My Grandparents

Image by freeparking via Flickr

I visited my Dad's parent's graves today. There was a funeral in Edgewood Cemetary that I was attending and thought I would try to find their plot. I found out that my grandfather's name was William Rufus McKinney (aka Big Papa) and that my grandmother's name was McGrath instead of Tolbert. McGrath, by the way, in this part of the country is pronounced McGraw (as in "queeksdraw mcgraw".) When I saw that I remembered a story that I had heard a long, long time ago. It seems that my grandmother was a Tolbert, but both her parents passed away when she was very young - leaving her as the heiress to a lot of land. As the story goes, her Dad's brother paid the McGrath's to adopt her so that he could take control of the properties. I also recall that the McGraths were not kind to her and that she married at a very early age in order to get away from them. My Dad said that her sister (and I can't remember her name) was married when she was 9 years old. He showed me the tree under which she played with her dolls after the wedding.

Another interesting note is that I also found my wife Pat's grandparent's graves are located adjacent to my grandparents! That's fairly odd, since they didn't know each other and grew up/ lived in different worlds - go figure.

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