Welcome, Readers!

If this is your first visit to Mississippi Memories, thank you for stopping by today, and I hope you will visit again. If you have visited this blog site before, thank you for continuing to read my posts. Although I write primarily about my own family history, I also enjoy posting photos of historic and memorable places from throughout the beautiful state of Mississippi. As the blog's subtitle suggests, I write about "people, places, and things" - all related in some way to the state where I was born.

Recently, I wrote a series of posts about our Memorial Day trip through the Mississippi Delta, with stops in Greenwood and Indianola. A post about the last day of our trip, spent in Greenville, Mississippi, will appear on my blog tomorrow. Although the trip included some visits along the Mississippi Blues Trail, I managed to do some genealogy research, too. One of my own rules as a family history researcher is to never, ever, drive by a courthouse without stopping in or to drive by a cemetery without visiting and taking photos. And I did both on this trip!

The trip through the Delta included stops at two cemeteries, all in Holmes County, where most of my Branch, Porter, Netherland, Pettus, and Trigleth ancestors are buried. While there, I took many photographs of graves in Hillcrest Cemetery, Goodman, Mississippi, and of those in Coxburg Methodist Church Cemetery in the old town of Coxburg, near Lexington, Mississippi. Although I have already posted a few of these photos to my other blog, Cemeteries of Dancing Rabbit Creek, I will continue to add others over the next few weeks. I invite you to visit that blog, as well.

Although my own search for ancestors includes the families of Atwood, Baldridge, Branch, Commander, Garrard, Gibson, Merriwether, Neatherland/Netherland, Pettus, Porter, Trigleth, Wilds, and Williams, I often write about the family of others, too. Sometimes a fascinating grave stone may be the impetus for writing a post about the life of the deceased whose grave it marks. And since I love history and people, I often research and write posts about individuals, some famous, and a few that were infamous, who played roles in the development of the State of Mississippi.

A few brick walls that have yet to be broken down keep me researching and writing, and I don't anticipate running out of material for a very long time, if ever. For almost ten years now, I have been searching for ancestors of my great-great-great grandfather, John P. Gibson, born in South Carolina in 1799, and for those of his wife, Martha J. Williams, born circa 1820 in Alabama. According to their marriage certificate, Joseph Gibson posted the marriage bond when the couple were married on January 3, 1843 in Monroe County, Mississippi.

And even though my recent visit to the Coxburg Methodist Church Cemetery and to the historic town of Greenwood, Mississippi resulted in additional information about my maternal great-grandmother, Martha Elizabeth Garrard Neatherland, I still need more about the Garrard family before they arrived in Mississippi.

So I will continue searching for answers that I know are there; I just have not yet found them.

I hope you will join me on this search.....and who knows? We may be related!

New Graveyard Rabbit Blog for Holmes County, MS

Today I am announcing the birth of another "Graveyard Rabbit," a new addition to a now international group or "bury" of rabbits known as "The Association of Graveyard Rabbits" founded by Terry Thornton, another Mississippian, and a fellow blogger who writes "Shades of the Departed" under the name "footNote Maven." Terry also writes his own blog, "The Graveyard Rabbit of Hill Country." The Association was formed in October of this year, and already it has bloggers who write from many states in the U.S., from Canada, and from England, Australia, New Zealand, and the Netherlands.

On the new blogspot, "The Graveyard Rabbit of Holmes County," I will be writing about old graveyards located in Holmes County, Mississippi, Attala County's neighbor to the west. I hope that you will join me on this journey in search of my ancestors. Maybe you will find some of your ancestors, too, as we travel to cemeteries located in Lexington, Tchula, Coxburg, Ebenezer, and other communities throughout Holmes County.

Welcome to the "rabbit trail!"

The Netherland Family Reunion

Pictured here is the family of William Bailey Netherland. He is seated near the center of the picture, with his wife Mary Elizabeth Garrard Netherland. His son, my grandfather, Ralph Ernest Netherland, is pictured standing in the back row, also wearing a bow tie. The picture is dated circa 1925, and is said to have been taken in Coxburg, Mississippi at the Netherland family home. Earlier this month, I wrote a post about the Netherland Family Reunion, stating that my mother didn't think she would be attending this year. Well, I was wrong. She felt well enough to attend, and she and my father drove to Coxburg today. She looks forward to this event and to seeing her brother and his family and many of their cousins and their extended families. Yesterday, when I talked to my mother, she had already made her delicious pina colada cake, and it was in the refrigerator, ready to take to the reunion's lunch today at the Community Center in Coxburg, Mississippi. I am so glad that she felt well enough to go. This family reunion is an annual event, usually on the last Sunday in August, when the Netherland family and its connections get together in Holmes County, Mississippi. According to my mother, the reunion is actually known now as the "Netherland-Spencer" reunion. Spencer was the married name of one of the Netherland daughters.

According to my mother, several Netherland family members who have attended the reunion in the past, have purchased copies of the book written by Gena Ayres Walls about her husband's connections to the Neatherlin and Leatherlin families. (These are earlier versions of the Netherland family name.) Some family members often bring the books with them to the reunion, hoping to fill in some of the missing branches on a few family trees. I hope this year's reunion was successful, with a lot of food and good fun, and I know that my mother's cake dish was likely empty when she took it back home.

Netherland Family Reunion - Coxburg, Mississippi, Sunday, August 31, 2008

The Netherland Family Annual Reunion will be this Sunday, August 31, 2008, at the Coxburg Community Center, Coxburg, Mississippi. But my mother and father will not be attending this year. My mother and father have always enjoyed meeting up with my mother's Netherland family relatives each year who come from several states and from as far away as New York City. Each person or couple attending the reunion bring a covered dish and share an afternoon together catching up on the latest family happenings since the past year. My mother's mind and her memory are miraculous, but her mobility is limited by osteoarthritis to such an extent this year that she and my father have decided they will not drive to Coxburg for the reunion. Her decision marks a specific point in her life, and in that of her family, because this was the once a year trip that symbolized the tie to her Netherland family and her roots in Holmes County, Mississippi.
My mother's father was Ralph Ernest Netherland, and her mother was Rosa Mae Pettus. Rosa Mae was born in 1908, and she was not even 18 years old when she married, Ralph, who was twenty-three years her senior. They had two children, my mother, who was born on October 8, 1926, and her only sibling, a brother, Reuben Netherland, born four years later.
Ralph Ernest Netherland was one of nine children born to William Bailey Netherland and Martha Elizabeth Garrard. According to the U. S. Census Record of 1850, William Bailey Netherland was born in Scotland. This explains the red hair that was so prominent on the Netherland side of the family.
Rosa Mae Pettus was born in Holmes County, Mississippi, the daughter of William Elza Pettus and Lucy Lula Trigleth. Ralph and Rosa Mae were divorced when my mother was 14 years old. A divorce in 1940 was almost unheard of and must have been traumatic for all family members involved, especially two children who were about 10 and 14 years of age. Rosa Mae Pettus Netherland remarried a few years later, and that husband died about 1953. Ralph Netherland never remarried and died in 1959 of stomach cancer. I saw him only once as a child just before he died of stomach cancer. Ironically, 6 of the 9 children, including Ralph, who were born to William Bailey Netherland and Martha Elizabeth Garrard, died of stomach cancer. A few died during their young adult years.
The stomach cancer information was unknown to many Netherland family members, including my mother, until a book entitled The Neatherlin, Leatherlin Connections and their Allied Families, was written by Gena Ayres Walls, who lives with her husband, a Netherland descendant, near Houston, Texas. Gena has written a genealogy column for her local newspaper for a number of years, and she used her very good research skills, coupled with her writing experience to compile the Netherland book. The book is complete with photocopies of actual documents, including death certificates for some of the family members who died of stomach cancer. Publication of the book was funded, in part, by Clarence Netherland, one of my mother's distant cousins.
I met Clarence Netherland because of the book. I discovered a copy of the Netherland book in the Erikkson Public Library in Dallas, Texas, where it had been donated by Clarence, and I later contacted him and asked if I could buy a copy of the book. Clarence owned Netherland Engineering in Dallas, Texas, until his death earlier this year. I purchased a copy of the book for my mother, and it was one of only three copies remaining at the time.
Now a quick plug for the Erikkson Public Library: it has one of the best, if not THE best genealogy collections of a modern public library, with almost an entire floor devoted to books, microfilm, and other types of publications. A bank of computers is available to access other documents contained in online collections. Paid staff, as well as many volunteers from the very active Dallas County Historical Society are on hand daily to assist researchers.
It makes me sad that my mother will be unable to attend the reunion this year. But time goes on, people get older, and things change.