What’s your story?
Like most Americans, I was pretty hazy on where my ancestors came from and how they got here.
My Mother was born in South Africa to American missionaries. My Father was born near Owensboro, KY. I always thought of my Father and Mother as having very different backgrounds.
A few things happened recently that led me to do some research and realize that the two sources of my ancestry were quite close.
One ancestor that I knew of was Levi Parks Keith. He was from my mother’s side, was in the Illinois cavalry in the Civil War, and died of disease late in the war.
I realized that “Levi Parks Keith” was a pretty rare name, so I did a Google search. This led me to a site called Grave Finder.
On that site, I found not only where he was buried but also information about his life and links to other family members, including his father and mother.
His Father, Mason Parks Keith, came from Virginia to Kentucky and then moved to Southern Indiana where most of my family stayed.
This intrigued me because I knew my Father’s family was rooted in Northern Kentucky and Southern Indiana as well.
I began to plug in some general history. The Great Lakes States as we know them were not open to settlement until quite a few years after the Revolutionary War. In addition, Kentucky was opened for settlement before the Great Lake States. Continue reading “What’s Your Story?”
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