I've been working on genealogy this past week and have found some really interesting stories and pictures. Knowing something about early American history helps when you start digging into the 1700's & 1800's . I also found it interesting to track families as they migrated from one area to another. Another interesting aspect is how young some of the women were when they married and started having children. I read about some early settler's in upper state NY one of whom was stabbed five times with a spear and scalped by the Indian's...AND SURVIVED! If our family line connects to hers I would understand why I'm so hardheaded (ha ha). This past fall I traveled to some of the cemeteries where our ancestors are buried and made pictures of the tombstones. Here are a few.

Earnest M. (the M stands for Malcom) was my mother's younger brother who died from blood poisoning after stepping on a rusty nail. I remember my mother and grandmother fussing at me when I was young running around outside with no shoes on...They would say, "You go inside and get your shoes on, you're going to step on a rusty nail and die of the lockjaw!"

These are my grandparents (my mother's parents)

This is another of my mother's younger brothers, who was killed when a train ran over him. The story is that...as the older kids, which included my mom, were walking into town, Jessie was following them. At the edge of town was the trainyard. The older kids had just crossed the tracks and, Jessie not wanting to be discovered crawled under a train that was sitting nearby. When he crawled under the train it started with a jerk and the big steel wheels ran over him crushing him to death.