear from someone like you.
Thank you for getting in touch.
I’m very interested in knowing more about, proven or unproven, Ephraim and Rebecca’s daughter Mary. I have heard that Rebecca was the daughter of Sam Jones, Seminole from Florida. I’m interested in hearing more about this as it was not part of the family lore on my branch. I descend from Mary Mitchell and her husband John B. Cooper, who died right at the end of the Civil War (and 3 of his brothers). Mary died shortly thereafter and I’d love to know more about the circumstances of her death–she supposedly died in LaGrange in Fayette County, Texas.
Again, thanks for stopping by
Debra
Oklahoma City
Hello Debra:
It is exciting to find that you have noticed my response….this is my first time to communicate this way and I wasn’t sure what to expect next. I’m 76 years old and have been retired for 20 years so this “new age” of communications is very new to me….in my time we did it the old-fashioned way with pen, ink and postage. Please keep that in mind as you read anything I post that it is done “one-finger” at a time and that both spelling and grammer may be suspect. Now….with that out of the way, I’ll try to tell you what little else
I know about some of your Mitchell relatives in Shelby County many years ago.
First, in response to your question about the Church, I can confirm that this is the only church attended by my Mitchell clan….all their lives. We went to a Mitchell family reunion there every year in July until about 1960 and this included all four boys and one girl (my one-half uncles and aunt) who were grandchildren of Ephraim and Rebecca. For some reason which I really do not know, all of these ultimately lived out their lives in what we called West Texas…in and around Quanah and Chillicothe and that general area. My father’s side of the family (i.e. half brothers and sisters) remained in East Texas mostly in and around Lufkin where I grew up. There were six boys and three girls who generated too many cousins to even try to count. My biggest disappointment to your posting was to see that the old church has been “modernized”…it still had that original 1800′s look when I last saw it about 1960.
Secondly, while I cannot fully confirm, I,m almost certain that Rebecca Jones lived out her last years [i.e. after Laura's death] with my grandfather and grandmother. My father would have been two years old when she died so I obviously never heard him talk about her but my grandma [who lived until about 1952] almost always visited Rebecca’s grave at those reunions so I’m confident there was some bond there. Also, Gramdma always had a large wall mounted profile-type portrait in her room of a woman who looked very much like an Indian…I remember always being fasinated by it because I was in my “Cowboy and Indians’ age at the Saturday mornings movies [Roy rogers and such]. I’m sure she told me who this was but I simply can’t remember now. I feel confident that one of my cousins has ths protrait now but I haven’t been able to locate it.
Thirdly, I can tell you that there was no recent kinship between Grandpa Mitchell and the Ephraim Mitchell clan. Grandpa’s family did have a North Carolina background but over several generations my Mitchell family slowly worked its way thru South Carolina and Georgia before Grandpa came to Texas shortly after the civil war. His father was in the Georgia Milita during the war and died in near Chatanooga in 1862. There may have been family connections way back in North Carolina but nothing recent when Grandpa married Laura Mitchell
Like you, I have searched for info about Ephraim and have found almost nothing. I would think that he is buried in Shelby county but can find no evidence of that so far. Unfortunately, the last of my father’s siblings died just a few years ago so we have no living source from a timeframe which could have answered some of these questions.
I hope I haven’t buried you with a lot of “prattle’ but no clear-cut answers to your inquiry. Like you, I find this type of stuff very interesting and I hope some of this info might be of assistance you. I found it particularly interesting that one of the gravestones of confederates which you posted is my own great-grandfather….James Chapman…who was my Grandma Mitchell’s father. He was with an Alabama regiment during the entire war and they moved from the Brimingham area when Grandma was a small girl….she loved to tell us kids about their move to Texas in a covered wagon when she was still very young. What a small world.
Here’s hoping you find some little bit of this long narrative to be of help. Just be happy to know that I have not talked about Sam Jones [Rebecca's father] whose Indian name was Aripeka…..his story fascinates me even though I can claim no direct family connection like you can.
Thanks for listening.
Bob
Ennis, Texas
Hi again, Bob:
Why don’t you email me and we’ll continue this discussion off the blog?
I have lots of questions! Me email is texhomaATgmail.com—just use the @ symbol instead of the AT–this is my attempt to foil the harvesters. 
Debra