Some Texas Gravestones

I am finally getting around to updating my blog I know it has been a long time!! Wow how time fly's. Everything is great with our family. No news is good news!!

I did want to post a few pictures from spring break in Texas.....As most of you know my mom and step-dad have been traveling the country visiting all the temples and doing genealogy. They have found hundreds of names and have done a session in virtually every temple in the continental US. 60 something if I remember right. My mom's grandma grew up in Texas and my grandma grew up in Oklahoma. So my mom wanted to get more info on family members that were buried there in Texas. This is the Thurber Cemetery in Thurber, Texas. This is were my mom's great grandma's son Jim (little Jimmy) Whitenton's was buried. He was 26 months old when he died in 1910. My mom had never been here and walked right to his head stone. She is amazing when it comes finding what she needs to know. She sure listens to that still small voice. I wasn't sure if it was morbid to take a picture of the kids around a head stone and I was reluctant to do so. But I am sure glad I did! I love this picture!! One of the coolest things about this picture is that there is another one that is almost the same with my great great grandma and 3rd great grandma in it instead. The picture was probably taken 70 or 80 years ago. When I get a copy I will post it too. I just love that we were so close to were our ancestors were. It is so cool to know that they were here putting flowers on this same gravestone many many years ago. It was an amazing feeling of family and sense belonging. It is very hard for me to put into words what it was like to be there. But it does put a smile on your face and gives you the good chills.

The next picture I chose has a bit of a story to it. We were hunting in a cemetery in Stephenville, Texas for my 3 great grandma and grandpa's headstone. My mom had gone the day before to the town's historical library to find the plot map and my 3 great grandma and grandpas location. The map narrowed it down to section 11 and we had been looking for about 40 min's I was getting frustrated. A little background on the day, is that Mary and Eliza were completely done looking in cemeteries for something they couldn't understand and were even more done riding in the truck and we had a 2.5 hour drive ahead of us. I was a bit stressed out and started questioning my mom. "Are you sure this is the right area? You didn't look at the map wrong? Mom I don't think it is here." She kept telling me "I know it is I was here." "Yeah I said in 2nd grade." I said sarcastically. She said that she was sure 'it was along the stone fence' and I was sure she was remembering incorrectly so we bantered back and forth as we stood there. mom was talking as we both looked down and we saw the corner of this gravestone peaking out from under the dirt. As we were talking my mom kicked some of the dried mud off and we realized it was the gravestone we were looking for!! Over the years the mud had collected over the head stone. If my mom had not been persistent it may have been completely covered next time someone came looking for it!! See the stone wall in the background my mom was 100% right! This is one of my most cherished times we had in Texas with my mom and John. Even Eliza got into cleaning the headstone of Grandma Bertie.