The history mystery

    I love genealogy. It's a hobby I could do all day, every day.
    In the past 10-15 years I started researching my family history. I looked up names on the Internet, looked through microfilm at the library, and listened to stories from some of the older cousins. But I never got full information, just bits and pieces. I wanted to know more.
    In the past week I have learned more about my family than I have in the last 15 years. But instead of being satisfied with this new information, it just made me yearn for more.
    I visited the Lauderdale County Courthouse to look at plat maps, land deeds and marriage dates, the archives department at the Lauderdale County Courthouse Annex to get copies of marriage certificates and look at city directories, and the office at St. Patrick Catholic Church to look up baptism, marriage and burial information. Not to mention walking all over the catholic cemetery and Rose Hill cemetery.
    I feel like a detective searching for clues to a big mystery. It has been an amazing adventure and I don't want it to end. I have loved every minute of it. (And I think I lost five pounds from all the walking I have done. An added bonus!)
    I always wondered why there weren't stories about my ancestors. Most families could tell you great stories about things that great-grandpa or great-grandma did.
    My roots in Meridian run very deep, going all the way back to 1868, but the stories are few simply because my ancestors were lucky to have lived at all.
    My great-grandparents, James and Anna Nevell Crowe came from Ireland. They were married in Meridian on Jan. 14, 1868. On the 1870 census he is listed as an engineer with the railroad. They had a total of six children. Their first son, Frances Patrick, was born on Nov. 27, 1869, and died on Oct. 17, 1872. By 1880 they had five more children.
    On June 4, 1880, James Crowe died at the age of 39. My grandfather, James T. Crowe was only six months old. On June 2 or 3, 1881, Anna Crowe died at the age of 35. The five children still living were all under the age of 10.
    I have heard stories that Father Louis Vally, the priest at St. Patrick Church, raised my grandfather. It is quite possible, considering both parents were deceased and that in 1880 the catholic community was still fairly small. All of the children were also baptized by Father Vally.
    The other children, all girls were "at school." (This is how it is worded on the census forms.) Anna, the child, and Ellen both became nuns, Maggie married later in life to a C.M. Waggoner, and the youngest, Mattie Crowe, died in 1889 at the age of 11.
    I have also heard my grandfather, James T. Crowe, was studying to become a priest, until he met my grandmother, Mary Serena Rose, daughter of John Seaborn and Bridget Harrington Rose.
    So, there aren't many stories because all of the children were too young. They never knew their parents.
    For me, the mystery grows.
    I want to know how my great-grandparents died. I want to know why Frances Patrick died at the age of three. I want to know how my grandmother raised six children during the depression after my grandfather died due to injuries sustained in a car accident in 1925.
    I can close my eyes and try to imagine how they lived back then. The hardships they endured. How they survived during the Yellow Fever epidemic in 1878.
    I have created a timeline starting in 1868 when James and Anna were married and so far have gone through the 1930 census. (My father, John B. Crowe, was 15 years old in 1930.) I will post the timeline on my blog when I have completed it.
    With more answers come more questions. Some questions will never be answered, but I will definitely have fun trying to find them!