I wanted to share with you a success story of mine.

I could not find Barbara Elizabeth GUNN who I knew from family Bible records was David Williams’s wife. I posted on the Robertson County, TN. Website, Person Co., N.C. site and all appropriate others. Not leaving any stone unturned, I wrote a letter to the editor of several North Carolina newspapers and the local one. However, I had one last resort that at the time, I was unaware of having. My mother was in a nursing home (with 24 hour a day sitters J I was her weekend and holiday shift. I began working on genealogy one Saturday night in August of 1998 after coming home from the day with Mother. She had had more strokes that day and I had to make THE decision of honoring her Living Will. Both my brother and sister were out of town. I was upset and tired as I had been there all week with her and came home to rest for the night. I opened the FTM and started putting in family information thinking it would relax me. Little did I realize the anxiety and excitement that was ahead for me. Now, back to my story…….. I wanted to get as much of her family information to share with her as I could. I read many pages to her and she would smile. I knew that a window in her mind had opened and she was pleased in my desire to find and insure a record of her family be made. Mother couldn’t help me at all, as she was unable to talk. The last 5 days of her life I was with her day and night. The last 6 hours I was alone with her. It was during this time that I told her when she got to heaven to please find out who Barbara E. GUNN’s parents were and to let me know in a dream or appear and tell me. I asked nicely and said please. J She died on October 12, 1998.

I had a corneal transplant on October 28^th and was at home recovering from it until January. In the early part of December, long after the ads ran, I got a phone call from a lady in Cedar Hill, TN. Faye and Bobby Dowlen had cleared off some land and found a cemetery. She remembered my letter to the editor. There in the cemetery were Barbara E. Williams and her father Joseph GUNN buried side by side. Faye and a friend of mine dug up David’s tombstone from under 8 inches of dirt. Two of their children are there also. We recorded the data on each tombstone and our County Historian was most grateful to add it to the cemetery records.

Barbara had been left out of the BIG GUNN book in our local library.

I was so excited. I was able to place my family in the GUNN family history. My GUNN online friends I had corresponded with now became my relatives. They were as excited as I was.

There is hope for us to find our ancestors. When you least expect it, they will arrive in some manner to let us honor and respect their memory by preserving our heritage.

God bless.

Nancy Williams Lewis