Terry: I am sending you this note, and to the Fayette, Marion and Lamar electronic newsletters, as some of this will be interesting to those subscribers. We had a good Christmas and I'm glad it's over!! :-)I went with Bo this morning to try to find the Pennington family cemetery off Co. Rd. 29, between Moscow and Vernon. We could not find anyone home, and Bo won't go on folks' property without permission. I know it's nice to do that (ask), but the law says you have to be able to get to your kinfolks' graves. I was major disappointed, but we went up to the Jarrett-Bankhead Cemetery instead. I have been telling him for years I wanted to go. Finally!! It is just this side (from Sulligent), across the road from the Hyster plant. I found a grave for an old Bankhead, born 1815, name broken off. We will go back next week with rakes and steel rods and try to find others. I so enjoyed it though it was absolutely freezing outside (29 degrees!). Then of all things I go down to a store in the county, and was getting ready to leave and I could hear this man telling the owner that he had a bunch of old papers he found in the attic of the s! econd oldest house in Fayette, belonging to the Robertson family. He wanted someone to tell him how much they were worth. All he could see was dollar signs, and no historical value whatsoever. I was sick. He said they go back to the 1850s, before the courthouse burned and they were about all kinds of families. I am supposed to go there in the morning and see them. I wish he would give them back to the courthouse but he wants money. He said half of them already were sold to someone in Virginia. What the heck do they care about these papers? He said they were written with a quill pen, stuck together with wax (precursor to the paperclip I guess) and he had an actual photo of John Wilkes Booth in there. Ironically, today Bo was telling me about the Sarratt family being in on the killing of Abraham Lincoln, and of course they came to the Fayette/Lamar Co. area also. Connection here? Maybe I can negotiate with this fellow. If I could get a bunch of folks who were interested to c! hip in, we might could get them for the courthouse. I certainly would not put them at the Fayette library, as the place was robbed of about 40 genealogy books they told me. They are sick about it, and making things miserable for anyone going to do research. They won't let you take anything other than a pen and notebook (you cannot even tear a sheet out of it though, must be in a notebook), and no purse, nothing. You must lock it up in a box, and there is a lock on the gate to the area, and cameras. Of course, she said that the cameras didn't help the thievery. We all have to suffer when folks do things like this. I did notice many things seemed to be missing. The library is understaffed anyway, and no one cares about genealogy, it is obvious. Everything is a mess. They sure could use some volunteers to go up there and keep it straight. Surely there is still a genealogical society there? Does anyone know? As for Marion Co., I am glad to say that I am finally transcribing Judge John Dabney Terrell's papers, starting in the year 1808. I was tickled to death a few weeks ago to find out that I am a Terrell descendant myself. No wonder I've been so interested in this family for so long. We hope to get these scanned onto the Northwest AL Territory website. Maybe Marion Co. will link to it also. There is so much information on people in the county and elsewhere that the judge had dealings with, and marriages also that don't exist in the courthouse due to the fire. :-) Sabra ----- Original Message ----- From: Terry Gosa To: Undisclosed-Recipient:; Sent: Wednesday, December 26, 2001 9:01 AM Subject: Note HOPE EVERYONE GOT HOME OK. HOPE YOU HAD A MERRY CHRISTMAS. Terry