Hazel--Where is Three Creeks, AR? Tell me just how you are related to me, please.....mmst ----- Original Message ----- From: HAZEL W. CRAIG <hwctodd@aeneas.net> To: <LAUNION-L@rootsweb.com> Sent: Saturday, February 17, 2001 7:12 PM Subject: DOWN MEMORY LANE > >From Tennessee: > > Union Parish Louisiana holds many great childhood memories of both joy nad > sorrow. I want to think of the happy days. - In the summer of 1929, about > my earliest memory, my mother had to have an appendectomy at Ruston > Lincoln Hospital. It was decided Grandma Jennie Welch and Grandma Sallie > Andrews would keep my baby brother, Willie Welch, Jr., who was just under > three years of age and I would go stay with Mother and Daddy's best > friends, Thelma and Stanley Fitzgerald. I enjoyed my stay with them so > much when my parents got back home I wanted to stay with the Fitzgeralds. > They had spoiled my rotten. Mother was in hospital two weeks, and then > was at my Uncle William Gray's home in Ruston for another week, so the > three weeks were filled with undivided attention. Through the years going > back to Louisiana from, in those days, Michigan, I would always visit > Thelma and Stanley. I was unable to visit La. when either of them passed > away but on every trip south would go to Pisgah Cemetery and visit their > graves. Even today I can close my eyes and see Uncle Dan Grafton, Thelma's > father, his snow white hair shinning when he knelt in Pisgah Church to > pray. Funny the things a child really remembers! Stanley Fitzgerald was > second cousin of my dad's and also he was a cousin to the Graftons. I > caught my first school bus at Grafton Crossing on Hwy. 167. > > In the fourth grade of school one of my only three first cousins came from > St. Louis, Missouri to stay with my grandmother and go to school. Do you > remember Frank W. Griffith, Jr. He attended the sixth, seventh and eighth > grades in Bernice in 1933, 34, and 1935. He was the school's best boxer. > And a handsome kid from the north as they called him. Frank was like a > big brother to me, always protecting me from any unhappeness that came up. > Frank Griffith passed away in November 1990 after a long bout with cancer > and buried in Illinois, leaving his widow, Ann Kozak Griffith. During a > long stay in the Marines in the South Pacific in WWII he contracted > malaria, which he carried in his bloodstream until his death, rendering him > unable to have children. Frank was in the Second Marine Division and was > nearby when he saw one of the Fomby boys from Bernice killed in action. > They were friends when Frank was in La. years earlier and ended up in the > same unit. Frank enlisting from Illinois and Fomby from Bernice. > > My high-school years were spent going to Church at Weldon Baptist Church > where I was saved in 1936 and baptized by Bro. M. V. Burns. And that > occured in the Fuller Pond too. I enjoyed going to Weldon and the > fellowship I had with the Browns, the Lees, Thurmonds, Youngbloods, etc. > will never be forgotten. > Four generations on my Welch side are buried in the Weldon Cemetery. Four > generations of my Andrews side are also buried there. And I have > identified an unmarked grave next to my grandfather Andrew's parents as > being Mollie Andrew's mother, Martha Scott Carley. A marker has already > been cut and on my next trip to La. I will have it erected in the Weldon > Cemetery. Her grave was marked with a half of a well tile. You may have > seen this pretty brown half tile. It has been there 60 years that I know > of and was actually placed there many years before that and I will leave it > as is, and place marker inside the tile. My cousin Sibyl Slavin of > Oklahoma helped identify grave from a letter she received in the 1980's. > > I have placed several CENOTAPH monument markers in TN., have one ready to > be placed in New Hope Cemetery at Three Creeks, AR. for my Jenkins > Hansford Welch who came from MS. to AR. in 1842. That also will be erected > on next trip to LA. > This unmarked grave marking is very inmportant to me. If you have > knowledge of an ancestor's grave that isn't marked, please mark it so the > next cemetery reading it will be picked up and published in the cemetery > book. > > Now for my sad tale, the morning I was leaving LA., July 1940 with my aunt > and uncle, Edward and Birdie Christman, to go to St. Louis to go to school > that fall, my favorite little dog got under the wheels of our car and > mother backed out and ran over and killed my dog. I believe it hurt her > worse than I. > > I am now retired from the Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad (now CSX) in Detroit, > Michigan, and have been in Camden, Tennessee for several years doing family > research. I am Editor of our Benton County Genealogical Society Quarterly > and I volunteer one day a week at our library even though I am handicapped. > Researching: KEY, WELCH, ANDREWS, CARLEY, STRANGE, LAWRENCE AND > McMURRAIN. CRAIG, CATES, BATEMAN AND TODD. > Happy Hunting. > >