Small World

Jumping Branch Coincidence

We went to a cemetery in Daniels WV this weekend to look for some Lilly graves. It was a small cemetery with about 30 graves - mostly Reeds, Smiths and Lillys. We photographed them all, and I uploaded the Lilly ones that were requested, and I started looking at the others.

When I look at a family cemetery like this, I like to lookup some additional data, birth and death records if the date ranges are right and so on. (West Virginia's wvculture.org/vrr site is great for this, by the way). And if there's enough there, I start an Ancestry tree to help look for census data and other records.

I started with Elias Reed. From the stones I know that I at least have info on his wife and daughter. I found an 1880 census record, and then an 1870 record, both in Slab Fork. We're always coaching each other to look at the actual records, so I pulled up the 1870 record and stared at it for a while. Eventually I scrolled down and looked at the neighbors of Elias Reed. I got a serious shock to find out that they were Numa and Martha Walker, my wife's great-great-grandparents.

Every cemetery we visit in Raleigh County we've found family names from my wife's tree. This one took a little more digging.