(This miracle happened Nov. 2, 2005, and I wrote the following account of it very shortly afterward.)
MY WYTHE COUNTY VIRGINIA GENEALOGICAL EXPERIENCE
On Tuesday Nov. 1st, 2005 I drove 3 hours to Wytheville, VA to teach quilting. I usually check the website Mapquest to see how many miles and how long it will take to drive to my destination, but this time I just took Wayne's word for it because he had been to Pilot Mountain several times and it looked about an hour farther to him. So on Tuesday I got a little worried about the time estimate so I got ready and left too early, giving myself too much time so I accidently got there 2 and a half hours early.
I wondered what I could do to use the time wisely, and thought I would see if I could find some stores and do some Christmas shopping. It was a little town of 8,000 people, so it had an old downtown like Chatham St. in Cary. I drove all the way through town, and on one side of the street saw a little storefront with what I thought said "Wythe County and Tazewell County Historical and Genealogical Society". All my young life, my mom dragged us around as she went on genealogy vacations, and I had heard her talk many times about Tazewell County and knew we had ancestors there.
Since I didn't find any stores to shop at, as I came back through town I pulled up in front of the Gen. Society and looked at the door and it said it was closed on Tuesday.
(Photo of the door.)
I thought to myself that I could come back the next day, so I called my mom on my cell phone. She told me later that I told her that I was at the Tazewell County and Wythe County Genealogical Society and if she could find me some names I could look them up the next day.
That evening while I was having dinner with the guild ladies, my mom called me back and I told her I was in Wythe county, and she told me to call her back later and she would give me the names to research. I taught my slide lecture, then went back to Carol Britt's house to sleep. My cell phone was almost dead, and I had forgotten to bring my recharger, so Carol let me use her home phone. I felt bad making her pay for my long distance use, and called Wayne and said I was coming home early the next day.
Then I remembered that I had called my mom about the genealogy, and that she was waiting for me to call, and thought "UGH! I don't want to do genealogy tomorrow! I already told Wayne I was coming home early. Maybe she won't have any names for me." So I quickly called her, and she said look up Shupe, Slimp, Happas, Cannoy, Garrison and Ballinger.
Wednesday morning I had to hang around until the place opened at 10 am, so I spent more money at the fabric store, and got to the genealogy place and was a bit surprised to see that the door said "Wythe County Genealogy Society" and didn't say a thing about Tazewell County. An intersection close to the building was Tazewell Street, so I guess the images just mixed themselves together in my brain. I don't think I ever would have stopped in the first place if I thought it was just Wythe County, because I never heard my mom talk about that county.
(Here is a photo of the big picture window of the Genealogy Society. Then in the next photo, you can see the window across the street.)
I went in and asked the volunteers there about my 6 names, and they had me look in an index of all of Mary Kegley's books. Mary Kegley had indexed almost all of the documents in that county, and when I looked in the index of all her work I could go to the separate books and find the names. I got about 25 pages marked with sticky notes, and suddenly the power went out in that whole section of town. I could only stay 1 hour because I thought I had to pick up Tara from play practice, so I paid them $10 to copy everything for me when the power came back on, and to send it to my mom. I had no idea what I had found or if it was important, I just got everything copied that had those surnames mentioned. I assumed that if I did find anything, it would be inconsequential because so much of that side of the family has already been done. I didn't think any of it would be useful to my mom.
Just about the time I was leaving, Mary Kegley herself walked into the building. I told her who I was looking for, and said that my mom might be interested in hiring her to do some research. She asked me where my mom lived, and I said my mom lives in Salt Lake City, and volunteers at the Family History Center. Mrs. Kegley said, "Oh, she doesn't need me! They have purchased all of my books!" But I got her brochure anyway in case my mom needs it.
I came home and didn't really think anything about the genealogy for awhile, and then my mom called me on Sunday very excited, because she had received the package of papers. She said "You found people we couldn't find."
She and her sisters are such good genealogists, and have been doing this for their whole lives. And yet a stupid person like me, who didn't even know what county I was in, walked in and found the very churches they attended, (Zion Church, and Kimberling or Kimbrell Church), with all the records of marriages and christenings of our ancestors. Records that Mary Kegley just indexed-- some of her books were published in 2004 so my mom and aunts didn't even know they existed yet.
My mom said I found two different generations of Johan Shoops that she didn't even know were in Wythe County. (Johan Shoop married to Catherina Anna Slimp, and their son Johannes Shoop married to Louisa Ferguson.) Since these two Johan's were on a pedigree chart I have here at my house (but I didn't have it when I was on my trip) I said, "But you already had their names." She said, "Yes, my Grandpa William Kyle Shupe knew all the names many generations back, but we didn't know the dates or places, and couldn't find the records."
And she said the papers give the names of their children, brothers, inlaws, etc. mentioned in the land records or christening records, and now they know where to look for all the other information that they need. My mom said that she thinks her Grandpa Shupe led me there. He did over 5000 endowments in his life, and really loved his ancestors.
To explain what a miracle this is that I found this, my mom and her sisters are huge genealogists. My aunt Alice has 80,000 names in her genealogy computer database, and the church has asked her to be one of the first ones to input it into the Church's new Unified System, to test the system to see if it can handle that many names at once. But instead of letting my mom and aunts find it, the Lord knew this Shoop information was just sitting there, and led me right to it.
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