My Old Kentucky Home

If there is one drawback to being a professional genealogist, it's that there's never enough time to do my own genealogy. Like the plumber with leaky faucets, or the contractor whose own home is perpetually mid-project, my ancestry has had to wait in the wings over the years while I happily help others along.

However...

Last month, my sister and I miraculously escaped for a week to hunt for some elusive ancestors of our own in Kentucky.

What fun!

I didn't bring my camera along- I knew I'd be too pre-occupied-- so I snatched a few photos from the web to give you an idea of Kentucky's breathtaking beauty:




Would someone please bury me in this blessed country?

No wonder all of my early American ancestors converged there.

After doing some drive-bys of our great grandmother's homes in Cincinnati, we spent most of our time buried in parchment and microfilm at the Kentucky State Archives in Frankfort and at the Jessamine County Courthouse. Of course we hung out at the cemetery, too, and traipsed around Nicholasville, the city and the countryside where several of our triple greats lived.

Main Street, Nicholasville

Jessamine County Courthouse

I think the most memorable experience of that week was discovering and visiting the family burial ground of some of our earliest ancestors on their original plantation. The home still stands, and though sadly deteriorated, the burial ground, located on a hilltop in a grove of trees, was such a peaceful, reverent spot.


Fortunately, someone documented the tombstones before they were as damaged and rotten as they are today.


It was such a happy little miracle that we even found this burial site. After one of the days at the Archives, we decided to make the drive to Nicholasville and visit the small public library there to see if we could find any local history files. Sure enough, in one thin, spiral bound, unpublished notebook on a related family, I noticed a small reference to the burial site of our ancestor. The name of the road and farm were given. As soon as I got back to the hotel, I googled this information and found the above pictures and specific directions to what was the original plantation of our ancestor (which I learned through examining deeds at the courthouse earlier that day). I would have never found this burial ground otherwise, as the plantation became known by another name after his death.

We prayed our hearts out to be guided on this trip. We are sure that those ancestors we found led us to where they were resting and to the land and home they knew and loved.

We made a couple of donkey friends while we were visiting the plantation. When we first got there and were climbing the hill, two donkeys were chasing a car and braying a few hundred feet from us. A little while later, we noticed them climbing the hill towards us, and we were a little apprehensive. But when they reached us, it was almost as if they could sense the same reverence we felt. They were gentle and sweet, and more than happy to join us on camera. I did have my video camera to document it:




Don't worry. I gave our forlorn friends some love after I put the camera down.