Family history touring

More and more we hear about families who include touring significant family/ancestor places as part of their reunion. This is a particularly special activity when many members are attending from out-of-town and rarely have the opportunity to visit. These would include homes/homesteads, farms, neighborhoods, schools, churches and cemeteries. Some families even do re-enactments in conjunction with the tours. We are very interested in learning about your history tour, e-mail us!

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Magnolia was a goal
For one Gilmore Family Reunion in Arkansas the family chose the theme “Celebrating Our Roots.” A highlight of the three days was a charter bus tour of Magnolia, the original homesite, and Pine Bluff, where they held a memorial service at the cemetery where ancestors are buried.

Getting there
The Taylor Family Reunion alternates their reunions between Buffalo, New York, and Chicago, Illinois. They hire a bus to transport the Chicago contingent to Buffalo and have transportation while they’re there. The per-person cost is better than any other form of transportation, for both the long-distance and local trips.

Cruising Biloxi
Laura L. Bedard, Hudson, New Hampshire, wife of Roland, member of 1st Special Seabees, wrote that their reunion activities in Biloxi, Mississippi, included a one-day bus excursion with lunch and sightseeing.

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Fleetwood family does Oklahoma
The Fleetwood Family Reunion gathers descendants of Charles Fleetwood and Lucinda Morgan of Oklahoma and their 14 children. The first reunion was in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, Capitol of the Cherokee Nation West, where their 7th great-grandparents met at nearby Fort Gibson, Indian Territory, in 1834. Charles Fleetwood was a Dragoon in the Army from Bertie County, North Carolina, on the east coast and Lucinda Morgan was a Cherokee/Catawba immigrant from the hills of western North Carolina.

The reunion reserved a travel coach with an intercom and visited several historic sites in Oklahoma’s Delaware District, along with places the family lived, transacted business and are buried. Presentations on the tour included charts, maps, pictures, displays, books, and genealogy material pertaining to family history.

Friday they traveled north into the Delaware District and visited historic sites where policies had impacted their ancestor’s lives. They contemplated Charles’s involvement at the Battle of Cabin Creek historic site. At the Saline Courthouse they imagined ancestors coming to cast their votes in Cherokee Tribal elections. They visited cemeteries where Lucinda and other descendants are buried. That evening they showed a documentary called Last Raid at Cabin Creek.

Saturday, again by coach, they traveled south, first stopping at Fort Gibson State Historic Site, where their ancestors met and married. Lucinda was 16 and Charles was 24. From there the tour stepped out of the Cherokee Nation and 30 years into the future. They went south to the Battle of Honey Springs State Historic Site. Again they imagined Charles’s involvement at another pivotal engagement of the Civil War in Indian Territory and cried that he was an old man in the Union Army, who at this place faced his sons who were Confederates.

Each day the coordinator, Jennifer Sparks, called ahead and made reservations for the party. She chose moderately priced restaurants with which she was familiar and served good food. Everyone was satisfied.

Reported by Jennifer Sparks, Fort Gibson, Oklahoma, who says in commenting about her reunion: “It was a great accomplishment to have successfully executed such a large event, and it was so worth it.  I think the greatest reward was the wonderful people I came to know and love.  I made so many new friends out of previously unknown relatives, and it is a satisfying feeling.”

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Civil Rights icon finds a new home
The bus in which civil rights activist Rosa Parks was riding when she refused to give up her seat to a white man is on display at the Henry Ford Museum.

According to the Associated Press, a Montgomery, Alabama, man bought the bus in the early 1970s, and left it to his daughter when he died in 1985. The museum purchased it from the family for $492,000.

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