Finding Stories Like Those

 

Reading stories of those mysteries solved only through modern techniques like DNA testing gives both a sense of awe and a sense of other-worldliness. Those stories, we think, can never be part of our own family's narrative. And yet, our family's stories can contain their own amazing events.

While I was reading The Forever Witness last week, I also was continuing my year-long project, mapping out the descendants of my mother's Tilson line. On Ancestry.com, I ran into a subscriber-shared transcription of a newspaper article about a Willis family member in eastern Tennessee, a Tilson descendant who would have been my fifth cousin. This woman, Della Willis Bible, went missing in June of 1994 in the hills of Cocke County.

The family reported Della as missing, launching a search through mountainous terrain that lasted for weeks and involved local law enforcement, neighboring fire departments, rescue squads, even FEMA and the National Guard scouring the kudzu-choked brier patches for miles around the missing woman's home. No sign of her body was found, even after weeks of effort. The search was called off.

Five years later while on a mountain trek, hikers happened to find the body, according to The Knoxville News-Sentinel that Sunday, April 25, 1999. Unlike the Van Cuylenborg case I'm reading in The Forever Witness, authorities suspected no foul play. However, the body was sent to forensic anthropologists from the University of Tennessee, not only to confirm the body's identity but to inspect for evidence of what might have happened to the seventy nine year old woman. At least now, her family could know.

I couldn't help but wonder: once her remains were found—or possibly long before—had Della's family members sprung for DNA tests in hopes of finding the rest of the story in those many "Jane Doe" reports? I went looking for DNA matches among my own results who could have been related to Della's family. Some of those matches in my list might well have gotten there through desperate stories of their own—maybe not brutal murders or even more benign tragedies, but stories of abandonment of one form or another.

This little discovery alongside the saga of a monumental case in the book I'm reading juxtaposed big, sensational stories with those more personal events which can so easily fade into oblivion over the years. Researching our own family's stories—not just the lineage—helps us uncover, relive, and celebrate (or at least learn from) the experiences of the distant cousins we may never meet. These are not common stories—or even "common" lives—but experiences which merit our attention and efforts to preserve.