Marlar Cemetery, Sawyer, Kentucky

Recently I received a friend request on Facebook from a Marlar who lives in Kentucky just across the river from Cincinnati, Ohio. He had decided that he wanted to befriend as many Marlars on facebook as he could, and I am so glad that he did. He is my husband's fourth cousin and is descended from the one brother who stayed in Kentucky while the mother and other children moved to Mississippi in the middle 1800's. I had not been able to prove who the other was but he gave me access to his website which gave me lots of information and I am now in the process of adding it to my website on tribal pages. This was very exciting information but the strange part was that most of the deceased members of the family are buried at Marlar Cemetery near Sawyer, Ky, in the southern most part just north of Knoxville, Tennessee. This cemetery is located in the Cumberland Falls State Park and my husband has vacationed near there twice and did not know it was there. Several years ago we made a trip to Sterns with our friends, Bobby and Judy and last year we spent one night in Somerset, Ky, which is about ten miles from the cemetery!
When I found this out I immediately started planning a trip to go to this cemetery and another one near by. Two weeks ago Jim and I along with our daughter Michelle and her husband James made the trip, combining it with a trip to Gatlinburg.
While there we were able to make pictures at both cemeteries. I am sure we did not get pictures of all the Marlar graves as there were many unmarked graves. Some of the tombstones had deteriorated and some had been replaced with newer ones, leaving the old ones there also.
While we were there we also visited Cumberland Falls. This was the first trip there for Michelle and James. We had such a wonderful time. The leaves were beginning to turn, the weather was beautiful and we enjoyed being with family talking about older family members.
I make a lot of pictures for findagrave.com and I had noticed that there was a request for a picture of a grave that was not one of my husband's relatives. I made sure that I made a picture to post. I received the sweetest thank you. It was from a young man in the service and the grave was his father's. He was so happy to receive the picture and I was happy I could make it for him as he was protecting our freedom!
Hope you enjoy some of the pictures we made!!!

Knocking down a brick wall!!!

I love genealogy. I love knowing where I came from and also my husband. I have been doing research since 1995 and during that time I have found and knocked down several brick walls. It is so exciting when you are able to finally find that one (or several) people that you have been searching for, sometimes for years.
That was the case with my husband's Marlar family. We knew who the first Marlar was that came to Tishomingo County. She was Mary "Polly" Barnes Marlar and came here a widow with several children. We didn't know who her husband was or where he was buried, only that she came from Kentucky. I had searched but with no name or information to go on could not find any concrete information of any of the Kentucky Marlars that could be related.
Flash forward to two weeks ago. I received a friend request from William Marlar of Kentucky. He had looked and found about 500 Marlars on facebook and had decided to see how many he could befriend. I immediately confirmed him and sent him a message to ask if he and my husband could be related. When I received his reply I was so happy I could have danced around the room!!! Now not only do we know his great great great grandfather's name (Allen Rubin Marlar) but where is buried. William is my husband's fourth cousin and descended from the one child who remained in Kentucky.
The most ironic part of this story is that this cemetery is named Marlar Cemetery and located in the southern part of Kentucky, north of Knoxville and Oak Ridge, Tennessee and last year my husband and I took a weekend trip that area and were within ten miles of the cemetery! About 12 years ago we had also been on vacation there and spent the night about 20 miles from there. Now I am planning another trip there, hopefully this fall so I can make pictures and see all the graves for myself.
I am so happy to find William and although he lives further north maybe in the not too distance future we will be able to meet. If he had not decided to befriend me I might never have found the information that he has been able to give me.
You just never know where that one lost piece of info will be that will connect you to many family members. Always be on the outlook and never say no!!!!!
Thank you so much, William, for finding us and welcome to our side of the Marlar Family!!!!!

My daughter, Tami Michelle Marlar White!

When my youngest daughter, Tami Michelle, was born in 1968 in Memphis, Tennessee, it was a trying time for the United States. We were living in East Memphis near Jackson and National and Jim and I both worked downtown. I had just found out that I was pregnant when Martin Luther King, Jr. was shot only blocks from where I worked. I was working for First National Bank on the eighth floor and we had guards riding on the elevators and National Guard soldiers standing guard around the outside of the building. There was a 7PM to 7AM curfew for everyone and all stores and businesses were closed. Things had eased a lot by the time that she was born, but she came in with a bang. She was born on Friday morning and on Saturday we had an earthquake that shook Baptist Hospital and did some minor damage to a building across the street. Then on Monday when we were ready to go home we woke up to an early snow storm and below freezing temps. We never picked out a boy's name and I cried for two days because I thought Jim was disappointed (he wasn't!) so I guess this was her way of making herself known! He also picked her name. Again because he had seen a girl he thought was pretty named Michelle. This girl was a receptionist for a printing company in Memphis. I guess it was a good thing we didn't have any more kids or he might have found a pretty girl he wanted to keep instead of just her name! :-)
She was a very good baby. Slept all night the second night we took her home, but when I took her to the doctor for a two week checkup she had lost weight, What did the doctor do? He made me start waking her up for a bottle every three hours day and night. Goodbye peaceful quiet nights!!!!!
When I look back now I can see that she had ADHD. Then we just said she was our "boy" and hyperactive because she was always talking and getting in to something. She went to Horn Lake Baptist Church kindergarten and the teacher used to laugh and say she spent most of her time in the corner for talking.
When she was eight years old, she had her tonsils removed and when I carried her back for her checkup. I noticed that she was smiling funny and got on to her. She tried to tell me she wasn't doing anything but I was in too much of a hurry to listen. When the doctor walked in, he said "Oh,no, this child has Bell's Palsy". She was the youngest child he had ever seen that had it. The nerves in the left side of her face were paralyzed and she couldn't close her eye and smiled crooked. We didn't know what to expect but thankfully it went away in about 3 weeks and although there is a chance it can, it has not returned.
Michelle has always had a love for the group "Loverboy", especially their lead singer, Mike Reno. She has seen him numerous times and met him several times. It is a joke around our house especially now that he is an "aging rock star".
Jan was the only child for five and a half years and then when Jan left home Michelle was the only child at home for almost five years. During her high school years she worked at TCBY in Southaven and later at a clothing chain in Southland Mall.
She graduated from Southaven High in 1986 and shortly after we moved to Pensacola, Florida. We lived there from June until the end of November and she and I went to the beach everyday. She could always swim like a fish and those were some of the best times of my life. We would go downtown Pensacola and walk around, go to the mall and just spend time together.
She also came to Iuka and lived with my mother. It was here that she met James and they were married in a simple outdoor early spring wedding on the deck behind the lodge at Tishomingo State Park. They have two beautiful children, Adam and Meghan.
Michelle works in the lab at Magnolia Hospital in Corinth. She has worked in nursing homes, doctor's offices, and also at Helen Keller Hospital. She is so good with patients especially older people. She wanted to be a nurse but had to quit school because her daughter had health problems as a child. She would be a wonderful nurse. She is so compassionate and caring.
Sometimes as Jim and I get older and have health problems, I feel like she is the parent and I am the child. She will take over and deal with the doctors, nurses, and insurance companies so we don't have too. She is one of the most family oriented people I have ever seen. No one better do anything to her family or friends! She is always the first person we call when we are sick or lonesome. She can cheer you up quicker than anyone I know.
I am so proud of Michelle. She is a hardworking, loving, caring mother, wife and daughter. If I could I would write it across the sky in diamonds-
I LOVE YOU MICHELLE WHITE!!!!!!!!!!!

My daughter, Janis Lynn Marlar Anglin!

One of the questions on my list is who are your children and write a little about them. Well, tonight I am writing about my oldest daughter. Her name is Janis Lynn but to us she has always been Jan. She was born in 1963, nineteen months after Jim and I married. We were so excited. We were young, living in government housing, Jim was working at the Vidette (The Tishomingo County News), and I worked as a secretary/bookkeeper for a auto parts company in Corinth, Ms, both of us earning 75 cents an hour!. It was a real stuggle but how proud we were, we had our own little baby girl. She was born at the Iuka Hospital on the exact day that Dr. Cosby had told me the first day he told me I was pregnant! He laughed and told me that he bet he couldn't do that the next "three" times! Jim chose her name. We would go to concerts by Wendy Bagwell and the Starliters and one of the backup singers was named Jan and he always thought she was so pretty so it just told me, she will be Jan and you can choose any name you want so I can call her Jan :-) so Janis Lynn just seemed like it fit. It was so odd because then you didn't know what you were having until they actually arrived, but we never had a boy's name chosen and it was a good thing because we never needed one.
She was such a good baby. It was almost as if she knew she had young, dumb, parents and she did. When she was 18 months old we moved to Memphis. We lived three blocks from the Memphis Zoo and I was off work each Wednesday so I would put her in a stroller almost every week and she and I would go to the zoo. We could amuse ourselves for hours just watching the animals.
She went to Merton Ave Baptist Church Daycare and for two years she attended their kindergarten. She really thought she was smart because she had so much schooling. One day I told her something and she disagreed and I said no I am right and she said, no you are wrong and I ought to know cause I have been to kindergarten! She was only five years old. How can you not love that?
She started to school in Memphis (Graves Elementery in Whitehaven) but only went there for about six months. We were living across the street from Graceland and she and my fifteen year old neice stayed at the gate so much that they became good friends with Elvis' uncle Vester and when Elvis was touring, he would ride them around on the grounds of the estate.
After going to Iuka, Hernando, and Horn Lake she actually graduated from Southaven High School. At age 16 she went to work at McDonald's in Southaven and worked there for two years. You would think that she would hate hamburgers but she still loves "Mickey D's" today. Sometimes I think they made their slogan "Lovin It" after her! Jan was a very realigous teen and was very active in all the teen activities at Southaven Church of Christ.
After high school she moved to Iuka, because in her heart she had always been a small town girl. One week end she called and said she was bringing home someone to meet us. I knew then he had to be someone special and he was. When they got ready to leave she hugged my neck and said, "Don't you just love him to death?" I knew then, wedding bells would be ringing soon. And they did. Her wedding was a simple, old fashioned, outside, country wedding that everyone enjoyed.
As the years passed by, she and Timmy had three adorable children, but life wasn't all roses as their second child, Kelsey, was born with spina bifida and didn't survive. The kids thrived in small town life with sports, cheerleading, acedemics and all the other aspects of small town life.
Her oldest, Stephany, is now married with two boys of her own, and will be getting her Bachelors Degree in accounting in May, and just started a new job at a local high tech space industry company. Her son, Andy, is a union member and travels around the country working at power plants and nuceular plants.
Timmy is a supervisor at a local steel plant. Jan has worked several different office jobs, but the one she has now is the lowest paying but most satisfying. She is Executive Director for our local historical museum. She is responsible for every aspect of everyday operations for a growing museum and a research library that had visitors from more than twenty seven states last year. She spends a lot of her own time and money to be sure that future geneations will know their heritage. I try to volunteer and help her as much as I can.
I am so proud of the woman that my daughter has become. I would like to take credit for all of it but I know that I can't. She has been an inspiration for me. I might not be the Christian I am today, if it had not been for her being so faithful when she was a child and a teen. When I see her speak to a group of well educated men and women and they tell me how intelligent and knowledgeable she is, I swell with pride.
She is currently serving as an officer on the board of museums for the State of Mississippi. Not bad for a kid from a town with only 3500 population, and one red light!
To say I am proud of her is a understatement and as her Dad and I grow older we have to count on our kids for not only moral support but also physical support. I know that when we need someone we will always have someone we can count on.
If I could I would shout it from the rooftops.
I LOVE YOU JAN ANGLIN!!!!!!! And I am so proud to be your mother!

Memories of growing up in a small town during the 1950"s!

Life was much simpler in a small town during the 1950's. Money was tight but life was uncomplicated without all the trappings of the modern day. Iuka had appoximately 2500 living in the city limits. We had no red lights and the major highway from Memphis to Chattanooga, Tennessee ran right through the middle of town along side the railroad track that ran from Memphis to Washington, DC. There were several freight trains and two passenger trains that came though each day and that was how we received our mail. My sister lived in Memphis and I would get on the train and ride to visit her and her family. My husband or kids have never had the pleasure of enjoying riding through the countryside and seeing the country like you did from a train.
We had two drug stores in town and both had soda fountains with soda jerks (mostly boys) just like the shows on TV. Going to Baskin-Robbins will never compare to going to the soda fountain and having a milk shake, malt, or sundae in a real glass. They were the meeting places after school when all the teens would meet to flirt and gossip. Awww, those were the "Happy Days" with a jukebox but without the Fonz!
Our town had a cafe called "Claude Curtis Hamburgers". We called the burgers "slug burgers" and all kind of rumors were told about them. They were greasy and you got them with mustard, pickle, and onion only. I don't think anyone knew exactly what he put in them but today's version uses soy in the beef. He also made hotdogs with kraut and a watered down homemade chili. Most times you could not find a table or stool to sit at. They sold for five cents!
We had a movie theater named the Majestic. On the week end it was the place to be. They would show westerns (Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, Randolph Scott, Lash LaRue) along with news and all the latest movies. When they showed "Love me Tender" with Elvis I think I saw it at least ten times, and cried each time!! The first run movies were at night and the westerns were mostly matinees on Saturday afternoon. You could go to town get a hamburger and coke at Claude's, go to the movie and get popcorn for a quarter! Try doing that today!!!! Later we got a Drive In movie which is still in operation today, one of only three left in the State of Mississippi. I actually met Lash LaRue at the Memphis Fair when I was about thirteen and he kissed me on my cheek. To me this was the almost as good as meeting Elvis!
All the stores were in the "downtown" area. On Saturdays it was hard to find a parking space. That was when everyone did their shopping at small family owned grocery stores, clothing stores, barber and beauty shops and the 5 and 10 cent store. We had two, one was named Elmore's and was actually a chain store out of Alabama. When I graduated from high school in May of 1959 I worked for them that summer until I could decide what I wanted to do with my life. I worked six days a week and I don't remember how much I made an hour but we were paid in cash on Saturday and my pay was eighteen dollars and a few cents after they took out taxes!