In the Cavalry: Getting Down to Details

Perhaps every mother needs to face up to the fact that her son entertains dreams of glory which may find their way out into reality when he enlists in the army. I don’t know how young men’s dreams took shape in the 1800s, but as soon as he could after the 1861 start of hostilities, Thomas Taliaferro Broyles grabbed his chance to turn his own dreams into reality. On September 5, 1863—supposedly as soon as he could after school graduation—T. T. Broyles enlisted at McPhersonville, South Carolina. Lieutenant L. J. Walker did the honors, enrolling him as a private in Company A of the Rutledge Mounted Riflemen and Horse Artillery.

At some point, Company A combined with Company B, Seventh Regiment of the South Carolina Cavalry, as noted on Thomas Broyles’ service records:

            The 7^th Regiment South Carolina Cavalry was formed by the addition of five independent companies to the five companies of the Cavalry Battalion, Holcombe Legion, South Carolina Volunteers, by S. O. No. 65, A. & I. G. O., dated March 18, 1864.

Shortly after that date, on May 27, 1864, newly-promoted Colonel Alexander Cheves Haskell assumed the responsibilities of the Seventh South Carolina Cavalry—a position which he held through the remainder of the war. Haskell’s appointment there replaced the command of Wade Hampton III, ironically later becoming the South Carolina Governor who subsequently saw to it that Haskell received a position as justice on the state supreme court. With his many significant roles in South Carolina military and political history, as well as commerce and transportation, a sizeable collection of Haskell's papers have been preserved and housed at the University of South Carolina library.

While notes concerning the Haskell Papers provide an overview of conditions of war under his command—and thus a bird’s eye view of what my great-great-grandfather may have also been experiencing in part—they, combined with sections of Thomas Broyles’ obituary, serve to introduce some doubt in my mind as to the reliability of the statements contained in that memorial.

I noticed, for instance, the report in the introduction to the Haskell collection:

            Haskell graduated from South Carolina College on the eve of the Civil War, second in his class, and immediately volunteered in the First Regiment…

Tell me, where have I heard such a line before? Could it be that statements like that in Thomas’ report are a popular romanticization of the time period?

            Thomas Broyles graduated from the University of North Carolina at eighteen years of age, and three days later was in the saddle as a member of Heiskell's Cavalry.

The parallel is too uncomfortable for me. Was it just fashionable to say one was so committed to this war that he could hardly await the chance to serve?—well, after graduation from college first, of course.

Then to some of the other facts: why, for instance, would a publication such as the Confederate Veteran misspell Haskell’s name? Editorial sloppiness? Disinterest in proper spelling? A dreadfully caricatured southern drawl? Or was there really another cavalry leader with the surname Heiskell, who just happened to carry the same two initials as Haskell? Why, then, would records—now preserved online—show company rosters detailed under the name Haskell and not Heiskell?

And then there is this little matter of math. Here, I’m hobbled in that I don’t feel entirely confident about Thomas’ birth date. But if he enlisted in the army in 1863, being eighteen years of age at that point would make his year of birth 1845. The birth date I’ve noted on my records was originally received from a footnote in volume one of Arthur Leslie Keith’s History of the Broyles Family (I've since found corollary evidence in the death certificate—though that only provides me a modicum of confidence). If the date given, October 28, 1842, is correct, an enlistment date of September 5, 1863, would put Thomas just shy of his twenty-first birthday. Not the eighteenth.

Bringing Dr. Keith’s long out-of-print manuscript into the conversation introduces another discrepancy: that same source indicates Thomas graduated from the University of North Carolina in 1860. That’s not exactly just a few days away from that September, 1863, enlistment, now is it?

Whatever the case may be—and especially adding the issue of his missing headstone to bolster my resolve—I propose a lot more study should be invested in sorting out the details of this man’s history.

And, above all, never trust an obituary. If ever there was a time to wax eloquent, it is in eulogizing a loved one recently departed. 

Above right: Kurz and Allison, Battle of Cold Harbor, from the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division in Washington, D. C.; courtesy Wikipedia; in the public domain. Cold Harbor was one of the battles in which Thomas Taliaferro's commanding officer, Col. A. C. Haskell, was injured.  

The Hunt For More Information

Though the information regarding Thomas Taliaferro Broyles’ burial remains hidden—at least for now—his obituary contains a number of other hints for me to follow. These details, hopefully, will paint a clearer picture of the man.

Proceeding from where we last left the narrative published in the Confederate Veteran in its January 1923 issue, the very next sentence provides enough for two days’ postings:

Thomas Broyles graduated from the University of North Carolina at eighteen years of age, and three days later was in the saddle as a member of Heiskell's Cavalry.

Let’s break that sentence into two parts. I have ulterior reasons for that. First, I’ll have to mount a new learning curve in researching Civil War veterans of that other side of the conflict. I’ve already made the attempt at researching Union veterans when I was working on my husband’s Tully line, coming up with grand family legend but nothing substantiated. In addition, my first foray into searching for the referred-to “Heiskell’s Cavalry” has not proved promising. This, I assure you, will take me time.

As to that first point—regarding educational background—I also hesitate. Today, I think just about everyone knows that the state’s university system is identified by city of campus location. The first thing I thought of when reading this part of Thomas’ obituary was “University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.” But was Thomas’ campus the one at Chapel Hill? At which campus would I begin my search?

Some people might balk at the statement that Thomas graduated from college at the age of eighteen. I’m aware, however, of several historic figures from the colonial period who had attended such institutions as Yale, for instance, at now-unheard-of early ages. Perhaps even in the 1800s, that accomplishment would not be such an anomaly.

And yet, as if to hedge my bets, I thought I’d take a look to see if the University also hosted a preparatory school. While I didn’t find mention of such an arrangement on campus, in reviewing the state’s history of providing public higher education, it appears that the first campus—and the only one at the time of Thomas’ graduation—was that at Chapel Hill.

That is not all there is, as far as Thomas’ education goes. Thanks to one of the readers here—Leah, whose comment included this helpful link—I now have a clue as to where the good doctor obtained his medical credentials: the University of Nashville Medical School, now merged with the better-known Vanderbilt University.

I’m beginning to wonder whether my great-great-grandfather had an obstinate streak to him, though. When I scanned through the online resources for the med school's alumni listings of that time period, once again I’ve had to face up to that “unable to locate” conclusion. For the time being, Thomas Taliaferro Broyles’ academic credentials are as well-hidden as his headstone.

I’m beginning to wonder what else about the man will turn out to be invisible. 

Tale of Two Thomases

While trying to locate the burial place for my great-great-grandfather, Thomas Taliaferro Broyles, I’ve run into helpful hints, kindly souls volunteering suggestions, but no headstone. Well, at least no correct headstone. Thanks to a number of people, I have been referred to a Find A Grave photograph of a headstone in a neighboring Tennessee county. But, as you can see here, the dates are slightly off—not to mention the name of the wife. The Thomas Broyles I’m searching for was born in 1842 and died in 1922; though he married twice, neither bride sported the name Sarah.

As I mentioned yesterday, with a name like Broyles in a locale like eastern Tennessee, the concept of two men having (almost) the same name is not far-fetched. I tread lightly through this tangled family web, though. I need to pay attention and be sure to get it right. I want to take in the broader picture, for at some point, I may need to sketch out the whole family tree.

Someone, it turns out, has already done that. Actually, several someones. Over the years, some of the data has been preserved online. My first such discovery was one I stumbled upon in my earliest computer-aided researching years—also the early years of Rootsweb—courtesy of the advice of online forum members. That discovery was the Germanna site on Rootsweb, which, among other surnames from the Germanna colonies, included a wealth of information on the Broyles line.

With those early affiliations, I also had the privilege of emailing some other serious Broyles researchers and benefitting from their work. Of course, after all those years, now that I’ve turned my hand back to working on that line, new questions are popping up. Basic stuff like: where’s Thomas buried, anyhow?!?!

Lest you assume it would be a simple matter of looking up the information on his death certificate, I need to say here that, for whatever reason, that specific field in the document was left incomplete. (Why? I want to know; the answer to that question alone may be worth the asking.) The absence of both cemetery and undertaker make me wonder whether the good doctor had decided to give his body up to medical science, perhaps at his alma mater. Or that there might have been a private family burial ground on his property—something not unheard of in those earlier years and older regions of our country.

Wondering about the private cemetery situation prompted me to visit the genealogy forums for Washington County, Tennessee, where the Broyles family lived. Surely someone local on that forum would know…I thought.

While genealogy forums can provide some helpful guidance, I’ve learned to be careful in my consideration of all answers and advice offered. My query to one of the forums on behalf of my Thomas, while yielding one of the longest discussion threads I’ve ever been party to, ended up not providing any leads to solve my mystery.

Suggestions included looking at his parents’ family plot in Anderson County, South Carolina (which didn’t yield any results), or where his second wife was buried in South Carolina (again, nothing discovered yet). Someone recommended a link to a cemetery index, which, while I’m happy to see such resources online, would have been quite cumbersome to sift through for my one name.

Finally, I decided to go back to the only obituary I have for Thomas Broyles and read slowly and carefully for any hints. There was a flowery mention of where he was buried. Once again, I attempted the local route, and someone on the forum offered the Find A Grave entry.

Initially elated, then hopes dashed, I went back to the forum to set the record straight—in case any other Broyles researchers follow my path in future searches and pick up some misinformation.

It was there I had the privilege of meeting—or “re-meeting”—the one who maintained the original Germanna Rootsweb site I had benefitted from so long ago. Of course, now there are other websites with that same information—updated and expanded—and I’m following the digital trail with this wealth of Broyles information to its newer digs on sites such as FamilyTreeMaker and Ancestry.com.

It was this Germanna connection who provided me the relationship between the two Thomases. According to “Sarge,” the Thomases are actually third cousins. The other Thomas—officially Thomas A. Broyles—was son of Jacob and Elizabeth Ann Good Broyles. My Thomas—the one with the middle name from his mother’s family—was son of Ozey Robert and Sarah Ann Taliaferro Broyles.

While I now know why the two Thomases will never be one and the same—even in the mind of a hasty researcher—I still don’t know any more than I did before about my Thomas’ final resting place. While that is a moot point in regard to the pursuit of membership in my lineage society of choice, the longer I can’t have that little bit of data, the more I want it.

Is Your Surname on the Map?

An interesting point pops up in the conversation regarding the search for Thomas Taliaferro Broyles’ grave: that there might be two men in Tennessee at the same time with the name Thomas Broyles.

Surnames can be the source of some interesting searches—and some interesting detours. I'm not talking about a surname as common as, say, Smith. I mean taking on the challenge of a name you just don't see every day. Broyles is one of those surnames that has just the right amount of differentness to it to make things interesting.

I always knew that. When I first heard my mother tell stories about my maternal grandmother’s family, I guess I was young enough to misunderstand the pronunciation of the surname. With just the slip of one “inconsequential” letter, the name morphs to Boyles—a much more common surname. When I finally got the gist of slipping that “r” back into its rightful place, I realized how often I’d run across people named Boyles…and how rarely I’d bumped into anyone named Broyles.

Take those years I was far away from home at college on the west coast. At first, like any college freshman, I didn’t know a soul. As I found my voice and found a way to meet people, out of the haze of newness I eventually discovered that there were two guys on campus—twins, I think, or close enough to fool me—who were named Broyles.

I just knew we had to be related. Somehow.

Believe it or not, as much as I can “talk” on paper to people I don’t know, I can’t find it in me to talk to strangers. So I never did say anything to those guys. Or maybe I did. I can’t remember, but nothing monumental came of it. I still can’t shake that thought that we might have been, oh, say, tenth cousins or something. It’s just that the Broyles name is not that common.

Taliaferro, the other surname I’m concentrating on right now, is another case in point. I remember being at one work meeting—and this was years after I got over my can’t-talk-to-strangers phobia—I ran into this financial rep, took one look at his name tag, and blurted out, “We must be related!”

Of course, he took a look at my name tag, saw a vastly different spelling printed there for my last name, and gave me a look like perhaps I was crazy—or at least illiterate. I think I redeemed my image by some quick talking, and we agreed that, with a name as rare as that, there was indeed a good chance that, somewhere back in Virginia give or take a couple centuries, we were family.

It turns out there are actually websites online that can provide readouts for the geographic distribution of any given surname. Worldwide distribution. Of course, that would provide a fascinating visual for a surname like Lee—not only a common name, but one which has attained Smith-like status in several different cultures.

But I’m not looking for Lee. I’m looking for oddball and unusual. Like Broyles. And if that weren’t enough, give me something like Taliaferro. That’ll put a website like that through its paces!

Though Wikipedia gives a clickable list of several such surname map generators, I’m afraid not all of those references are currently available. Dynastree, for instance, though one resource I’ve heard about in years past, didn’t seem to work for me when I attempted a search there yesterday.

However, I struck the mother lode with the resource at PublicProfiler.

When I entered the search term, “Broyles,” into the PublicProfiler dialog box, at the top of the results readout was a world map showing countries with any distribution of the surname, sorted into color-coded categories by “frequency per million.” While I expected Germany to have a good showing in the results, that country—as well as France—had a “low” distribution. The country with the highest distribution was the United States.

When I clicked on a specific country, the website provided additional information. I clicked on the United States to see what further details I could find. As I could have predicted from my little bit of Broyles research, the states with the greatest showing were Tennessee (which topped the list) and what is now West Virginia. (At the time the Broyles family settled there, it was undoubtedly considered part of Virginia.)

The charts below the map list further data: top countries for the surname with frequency of distribution, top regions within the country, and top cities. In the case of Broyles, it was no surprise to see Greeneville, Tennessee—final resting place of another Thomas Broyles, whom I’ll discuss in a later post—and among those top five cities is Jonesborough, home of my Thomas Broyles.

Since it was so fun putting this handy online vehicle through its paces, I thought I’d take another lap around my family tree and check out the surname Taliaferro. This one was interesting. England, the supposed source of Taliaferro emigration to the United States, was the lowest of the top five countries listed. Germany and Belgium also were included in the top five. Of course, the United States was ranked number one—followed at a distance by the surprise number two spot, Canada. Quebec and British Columbia claimed their share of Taliaferros to the north of the United States. And in America, the predictable locations of concentration include the area around Virginia and Maryland.

This worldnames.publicprofiler.org site is the result of research projects done at University College London regarding the geography of family names. It is free to use. The only downside—and this is where the element of trust comes in—is that, to use the site, you must provide your email address. Other than that, the only restriction is that the use must be for non-commercial purposes.

For those, like me, who need to know more about a topic than is even remotely necessary, the website provides a FAQ section, and another website provides an explanation and sample applications that show how to put the program through its paces.

So go ahead: take this bright shiny thing out for a spin. You should have some fun with it.

In the meantime, it helps me rest my case: while there aren’t too many people with the name Thomas Broyles out there in the world, chances get much higher that in Tennessee, you’ll not only find your man, but two or three others who claim that same exact name.

Above: Watercolor portrait of Chang and Eng Bunker, called by some the original Siamese Twins, by an unidentified French or Dutch artist in Paris, circa 1836; courtesy Wikipedia; in the public domain. 

Each Discovery Leads to More

Those who are hooked by genealogical research often compare it to detective work. I’ve actually stumbled across comments explaining that genealogy is like CSI, only “without the icky bodies.”

While I have yet to find the dead bodies—my current pursuit of ancestor Thomas Taliaferro Broyles has failed to yield any details on the location of his burial—I have been able to unearth further details on his family constellation, thanks in part to my Genealogy Angel’s discovery of the issue of Confederate Veteran containing his obituary.

Keep in mind that those names have been there for the taking in many online resources. I know that. Right now, I’m preferring to revel in the pursuit, finding the source documents and corollary details in a treasure hunt of my own making. While I have many distant cousins and other Broyles and Taliaferro aficionados who have generously posted their findings—some amateur, some expertly researched and duly documented (no doubt)—there just comes a time when I want to have the thrill of the chase, to do it myself.

Looking back to the article in the February 1923 issue of the Confederate Veteran which I posted yesterday, I want to extract as much data from the narrative as I can. I want to take this step by step. And yes, I know that while my overarching goal of completing the D.A.R. paperwork may not entail such excruciating detail, for a moment, humor me. I want to do some exploring. After all, I can’t sniff out a bunny trail without getting nosy. And you know how I love finding stories.

The opening paragraph of the Confederate Veteran article gives me plenty of ammo for my first volley of exploratory salvos:

            Dr. Thomas Taliaferro Broyles died at his home near Jonesboro, Tenn., on December 8, 1922. He was a son of Dr. O. R. Broyles, of Anderson, S. C, and a brother of A. T. and John P. Broyles and Mrs. W. D. Williams, of Greeneville, Tenn., and Mrs. M. C. VanWyck, of Anderson, S. C, whose husband was Dr. Samuel Maverick VanWyck, C. S. A.

The first step, for me, is to aggregate the records for Thomas’ father. Like Thomas himself, his father was a doctor. In customary southern fashion, the man’s name was given as initials, but I know that his name actually was Ozey Robert Broyles. As we discussed yesterday, Thomas’ mother—though not mentioned in this article—was Sarah Ann Taliaferro Broyles. We’ll trace her Taliaferro roots in future posts as we pursue the American Revolution patriot for D.A.R. purposes.

From this article, we can glean some names of Thomas’ siblings—though I assure you, there were several more than are listed. I presume these were recounted in this article for some significance to the core mission of the publication: veterans representing the Confederates in the War Between the States.

From what I can see so far, here is a deciphering of the alphabet soup of family names. “A. T.” refers to Augustus Taliaferro Broyles, in my records showing as the oldest of the Broyles siblings—though I have far to go before I can confirm that there were none older. “John P.” names Thomas’ younger brother John Pendleton Broyles. I am clueless—no, awaiting a fresh discovery!—as to the identity of “Mrs. W. D. Williams,” though the location of Greeneville, Tennessee, catches my eye as it is far afield of the elder Broyles’ home location in South Carolina. I offer the guess that “Mrs. M. C. Van Wyck” represents the former Margaret Cornelia Broyles—causing me to wonder if the Van Wyck household listed next door to the Broyles home in the 1850 census might be the immediate family of her deceased husband, Samuel Maverick Van Wyck.

Of course, this 1923 article also introduces questions. Mainly, I’m wondering what became of all the other Broyles siblings. Had they all passed away before this point? It looks like I have my work cut out for me, if I choose the path of this detour, for Thomas had many siblings. On the other hand, isn’t it the chase that puts the joy back in genealogy work? At least, for me it is. I thrive on discovering what happened to all the rest of the family. Apparently, there is a lot of thriving left for me if I choose the detective work of this path to pursue.

Introducing the Doctor

Leaving Florida behind in my chase for the D.A.R. prize, I regress into Sarah Ann Broyles McClellan’s childhood years in Tennessee. It is her father, actually, who I am pursuing.

Thomas Taliaferro Broyles was a doctor in the Jonesborough area of Washington County in Tennessee. It is the “Taliaferro,” as we shall see later, that I am most focused on, for that is the surname that holds my patriot prize. Thomas’ mother, the former Sarah Ann Taliaferro, had chosen to pass her maiden name on to Thomas, bestowing it, in the fashion of the time, as his middle name. He, in turn, returned the favor when naming his second-born after his mother.

While I have been bemoaning the dearth of family treasures to pass on the ancestral stories, tidbits have begun popping up. I’m thankful for that. I really have a need to know who these people were.

In my quest to get the stories, though, I may get more than I bargain for. While searching for Irish-Americans in Chicago yielded a rich contextual backdrop to urban life in the late 1800s, finding the details in a southern, post-Civil War milieu presents me with a zeitgeist with which I’m not as comfortable. While I was raised by a mother whose parents were southerners through and through, the end result has been that I’m as much a northerner as my grandparents were southerners.

No matter which side of the Mason Dixon line you may claim as home, you can get a sense of what I mean when you read Thomas Broyles’ obituary, as found by my Genealogy Angel in The Confederate Veteran, on page 66 of the February 1923 edition.

 

            Dr. Thomas Taliaferro Broyles died at his home near Jonesboro, Tenn., on December 8, 1922. He was a son of Dr. O. R. Broyles, of Anderson, S. C, and a brother of A. T. and John P. Broyles and Mrs. W. D. Williams, of Greeneville, Tenn., and Mrs. M. C. VanWyck, of Anderson, S. C, whose husband was Dr. Samuel Maverick VanWyck, C. S. A. Thomas Broyles graduated from the University of North Carolina at eighteen years of age, and three days later was in the saddle as a member of Heiskell's Cavalry. He was one of six brothers, two brothers-in-law, and several cousins in the Confederate army, ranking as privates, captains, colonels, and surgeons. Sustained by trust in the righteous cause, the mother at home unceasingly wrestled in prayer and fasting. Comrade Broyles was a conscientious man and soldier. A comrade of the same command wrote to home friends: "Tom won't hear to our being whipped. He is a brave boy, and comes up to time exactly in the hour of danger." His brother Robert wrote to their mother: "I offered him everything I had, even tobacco, when I saw him last, but he would not even breakfast with me." Characteristic of the Confederate soldier! Both Thomas and Robert were present at Lee's surrender.

            After the war, Thomas Broyles graduated in medicine and practiced for many years. He was a man of piety and unusual attainments, and could thrill his listeners with vivid descriptions of great battle scenes in Virginia, the privations and sufferings of war. He was twice married, first to Miss Reney, of Alabama, and his second wife was a daughter of General Harrison, of South Carolina, a distinguished jurist of his time. She survives him with two daughters. At the age of eighty years he answered the reveille from the distant shore, and his body rests under the cedars of Lebanon churchyard, while below the near-by cliffs the waters of the Nolachucky sing an endless requiem.

Analog, Snails, and the Rainy Season

I have a blogging friend who writes from Minnesota. Every fall, she has a contest among her readers to see whose guess comes the closest to the season’s first snowfall. Incredibly, she already has a winner.

Around here where I live—I assure you, a much more habitable clime than Minnesota—thoughts are more likely to turn to rain than snow. We can begin our rainy season any time from September through mid November.

As for this year, it started last night.

The drip-drip-drip of the season change happens to take on the very aura of what I’ve been feeling about my genealogy project since taking the leap from researching a big city (Chicago) to exploring a rural area (like northern Florida or east Tennessee). Believe me, after a day of sheer research drudgery, I’ll take digital and email any day, over analog and snail mail.

But snail mail it is to be. I’m all set to hurry up and wait six weeks for the sunshiny state of Florida to respond to my request for death certificates for my great grandparents, Rupert Charles and Sarah Ann Broyles McClellan. (By the way, you know this is the south, now, don’t y’all? And everyone in the south uses two names, y’hear?) All the while, I’m fervently wishing there was a place where I could get a fast response without the financial drain.

Why is it that going from zero to sixty to enter the digital research race is such a thrill, while returning from sixty to zero is such a drag? It’s just the same process, only in reverse.

And it’s not like I haven’t paid my dues in dusty reading rooms, or cranking microfilm readers so fast it induces motion sickness. I used to thrive on the hunt in archives, or the chase through multiple cities’ libraries, just to come up with one coveted fact. What’s different now?

It may just be that I’ve become spoiled. With an online world saturated with the likes of Ancestry.com, GenealogyBank, Fold3—not to mention the free resources all the way from the top with FamilySearch.org to the thousands of free genealogy links just there for the taking on Cyndi’s List—there are so many ways to find what we’re looking for.

Until I get to rural—read isolated—places like Embreeville, Tennessee. A spot like Embreeville doesn’t even have its own Wikipedia entry (okay, insert tongue in cheek here). Granted, having a Wikipedia entry does not confer authority upon a person, place or thing. But it does take people to write Wikipedia entries, and it looks like there is quite a dearth of people willing to record anything about the place called Embreeville. Oh, there is a longstanding AngelFire page that gives a brief history of the place. And a weather service website that includes a picture of the area. After all, one of Embreeville’s claims to fame is that the Nolichucky River makes a horseshoe bend around the town. Now, that’s living.

As you can imagine, it sometimes seems as if it would be more productive for research progress to actually travel there and try to find things for myself.

That, however, is my bad attitude coming out. (Yes, I’ll blame it on the rain.)

When the Broyles family needed to go to town, however, they did have a town to go to—thankfully. Sarah Ann Broyles McClellan’s childhood days were balanced between the solitude of Embreeville and the historic quaintness of Tennessee’s oldest town, Jonesborough. Or, putting it more the way the family wrote it in Bible and other records, “Jonesboro.”

Just as there were signs of civilization for the Broyles family living near the town of Jonesborough, I do have online options open to me, too. Just in my one fitful—make that pouty—day of stumbling about in this strange online land, I managed to find some old Rootsweb sites, plus the thoroughly modern Facebook pages for the Washington County Tennessee Obituary Project (seventeen hundred and counting), the Jonesborough Genealogical Society, and Friends of the Washington County Tennessee Archives. The more I look, the more I’m sure to find. It’s just a learning curve, and I’ll have to get used to climbing it without slipping. Someday, I’ll be taking it at sixty.

Somewhere in all those signs of civilization, though, I’ve yet to uncover any obituaries or cemetery records that match up to my Broyles family names. And yet it is Sarah Ann Broyles’ father who is my next link to my quest for D.A.R. membership: the good doctor, Thomas Taliaferro Broyles. I need to remind myself, though, that for this application, all I need is documentation . Stay the course, don’t be tempted to detour onto bunny trails. I need to remind myself of that mantra when I’m yearning to stop and sniff out all those delicious family stories that have peopled the data I’ve done in past research quests. While D.A.R. may want names and dates, I really thrive on the stories—but that will come later. The dreary rainy season does take an occasional break for some sunshine.

Above: oil painting by Gustave Caillebotte, Paris Street in Rainy Weather, courtesy Wikipedia; in the public domain.