Thursday, December 27, 2012

Met a new (to me) cousin!

A couple years ago I started corresponding with a distant cousin named Jim Mosier. His great grandfather and my great, great grandfather were brothers. Jim saw some of my memorials on find-a-grave and contacted me, and we've been cousins ever since. Last month he drove down from VA to visit me in NC and we spent two days traveling around SC to graveyards and visiting family members.





Our grandfathers are buried at this cemetery, Union Baptist Church Cemetery, in Lancaster, SC. They were raised adjacent to the church at the old Tom Small Farm, until their mother died and they were separated to live with relatives.




Jim's great grandfather Thomas Milburn Calvin Mosier had a farm in Cassatt, SC, where some of his descendants still live. After leaving Lancaster we drove to Cassatt to look up Jim's family. We met his cousin Jack, and Jack's wife Jan and son Kyle. Jack had to go to work but Jan and Kyle were so warm and welcoming to us. They let us walk all over the old farm land, take photos and then invited into the home to look through 100's of photos. 

We also stopped at the Cassatt County Store. Jim's Uncle Charley Mosier used to own it but he was robbed and murdered at his house in the early 1970's after leaving the store one night. It has been told that before he died he said they didn't get his money, which he was known to carry a lot of. We met a man in the store who told us a very heart warming memory about Uncle Charley.

It was a great visit, and Jim and I are definitely cousins for life now!

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