I first became interested in my family genealogy in 1966 (at the age of 17) while waiting for my father to pick me up from the library. Research was sporadic as I was busy raising a family and the research was put aside.

In 1978, I began doodling a landscape as I talked on the phone. In the landscape was a large tree, possible oak or pecan, without leaves sitting in a field with low hills in the background and stones. As soon as I put a copy in a scrapbook (somehow it was important to me) the doodling stopped.

14 years later, in 1992, a classified customer walks in to the newspaper I work at. Ronnie Brooks told me about finding William Babb, Revolutionary soldier's gravestone near his house while out riding on his 4-wheeler. I immediately knew this was the grave of the first William Babb who settled in Baldwin County, GA.

Ronnie gave me directions and a few days later on a cold Dec. afternoon I drove down the road. Imagine the overwhelming feeling I got, when I saw the picture I doodled so many years before unfolded before my eyes.

There sat the big pecan tree with the low hills in the background and granite boulders on the right. I drove up a little road and on my right on a little hill sat a lone granite gravestone, weathered by nature. The gravestone, placed there in 1930 by the local chapter of the DAR, was surrounded by unmarked graves.

I found Grandpa after all these years or did Grandpa find me?
 
 
 

copyright Eileen Babb McAdams 1998