The first day we visited sites near Cape Girardeau, and spent that night in a hotel there. Kelly had contacted one of their first cousins once removed who lives nearby, and he and his wife joined us for an enjoyable dinner and conversation. Ernie is the sisters' first cousin 1x removed--the nephew of their grandmother.
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| Sisters Lonnie (left) and Kelly (right) flanking cousin Ernie Chiles and his wife Patty. |
"You win: your 3rd cousin 3 times removed beats my 4th cousin 5 times removed! And we are 7th cousins 2 times removed, so that's getting pretty close to Adam and Eve. :)"
Over the course of the two days of ancestry search we visited five cemeteries finding the graves of twenty ancestors. One of the highlights was the grave of Catherine Johanna Doretta (Herzinger) Ebrecht. She and her family immigrated from Germany in 1838, and arrived in Jackson, Missouri two weeks before Christmas of that year. Her father, a shoe maker, had come over the previous year, and set up shop in Jackson, about 8 miles northwest of Cape Girardeau. Within the first year of their arrival, Catherine and her family witnessed the passage of Indians during their forced removal from the southeastern United States that has become known as the Trail of Tears.
Catherine was 8, and could not know the whole story and tragedy of the Trail of Tears. Later in her life, in 1915, she dictated part of her life's story to her granddaughter, who recorded the tale in writing. An excerpt from the document allows a fascinating glimpse of that period in history:
"My father was a shoemaker in Jackson, and had a big shop. We got there two weeks before Christmas. During the first year so many Indians were led by white men from Missouri through Jackson. I was so afraid of them when they would feel of my long yellow braids if I’d be on the street.
The
Indians . . . had my father make shoes and boots for them, and when he’d
tell them the cost, they’d make him take more. He sometimes made a hundred
dollars a day. The Indians were passing through for two weeks."
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| Kelly and Lonne at the grave of their maternal grandmother |
After searching cemeteries farther north, we spent the night at the Inn St. Gemme Beauvais, a bed & breakfast in Ste. Genevieve, Missouri.
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| Lonnie & Kelly among ancestors' tombstones. The grave of Catherine, the girl who witnessed the Trail of Tears is on the left. |
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| Dinner in Ste. Genevieve |
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| One of our rooms in the Inn St. Gemme Beauvais |
