KCMO

Day 3 of our Kansas City trip and I am finally getting a chance to do a little post about the happenings so far in our little adventure.  Flying from Salt Lake City to Kansas City.

Driving over to our hotel from the airport.

We arrived in KCMO on Tuesday afternoon got checked into our hotel and then went to meet Roy's new found cousins over in Independence, for supper at the Pizza Ranch, an all you can eat pizza, salad and chicken place. The chicken was fantastic, as well as the salads, and I was good and did not eat any pizza, though I was quite tempted to do so.  We all started talking as soon as we got there so I forgot to take a picture of the restaurant and the food, but thankfully I remembered to take pictures of the people we were meeting.  😊

We set and visited with Wayne, his wife Viola, daughters Sharon and Susan and Susan's husband, David and son, Daniel, her daughter, Hannah was at work so we did not get to meet her.  We set and talked and visited like we had always known each other, even though we had just met for the first time that evening. We were there for over two hours talking and getting to know one another.

Wayne and Roy are just second cousins on their Mom's side of the family, Roy's Mom, Elnora and Wayne's Mom, Rachel were first cousins.  Elnora's mother was Mary Myrtle Kerby Mortenson, 1892-1969, and Rachel's father was Joseph Lee Kerby, 1890-1956.  Myrtle and Joe were siblings and two of the children of Francis Kerby III and Rachel Isabel Riggs.  Rachel had gotten married in 1938 and within a couple of years she and her husband and their baby son, Joe, left Arizona and lived in a number of places over the years while her husband was in the military and working as a miner. Wayne said he had only been to Elfrida twice I believe it was and that was for the funeral of his grandfather, Joe Kerby in 1956 and one other time.  My husband, Roy was born and raised there and so he was able to tell Wayne a lot about the area and about the Kerby family as well.

We are planning on getting together again next year when Roy comes in for his meetings.  If we have time on the return trip from Kentucky to KCMO we may stop and visit with them before we go to the airport, just depends on traffic and how quickly we can get up and packed on that day.

Well, Roy went to work the next morning and I got ready to meet a new cousin of mine from my Mom's side of the family.  This cousin is a lot more distant than Roy and Wayne.  Kellene and I are 10th cousins 2 generations removed from our common ancestors who were Richard Stout and Penelope Kent.  I come through Richard and Penelope's son, James B. Stout and his wife, Elizabeth Truax and Kellene comes through Richard and Penelope's son, David Stout and his wife, Rebecca Ashton.

Kellene stopped and picked me up at our hotel and took me to lunch at the Smokehouse BBQ in Gladstone, Missouri.  I love BBQ and their burnt end sandwich and baked beans were the bomb!!!!! Thanks again for a fantastic lunch Kellene.....  We set and talked for at least two hours there at the restaurant and then came back to my hotel and I showed Kellene how to go about doing some searches and some websites for family history research for another couple of hours, before she had to leave.  We are planning on getting together again when we come back next year.

When Roy got home from work last night we went for supper to Jazz, A Louisiana Kitchen.  We usually eat there every time we are in Kansas City, the food is dynamite and the entertainment is always really good as well.  I had the catfish po' boy with New Orleans coleslaw and hushpuppies and Roy always gets the shrimp fettuccine.  For dessert we shared a strawberry stuffed beignet. Again Roy ate most of my bread and I had a few bites of the beignet, after all I am trying to be good and keep my carb count down, but I only let him have a little bite of one of my hushpuppies, I had to eat all of them.  😉

Our waiter, Jack, was fantastic and johnny on the spot with drinks, food and just to make sure we were being taken care of.  The place is mainly a dive bar, but the food, well you need to go and check it out for yourself.  A very eclectic place to be, for sure.

Jazz has live entertainers there every night from 7 to 10 and we have not seen any we did not like and last night was no exception.  Just a little video clip of one of the songs this man did last night, I never did catch his name but he was good and man could he play the guitar.

Live at Jazz in KCMO May 24, 2017

After we left Jazz we drove over to the National World War I Memorial that is located here in Kansas City.  That is how Wayne found Roy, his mom, Rachel had always told him about her uncle, her dad's brother, Arthur Kerby, who was killed during World War I in France on the front lines at the Battle of the Marne.  My husband Roy had always heard about this uncle as well and so one of my stories for my blog I wrote about Uncle Art and when Wayne punched in his name on google, it took him to my blog and the story I had written and posted in August of 2015, and the rest as they say is now history. 

There are brick walkways with many names of men and women who either died or served in the many conflicts throughout our nation's history.  The memorial is just beautiful and the grounds around it and the surrounding areas are very nice. I even found a brick for a Henry Doss, which was my Mama Jessie's maiden name.  I need to figure out who he was and tie him to the family, he is bound to be related in some way.  They have walls of pictures of some of the battlefield areas that are really cool too.  Here are just some of the pictures I took from there last night.  

From the monument you can see the building where Roy was having his meetings this week and then the cityscape too.

Tonight we are going to McCoy's for supper, we found it last year, they have the best chicken and waffles and Roy wanted to have them again.  I will have the chicken, but that darn carb thing will make me skip the waffle, but I might just take a bite of Roy's anyway.  😋  I will add a couple of pictures later after I take them tonight.

Tomorrow we will drive across the middle of the great state of Missouri following the trail, Roy's 2nd great-grandfather followed in 1834, from Liberty, Missouri over to his property in Monroe County, Missouri.  More about this in my next post.

Getting Ready to Start Vlogging

Well I guess vlogging is a word, it wasn't when I was a kid, but neither were videos.  I guess that means I am old.  😉

Roy and I, are getting ready for our trip and are leaving on Tuesday morning for Kansas City.  When we leave Kansas City we will be driving around the states of Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky and probably Tennessee before all is said and done.  We will be doing a lot of visiting with family, mainly my side, as well as stopping to see the lands and cemeteries where some of our ancestors lived, died and were buried along the way.

On Tuesday evening we will start off by meeting with some of Roy's relatives who he has never meet before.  Roy and Wayne are just second cousins on the Kerby side of their family, their mothers were first cousins.  However, Wayne's mother married when she was 17 and within a couple of years or so they left Arizona and never lived there again.  Both their Mom's are now deceased but they would have know each other, probably very well, as they were both born just a year apart in the same little town of Webb in southeastern Arizona, about a mile apart from each other.  My mother-in-law, Elnora's mother was Mary Myrtle Kerby and Wayne's mother, Rachel's father was Joseph Kerby. Myrtle and Joe were siblings and children of Francis Kerby III and Rachel Isabel Riggs.

While we drive across Missouri we will be stopping in Monroe, Lincoln, Ralls and St. Charles Counties in eastern Missouri, just north of St. Louis, where the Riggs family lived having moved into Missouri from Kentucky in about 1809.  Rachel Isabel Riggs father, was Nathaniel Riggs and he owned close to 400 acres just south of Florida, Missouri the little town where Samuel Langhorne Clemens, better known as Mark Twain, was born.  I have gone to the BLM site and located the plat maps showing Nathaniel's property as well as his brother, Jonathan's property and some of their brother-in-law's properties as well.  So we are going to be walking around the land the Riggs family walked almost 200 years ago.

The father of Nathaniel and Jonathan Riggs was the Rev. Bethuel Riggs who started the Sulphur Lick Baptist Church sometime around 1813 or 1823, both dates have been given in different histories I have found. Bethuel started the church in his own home and just a few years later around 1827 or 1828 they built a church house just 4 miles west of Bethuel's home on Davis Road. That church is still there with another church house built in 1856 at the same spot. We are planning on going there too to see the church, which is still being used, while we are in the area.

Bethuel Riggs was suppose to have owned some land too, but so far I have not been able to locate it. I am assuming at this time that he may have just lived on his son, Jonathan's land which was just about 7 miles north of the town of Troy, Missouri and the church house is about 9 miles northwest of Troy.

On Wednesday I will be meeting for a lunch a distant cousin of mine from the Stout side of my Mom's side of the family.  We have talked on the phone before but we have never meet in person.

Each day I will try and write up a little something for this blog and post videos as I can, most may have to wait until we get back home, but we shall see.

While in Kentucky I will be visiting with my Mom's 3 sisters, Barbara, Amy and Iva and their families and with my Dad's 2 brothers, George and Bobby and their families.  I have already given them a heads up that I would be asking them questions and videoing taping them for my new vlog.

As time permits I will also be visiting other family as well.  Also, videos at cemeteries, the ferry from Marion over to Cave-in-Rock, Garden of the Gods in Southern Illinois and anything else I think might be of interest.

To start this vlogging off I thought I would post the video I did back in 2012 when I was in Kentucky. It is of the old house my Daddy, his parents and siblings lived in 1940, just past the old Love Graveyard in Crittenden County, Kentucky.  Make sure you click on this link here are the link to the right of this post that says, My Vlog "I Dig My Roots & Branches" to see this video and all the others I will be posting.  All the videos I do during this trip and any other trips will be posted there.

Come along on our little adventures into the past.