Exciting
Only logged in members can reply and interact with the post.
Join SimilarWorlds for FREE 禄

4 Wheeling in the Hollars of Kentucky

For those who don't know what a hollar is, it is a remote valley in the hills. I have been working on my genealogy for about 8 years. Seems that most of my family is from Kentucky, settling there with Revolutionary War grants.
I have found some really neat things. This past year, I decided to go to the Kentucky Derby and do some grave hunting.

No one in my generation had ever seen these graves. I remember as a little girl, helping my dad write letters asking for money from the family to put a fence around the family cemetery.

I reached out to the owner of the property and he agreed to take us to the graves. He said "this is going to be rough" I was serious about seeing them. I have a lot of family buried here so I was up for the challenge.

Kentucky has at least 2 poisionous snakes-the copperhead and the rattler. They get to be huge. They have something called a horse tick. I don't know what that is, but i didn't want one. We sprayed down with insecticide that took 6 washings to get out of our clothes. I wore snake gaiters, jeans, crap kicking hiking boots and carried an aluminum pole. I was going to kill anything crawling near me. My cousin wore these little rubber ducky boots and fell a few times.

I have never had so much fun in my life. I drove the gator. I went a little crazy too. that thing can move. To say this was an Indiana Jones adventure is an understatement. Oh, it was raining too.

When I came across my GR Grandmother's barn, i wanted to cry. I saw where my dad went to school. I saw the road that my grandfather was killed on. I saw the fence that my dad has put up in 1967. I couldn't see the graves because of the overgrowth and you can't lean down because of the snakes, but i started to cry.

I led the charge and took money for a chain link fence. We will be renaming the cemetery too. I am going to post some headstones that are not my relatives.

Johnnynoir, this barn is for you!


my cousin and our guide with a machete


the old homestead. Absolutely beautiful.




and what it looks like today!

This page is a permanent link to the reply below and its nested replies. See all post replies 禄
Bertie46-50, F
What an awesome story! My dad is from Kentucky too. He just passed away in April. 馃様馃挄馃挋
akindheart61-69, F
@Bertie what part?
Bertie46-50, F
@akindheart I don't recall. I didn't really know him. I found a half sister who grew up with him on FB years ago. We keep in touch now. She sent me a bunch of pictures of him in the mail. I do things the old fashioned way because the internet isn't safe for me. My dad passed away last April. My favorite memory of him is when he took me flying in his little 4 seater airplane over Catalina Island in California when I was 19 years old. I never saw him much at all.