Researching the HOWARDs- Part 2: A trip to West Virginia

As I mentioned in part 1 of this story, I began armed with this bit of information from my grandmother, They were the "Howards of Virginia, wealthy and important."  Visions of southern plantations waft through my brain.  When I finally got an official copy of James E. Howard's death certificate which gave his birthplace as West Virginia, I was a lot less impressed. True, that my grandmother didn't really lie, after all, when he was born in 1859 there was no West Virginia it was just Virginia.  However, I now had to put away visions of southern gentility and replace it with a more realistic vision of the hard-scrabble, oft-feuding, mountain-folk.

To find out even more I decided that a trip to Marshall County, West Virginia was in order.  So I left my husband with the family car and the kids and took his pickup off for a weekend in West Virginia.  The trip to Marshall County was a story in itself and really why we should all get out there at times to dig for our roots rather than just sitting and researching at our computers.

Sure at the courthouse I found wills, records, etc...  but I found so much more...politics... geography... and beauty.

First politics: A trip to the local historical society gleaned the names of a few John Howards (my 4th great grandfather) buried in the area.  I asked one of the volunteers for directions to the Howard Cemetery in Cameron. I got a chuckle and a follow up question. "Which Howard Cemetery, the Howard Republican Cemetery or the Howard Democratic Cemetery?"  At this point I was flabberghasted, there are TWO different cemeteries for the same HOWARD family, separated in distance by about a half mile apart but apparently worlds apart politically. During the drive I couldn't help but wonder  what a post-Civil War family must have been like; to have such deep-seated political wounds as to not want to be buried in the same cemetery. Quite the family feud indeed! 

Geography: Now let me set a scene for you,  I grew up in the Allegheny Mountains of Pennsylvania, and WV has the exact same mountain range,  it's all Appalachia. But I'd never been to West Virginia before. The first observation I made was that here in PA, all the roads are at the base of the mountains. OK, new highways may be at the top, but old roads that lead to real villages tend to follow the creeks and rivers, with tiny dirt roads leading up into the mountains. In short, you get used to driving along in PA and looking up at the mountains. After driving in WV for a while I began to notice that I was driving on roads that were at the top of mountains and I was constantly looking down and the little dirt roads led down into the hollows.  That alone set me up for a surreal experience.
 
I arrived at the Democratic Cemetery first at the top of a hill. There were some folks who I thought were probably cousins, but no stones that seemed to be any direct relations, so I moved on to the Republican Cemetery down the dirt road that lead to the ravine.  I got to the bottom and what was there, well... pretty much a swamp.  With a cemetery on one of it's banks.  I put the pickup into park at the end of the dirt road, and got out.  Squish!  My foot was now covered in mud. Furthermore I noticed that the tires seemed to be pretty mired in mud as well.  Next something LARGE that I glimpsed out of the corner of my eye, slipped into the pond that formed the center of this seeming swamp. I shuddered, I didn't want to know!  After not finding my 4th-great grandfather's grave in this cemetery either,  I climbed back into the pickup and at first went nowhere, just spun in the mud.  There was no cell phone service, my truck was stuck in the middle of a swamp and I remember thinking that I would die right there and I'd have to be buried with the "poor relations"  after all if they'd been better off surely they could have been buried up on the hill!  Anyway, 4-wheel drive and some luck did get me back out.

Absolute beauty: After my mud experience I still tried many more cemeteries. Though I never did find my 4th great-grandfather HOWARD, I did find the tombstone for my 4th-great grandfather James LAUGHLIN (1796-1873) in Rock Lick, WV. At the time, I couldn't conclusively prove that he was my grandfather, frankly I still can't but as I stood over his tombstone, the sun broke through the clouds and the most beautiful rainbow appeared.  That rainbow continued to follow me for the rest of the day and back to the hotel. Coincidence, sure.  But I like to think that it was great-grandpa smiling at someone who'd found him -- someone who's blood, and someone who cares. :-)