Our Winter in Alabama

We stayed the winter in Alabama and worked on Pope Genealogy. We completely finished the Union Grove Church Cemetery project. We took pictures of all the tombstones, which was about 1000.

'View of the oldest part of the cemetery. '

Then I extracted all the data and put it into a database. We mapped all the graves. We also did GPS readings on all the Pope graves. It was a wonderful learning experience and we had many miracles happen especially at the cemetery. I would have people show up with some bit of information we needed.
The Pope family migrated from Haralson County, Georgia. We found a wonderful old courthouse that had been saved from destruction by the Haralson Genealogical Society.

It is now a small library with a genealogy room. That's where we found all these old marriage application dating from 1929 to 1951. 150 books with about 8000 applications for marriage. We asked if there was a book of the information or CD or something. They just looked at us funny and smiled. Ah, no, that's it. I said, "Your kidding!" I told John, we had to get that information. What if they burn. These applications not only had the names of the bride and groom but also the parents names, birth dates and where they lived. It was like a goldmine. But we knew we had to finish the cemetery project first. So, right before we had to get ready to leave we photoed all the applications. It took us about 4 days with the help of the Brother Williams, the genealogy teacher,our friend. We presented a copy to the Haralson Library. They were so excited that someone would do this for them. We left Alabama with some sadness. We acquired some wonderful friends, and a love of the people. We were so blessed with rich experiences.