FINDING GRANDFATHER AT THE BATTLE OF VICKSBURG
Have you ever tracked your family through a family tree or maybe you are tracking that illusive ancestor right now. My family certainly has had some adventures as we tracked our ancestors all across the United States and across the ocean. We have listened to stories of past events and diligently written it all down. Some of the stories proved true and some proved false, but all are interesting as all are like a mystery that needs to be solved. One such mystery occurred in tracking my grandfather’s father and in fact my grandfather’s whole family. He was my mother’s father and his name was Marcus Webster, a poor farmer that raised seven kids and gave up his dream to become a preacher to raise his family. But his father was an enigma – we did not even know where he was buried. Marcus never would talk about him and he may have been in that generation where fathers were called Paw and mothers were call Maw and kids never even knew their names until upstart grandchildren began doing the research. It would be many years later in a very unusual way that his history would be discovered. That inquiring grandchild of 14 had been challenged to track down the family by Marcus’s wife, Lillie. That started a lifelong pursuit for zillions of ancestors that may or may not ever be found.
Marriage would take that grandchild all the way to San Angelo and a faint story that the illusive grandfather, father of Marcus might have been buried in West Texas somewhere sent the family searching every cemetery between Fort Worth and El Paso and down to Sanderson, Eldorado, Menard, Mason, etc.
Quite by chance while searching a small cemetery for another line of the genealogy, my young son (everyone searched) found a grave all by itself in Trickham, Texas, near Santa Anna, and it was my illusive grandfather. That sent the search to