It's been wonderful to read of everybody's connection to Shelby Co. Seems we are all still there in spirit. I am Melinda Tillman, live in LaMarque, Galveston Co, and I spent all my summers and school holidays at my maternal grandparents' farm near Corinth Baptist Church right on the Panola Shelby Co line. I would be the smartest genealogist on the list if I had kept notes on my grandmother's stories. She always said that EVERYONE in both counties was kin somehow and she knew exactly how. I loved listening to her stories of double first cousins. One difference I remember from what another lister recalls is that the water was cool and sweet. He obviously drank from a different well. The water I recall was very high in iron ore- not a bit sweet, very hard. Stained everything orange. But it was cool- I can almost taste the tin dipper scooping out well water from the tin bucket. Now, my paternal grandparents lived in Nacogdoches and their "city water" came from the same spring that the Ozarka Company uses to bottle. We used to call it "white lightnin" Nothing tasted better in the summer than ice cold 'Doches water. No city has better tap water. My grandparents are Jim and Lula Richards McLeroy. "Papa" Jim McLeroy was the son, brother and cousin of "too many too count" Baptist ministers. Papa was a school teacher, the first superintendant of Gary School, and mostly a farmer and the best grandfather on earth. Grandma Lula was a farm wife and professional grandmother who cooked, quilted, shelled peas and told stories. She always wore a bonnet in the sun and had almost no wrinkles, even in her 70's. She was wise before her time. My Shelby County great grandparents were JL Morgan Richards and Mary Morris. Mary died young leaving my grandmother to raise her younger sister. Morgan Richards was a talented gunsmith who made really good moonshine. His businesses must have kept him close to local law enforcement, most of whom were cousins and steady customers of both businesses. Morgan Richards' parents were Caroline "Calline" Conway and John S Richards,son of Mary Sapp and Charles Harrison Richards. Caroline was widowed and later married John Richards' recently widowed cousin BD Sapp. Not a marriage made in heaven. The Conways came to Shelby Co ca 1850 from Fayette Co TN. The Richards came to Texas from Blount Co AL ca 1832. Charles Harrison Richards died soon after leaving Mary Sapp Richards, aka "Granny Richards" a widow in the frontier with young children and orphaned grandchildren to raise. She is the feisty woman who is credited with the community name "Buck Snort". No ornery old buck was going to destroy her garden. Great grandparents on the McLeroy side included Sarah Alice Davis and James W McLeroy Sr. Sarah was the daughter of Abijah Davis who was BORN in Texas in 1835, a son of Nathan Davis and a grandson of Nathan Davis Sr who was in Texas by 1818. Nathan, his wife Jane Ewing and mother in law, Elizabeth Ramage Ewing Lewis left South Carolina ca 1800, migrating with family thru KY, Jackson Co, IL and Saline Co AR. Sarah's mother was Permelia Jane Taylor, dau of William Taylor, another early Texas settler. The McLeroys were plantation owners in Georgia who lost all in the Civil War. Edward McLeroy, a Mason and former Confederate soldier, moved his family to the area around Pine Hill, near his brother in law, Dr Lassiter. He was apparently quite devastated by the War and died not long after coming to Texas. Family lore has it that he died of an intentional self inflicted gun shot wound. He left Sophronia Lassiter McLeroy a widow but she had a family of mostly grown sons and daughters. Sophronia lived a long life, in the childhood home of my grandfather. He remember ed her well. Papa also recalled his maternal grandaddy, old Abijah Davis who also lived with them. Abijah was blind in his old age and that impacted Papa deeply. It's amazing to me that a man I knew so well was so close to a man born about the same as Texas. Abijah Davis is my earliest Texas born ancestor and his grandfather was here long before the Republic. No wonder I feel so rooted to Shelby and Panola County!