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I’ve got two lines of family now, the Wimberleys and the Hugheses that both carried stone with them from out of state. They are also, perhaps coincidentally, the lines with the most Native-American rumors.
I’m just stuck on this picture of these men, two were stonemasons, I don’t know about the third, carrying stone from state to state. One carried it with him from NC to Texas, and in fact died on the trip, apparently, from the wagon or wheelbarrow or whatever it was, overturning on him, buried under stone.
Then my cousin told me that my great-uncle (her g-grandfather), a terrific stonemason carried stone around with him, too, and she was pretty sure his father did it as well. My mother had stories that the stone wall around the house in Texas was made of stone carried from Henry County (she wasn’t sure what state.)
Why, oh why, would they go to all that trouble? I’m pretty sure they have stone in Texas. And even if they didn’t know that, then, why carry their own stone to the next place when they traveled again?
The reason I’m thinking about this right now, besides the fact that my daughter carries rocks with her, so it could just be a family peculiarity) is that I recently saw a picture of a stone house built by my g-grandfather and it was Amazing! Intricate and awesome. My mother told me that the family tale was that my great-uncle could look at houseplans and tell you how many stones it would take.
I did wonder if the NA connection could have anything to do with it.
Reason?
These people moved A Lot! It’s hard for me to believe they were attached to the land from states they were just passing through, that didn’t mean anything to them, or that they really wouldn’t know or have found out, whether there was stone available in the state to which they were moving. And I wondered if the explanation wasn’t that the stone they carried wasn’t stone from home! And that way they carried a bit (or even large chunks) of home with them when they left, to build into their new home when they settled. (They did do this.)
Romantic? Is there any kind of tradition of this that anyone knows?
I’ve never heard of it before, but it does have a romance to it. Thanks for sharing the story. I’ve heard of native customs of carrying a pinch of dirt from your homeland with you.
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