Picture a very small version of Mayberry RFD, and that's what Woodbine is REALLY like!This is the small farming community where my mother's parents and their parents and THEIR parents resided.
On our trip, we were planning to just visit Woodbine one day, but it turned out to be two. The first day we stopped at the little one room Historical Society building and just happened to find a lady there, who just happened to stop by to pick something up for someone. (She didn't know she was an answer to my prayer!) Anyway, we told her that my mother grew up there and we were researching any info on the Ellison and Erlewine families. She got SO excited and started pulling out ALL this information and we stayed there for several hours making copies and reading things. She made arrangements for someone to meet us there the following morning.
We spent that afternoon visiting the "Ellison" cemetery and writing down as much info as we could.
On this monument of the WWI veterans, from Woodbine, there are a few Ellisons and Erlewines.The post office is the building behind it, and I went in there to ask if they knew where the "Mefford" cemetery was because we had found out several more relatives were there.
The postman didn't know where it was so he ACTUALLY sent me to the barbershop because he knew the barber would know! (Okay...picture Floyd and Gomer and Andy in the barbershop!)
Then he remembered it was Monday and it would be closed, so he sent us to the "City Hall" which after driving around the corner, was just a building with one door that read "POLICE" on it.
Now you have to picture an even SMALLER police station than Andy of Mayberry, and there was the head of police. When we asked him where the cemetery was, he got on his cell phone and called his one and only deputy, and located it on the map. It was then that I noticed the picture of Barney Fife on the wall! Too funny!!
We did find the cemetery and a relative or two there, but it was at this next cemetery where we got tons of info. This is where we found the Lenox family which, after researching for over a year, I found the parents of my Greatgrandma Erlewine! So EXCITED! They were from Ireland!
Since they were one of the first settlers in this town, Palmyra, (300 miles from Woodbine)there was a road called Lenox Rd. We also found a house where the mailbox read, Lenox and I got out and knocked at the door, but no one answered.
I wanted to stick this picture in because Isaac was the one who went from Virginia to Ohio, to Missouri, to Illinois, to Iowa. We think he met up with the Mormons in Ohio and then traveled with them. He owned property in Nauvoo and settled in Woodbine, Iowa which is about 40 miles north of Council Bluffs (Winter Quarters). We learned at the Winter Quarter Visitor Center that Woodbine was settled by the early Mormon pioneers. We believe Isaac was one of them!!(I have more info on all of this, but realize this may be getting boring...if you've stuck it out and read this far!)
.
So what do you think of your heritage?
