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| How to restore |
Mainly because the stories told to me reach all the way back to the 1820s when my combined parentage were just settling into what became my home. Their struggles became imprinted on my brain. Their lives and characters also resonated with today's lives and characters.
One great-great grandfather traveled from Ohio to Illinois in order to settle his parents in our town, then named Monument. In doing so, he had to leave his pregnant wife and one child. "I'll be back" but he did not return. Eventually, his brother returned to inform her that he had married another woman. She too remarried. It was a time period when not everyone who headed West came back. (There are more details around this, much juicier details.)
His descendants in Monument (now renamed Nebo) mostly led Godly lives and positively affected those around them.
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| Battlefield grave |
What a legacy to leave! And what a long-term story that won't fade or be forgotten! Yet, when one walks through a long abandoned cemetery, the names and lives led are faded out of memories, with only toppled over headstones marking that they had ever walked the lands surrounding them.
And yet, whoever viewed that grave in 1863, went on to live and leave their own places. And those people led to more and more descendants, and someone among them will be remembered.
Find Us Faithful as sung by Steven Green
I sure hope my life and life's work won't end up being a toppled over and niche-covered stone. I pray that my descendants can talk about that Susan Peck Kane, way back when, and smile at my own faithfulness.
