Behind the Big Pecan Tree
by Eileen Babb Sumner
My e-mail address is sumner@accucomm.net
and I live
in Milledgeville, GA.
I first became interested in my
family genealogy in 1966 (at the age of 17) while waiting
for my father to pick me up from the library. Research was sporadic as I
was busy raising
a family and the research was put aside.
In 1978, I began doodling a landscape as I talked on the phone. In the
landscape was a
large tree, possible oak or pecan, without leaves sitting in a field with
low hills in the
background and stones. As soon as I put a copy in a scrapbook (somehow it
was
important to me) the doodling stopped.
14 years later, in 1992, a classified customer walks in to the newspaper
I work at. Ronnie
Brooks told me about finding William Babb, Revolutionary soldier's
gravestone near his
house while out riding on his 4-wheeler. I immediately knew this was
the grave of the
first William Babb who settled in Baldwin County, GA.
Ronnie gave me
directions and a
few days later on a cold Dec. afternoon I drove down the road.
Imagine the overwhelming feeling I got, when I saw the picture I doodled
so many years
before unfolded before my eyes.
There sat the big pecan tree with the
low hills in the
background and granite boulders on the right. I drove up a little road
and on my right on a
little hill sat a lone granite gravestone, weathered by nature. The
gravestone, placed there
in 1930 by the local chapter of the DAR, was surrounded by unmarked
graves.
I found
Grandpa after all these years or did Grandpa find me?
Submitted: Fri Aug 14 17:00:13 1998
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