Grandma Page came for a visit this week and spent a lot of time hanging out at home with Emmy. While most of the time was spent relaxing at home, Grandma did pry herself away from the baby girl one day and headed with me to Halls, Tennessee.
Halls is only about an hour and a half to the north of Memphis, and it was once home to my great-great-grandparents. Mom and I thought we would check out the town on a mini family history excursion.
Halls is also where my great-great-grandparents first met missionaries from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Two missionaries were traveling by train across the state and one felt prompted to get off the train in Halls. The other objected, having heard stories that missionaries weren't received kindly in those parts. When the train pulled into Main Street Station the missionaries got off and started walking down the road.
Here is Main Street in Halls, where the missionaries got off the train. They made their way through town and at some point eventually made it to our family home, where my great-great-grandmother was "up to her elbows in flour". She didn't answer the door at first but after the second knock heard a voice in her head tell her to answer it. She did, and the rest is history, as they say.
After some time on Main Street, we head to the local cemetery, not expecting to find anything, but curious nonetheless.
While walking through we found two headstones with our family name on them. Haynes was my grandmother's maiden name. We have no idea who Julia or Don are, or if they are in our line, but the census in 1900 for Halls was 395 people, and in 1950 it was 1,808. What are the odds that in a town of less than 2,000 there were two unrelated Haynes families?
It was a really neat day trip with my mom to cap off a fun visit.
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