See, Mom's been doing genealogy for many moons, since she was preggers with yours truly. As I have whined before, when I was growing up, rare was the vacation that didn't involve a cemetery, a courthouse, or trespassing on strangers' property to see where an ancestor used to live.
One of the goals for the trip was to find the grave of an ancestress, Mary Elizabeth Hollis, who obviously existed, since we are here, but we can't find any proof. Family lore has it that she died and was buried in the cemetery at the Macedonian such and such Church cemetery. So the plan was to go in the afternoon, after spending the morning in the courthouse. But according to the weather channel, remnants of Harvey were supposed to come into western Alabama in the afternoon, so I told Mom that we needed to switch the plans.
After breakfast, we hit McD's for some tea and then drove 20 minutes to Sulligent, AL. If memory serves, this is where my great grandmother met my great grandfather - he was working on the railroad ("all the live long day!!!...). So here's a pic of the train depot.
Going through town, we found our way to the Macedonian such and such Church cemetery. We traipsed around over the bumpy terrain, doing our best to read really old tombstones. There were tons with broken headstones, or totally illegible stones, so we can't say that Mary Elizabeth wasn't there, but we did not find her stone. We did find the stone for David H. Hollis, not a direct ancestor, but a twig off the same limb of the family tree - per Mom, his father-in-law went nuts and killed him. She couldn't (or should I say "wouldn't"?) give me any more details of the crime. Hmm...
So now, Mary Elizabeth's widower, Derrill Upright Hollis, was buried in the Hollis cemetery on what used to be part of his 1,500 acres of property. Mom and Dad had been to see it, but Mom thought I should see it. So, using her memory, we drove around trying to find it. We found this sign,
but no cemetery.
Mom was bummed, and it was starting to sprinkle. So we drove around Sulligent to locate the town library, so Mom could see if there was any records that might help us prove 1) that Mary Elizabeth wasn't a pigment of our imagination; and B) where the Hollis cemetery was. We rummaged around in their "genealogy" section - or maybe it was their genealogy "section", that's better, because it wasn't very big. We did not find anything, but when the woman behind the counter stopped gossiping with another lady who obviously wasn't very busy, we approached her to inquire about the Hollis cemetery.
While she is attempting to help us solve the mystery, a black gentleman came in and she said, "well, this is the man to ask, he's Somethingorother Hollis!" So the four of us continued to work on the mystery until the light bulb appeared over the guy's head and he's like "Oh, yeah! I know where that is!" And he gave us directions.
Before trekking out, Indiana Jones style, it was lunch time, and our make your own waffles were no longer holding down the fort energy-wise, so we stopped at the BBQ Hut - we'd passed it before and it sounded good, but now, it is pouring rain, and we could see people wading through the raindrops to go get it, and decided that was a good recommendation. We managed to get thoroughly soaked, but enjoyed the BBQ.
Having refilled the fuel tank, so to speak, we set out. But keep in mind that it is pouring rain, and while I was already wet, neither of us wanted to get wetter. We did find the cemetery but it was no longer the well kept jewel that Mom remembered seeing before. We did trespass onto someone's property, but decided to be happy with just a picture. If you look really close, you can see tombstones in there. One of them is Derrill Upright Hollis.
We decided to swim back to Hamilton, and spend the afternoon in the courthouse. We were shot down at every turn because all the info we were looking for was from before one of the various times the courthouse burned in late 1800's!
As the afternoon drew to a close, we Googled looking for someplace good to eat. The background here being that Dad was of the opinion that there was no place good to eat in Alabama. After reading the online menus and reviews (some of which were laugh out loud funny), we decided upon O'Bryan's Family Steakhouse because we were in the mood for an actual meal.
We were seated, waffled our way through ordering, and Mom got up to go fix her plate at the salad bar. That's when one of the waitresses came frantically to the table telling me that she was sorry, but they were going to have to close. WHAT? Oh, don't worry, they could cook our food, but would have to give it to us in a to go box. WHY? Because of that.. and she pointed at the tv on the wall in the corner. The radar being showed was red. So I'm like, "a storm?" No, a tornado... and the manager isn't here, and they left it to us whether or not to stay open. Right, you leave the decision whether or not to stay open up to a bunch of teenagers?
So, a couple of things, 1) the time it took for them to cook our food and bring it to us in to go containers, the tornado was long gone; B) the county we were sitting in, was long and skinny, we were sitting in the top part and the tornado was in the bottom part and moving north east. The restaurant was never in danger; and finally, when we did get back to the hotel, they hadn't given us any utensils with our carry out. After that experience, I don't think Dad would have changed his mind about Alabama cuisine.
Staff tuned for our next episode "So When DID She Die?!"
Love it! Looking forward to the next installment.
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