"Looking for One Thing, But Found Another!"

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My Haynes Story!

This is the story of my accidental find on my Haynes family! My youngest son, James, was working on his Division Two of the 4-H Genealogy Project that required photos of tombstones for his ancestors and other relatives. Since most were buried in Kentucky in about 6 counties, it seemed wise to plan a route to go from cemetery to cemetery and to know who we wanted to get a photo of their grave marker. Best way to do that was to go to Willard Library and check the "Cemetery Inscription" books. These generally had the name of the cemetery with location and listed everyone's information on their personal little monument. I sent James back to get the Christian County books while I got out our charts & records of who we were looking for.

Odd that someone had left a book on the table instead of placing it on the cart as requested by the library. Coincidentally, it was a cemetery inscription book for Ohio County, KY. I didn't know the library had this book... they only had one book for this county for years - a marriage record book. This marriage book listed the marriage of my ancestors William Allen Kimble to Hannah Haynes 25 Aug 1825. According to the census records, they lived in Grayson County, Ky adjoining Ohio Co. to the east. So, while I had this cemetery book in my hand, I checked for Kimble's in the index. To my amazement there were many listed! Quickly, I looked for Haynes... there were even more! I found the cemetery that William & Hannah were buried. This book is what some call "annotated" version which meant (to me) that it was a notable work (possibly blessed by a Priest or Rabbi) or that it contained notes appended thereof. I think the latter is correct! ;) The note for Hannah stated she was the daughter of John Barton Haynes & Rhoda Huff. RHODA?!!!? So, that is where the name "Rhoda" came from! The daughter of Hannah & William Kimble was Rhoda Kimble who married William Wood (my great-great grandparents).

Of course, I needed to prove all of this. I visited the graves of all those I just mentioned and the library in Fordsville. They suggested that I go to the Grayson Co. Library in Leitchfield where I found a booklet on the Haynes of Grayson, Ohio & Breckinridge Counties of Kentucky. Information from the census & the John Barton Haynes Bible listed all of his children including Hannah married to William Kimble. Now, this library suggested going to the one in Owensboro. There I came out with close to 300 pages of copied data documenting this Haynes/Huff family costing about $40! And it was worth every penny... I had discovered five new generations and eight new surnames of direct ancestors. Incredible find!

I remembered seeing in the TSGS 5-Generation Book that someone else had Haynes in Kentucky. It was Joan Parker (former Special Collections Librarian for Willard Library & currently at the Newburgh Public Library) and her ancestors were John Barton Haynes & Rhoda Huff, too!!! Later, I learned that the late Sam McDowell descended from this family of Haynes. Sam published a lot of genealogical books for Kentucky researchers and attended most of the TSGS Seminars as a vendor. We had become friends over the years through these seminars.

I want to add this little story to this. After I learned that Joan & I had the same ancestors, we exchanged information each had. And I was surprised at all that she had that was different than what I had found! I went by the old Newburgh Library by the river to give Joan copies of what I had. I was telling her that it just seemed like we could just pick up any file, folder or book and get more information. I reached out grabbing a book off of the shelf we happened to be near and stated: "I could pick up any book look in the index and find our Haynes family" (while turning to the index). To my surprise there was John Barton Haynes!!! Joan did not believe me when I said I just picked this book at random. Becky was there and said that I had not looked at any books, we were just standing there waiting for Joan to show up after she was called to meet us! And, that is the truth!

- Written by JGWest