Prior to our visit, Bill was contacted by Nancy Etheridge Lasley of Chehalis, Washington. She found a query Bill had posted online questioning the initials T.R.B. as well. In her words she, "happened to stumble on Bill's pondering about who was T. R. Brantley that erected the headstone on Amos Brantley's grave." As it turns out, Thomas Ryal Brantley was her great grandfather and he was Thomas Jefferson Brantley's son... and thus Amos Brantley's grandson. He and his wife Cora Jackson Brantley had one child, Mae Alma who was her grandmother. Her dad was his only grandchild and she is his only great grandchild.  Finally, after over a decade of wondering that puzzle has been solved. Not only did I add another piece to the puzzle, but I was able to connect with a distant cousin sitting an hour away from the Pacific Ocean who I never knew.

She told me a story about when Thomas Ryal was a very little boy and the soldiers began to return from the war, he stood on the road and spoke with them and counted them. They gave him Confederate money and he carried it home and his mother sewed each piece as if it were a piece of fabric, onto a quilt back. Nancy said, "In my lifetime it was called "the money quilt." It's really a stunning thing and beautifully done and well preserved." She took the quilt and put it on loan to a museum and now children and adults are viewing Confederate money for the first time. Nancy did that, because like Thomas Ryal, she wanted to honor her family and "tell a story."

In an e-mail Nancy sent to me, she said, "Story tellers are needed... and you are one and Thomas Ryal was one and now I get to tell his story. Stories connect us just as much as DNA. I think they connect us more than genetics. They provide pride, a sense of value and of having a spot in a bigger scheme of things and even a little sadness that we didn't get to meet these people... and who were they? What did they love? What was their favorite anything? What did they believe in? If you are tracing your family tree, then do you want sets of numbers or tales of who those people before you were? I vote for tales! It's human nature to want to define ourselves... and that's the genealogy "bug" but I'd rather have a collection of stories than names and numbers."

I would have never been able to find Amos Brantley's grave on my own. Bill guided me to the spot which was far back in the woods behind the old Waller family home. Surrounded by nothing but wilderness and quiet, I knelt down beside the grave as tears of pride and joy filled my eyes. I truly had a loss of words being there with my 4th great grandfather's (presence) right in front of me. I had been waiting for that moment for over ten years and to actually be there was one of the proudest feelings I've ever had.

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