Rev. Alexander Polk Holloway, son of Burton W. Holloway, born Jan. 9, 1846, Rhea County, Tennessee; died Mary 5, 1926; m. Mary Adeline Boulden Dec. 8, 1884. She was the daugher of —-. She was born April 1, 1866.

[the book then lists children roy y; orpha m; barney a; w.ray; m. ruth; calla b; harry g; india elmina; alexander huston. the children are listed as having been born in pope county, illinois and williamson county, illinois.]

Alexander Polk enlisted as private in Co. F, 29th Reg., Ill. Vol. on the 23rd of August, 1864. He served until the close of the war. He was married three times, first to Minerva Gilbert, Dec. 16, 1866; second to Matilda Reid, Oct. 8, 1876; third, to Mary Boulden, Dec. 8, 1884. Funeral was in charge of the Masonic Order.

source: holloway, olin e. genealogy of the holloway families
knightstown, in.: unknown, 1927, 462 pages. (pp 336-337)

i am not related to any of these people, but i came across them in a search for my majors family in rhea county, tennessee. hope the information provides someone a good lead.

today, i lost a planet. my universe has shifted.

and it happened this morning in czechoslovakia. Who’d a thunk it?

now, I am not maligning czechoslovakia or its citizenry. not at all. it’s just that when i looked up to the heavens each night as i was growing up, i never dreamed that a group of people, one of whom apparently waved a stuffed disney character named pluto aloft would be able to change forever how I look at my evening sky. 

so, these days even our cosmos is no longer sacred.  i mean, it’s not like in was in 1930 when they discovered a new planet - the very pluto I’m talking about here. and it’s not like that morning in 1983 when i woke my teenagers telling them that the dusty stuff all around vega was thought to signal the formation of a new solar system. It said so on npr and on the front page of the washington post. “get up,” I ordered them.”new solar systems are being born.” i was enchanted.

 no.

discoveries are something we all understand can add to our knowledge. as genealogists, we are used to opening our minds to accommodate all kinds of strange discoveries.

but to me, that is not what this demotion of pluto is. it’s akin to discovering that you’re not related to half the people you’ve been meticulously documenting in your database because some guy’s dna somewhere doesn’t match up, and you’re not in the family you thought you were. and yet, they were your family….

in both scenarios, knowledge has been subtracted. not just a little piece of knowledge. i mean, really, we’re talking whole worlds’ worth!

so now my mind has to forget that list i dutifully memorized and proudly burned into my brain back in second grade - all the planets of our known universe: mercury, venus, earth, mars, jupiter, saturn, uranus, neptune, and pluto.

with a stroke of the pen, or maybe several pens -  but more likely with a bunch of keystrokes on a bunch of computers -  pluto is no longer a planet. it has been fired from planetdom because it was an oddball. it simply didn’t fit in with all the other planets with its warped orbit and puny mass.  big tough guys rule. big tough planets rule.

if you stick define: cosmos into google this morning, as I did, you’ll find that the resulting definitions usually contain something about it being the universe and being an orderly or harmonious system. well, HAH! my universe is no longer orderly. i lost pluto.

does anyone else care?

hello?

on a trip to roane county, tennessee last week, i was successful in locating the burial location of daniel mc pherson (22 oct 1755 - 17 oct 1844) and in establishing that he may well have had some familial connection to the henry mcpherson living near rockwood in the first half of the nineteenth century. you can see henry | here |, for instance. (use your browser’s find function or control f to locate him on the page.)

robert bailey at the roane county heritage commission (my home away from home when i’m away from home) showed me the watts bar reservoir cemetery book - something i have somehow managed to miss until now….

the book has a grave site map of the old mcpherson cemetery on the north side of the river. out of about 72 graves, only nine are said to have been identified in 1940 when this survey was published. happily, one of them is daniel mcpherson’s and another is henry mcpherson’s. on the plot map, the two are seen at graves 44 (daniel) and 42 (henry). the graves are sort of kitty-cornered from one another. like this:

X henry mcpherson #42
     X daniel mcpherson #44

the cemetery book is vague about how to get to the cemetery. robert bailey says it’s off new hope road. here’s a link to roane co, tn cemeteries on topo-maps | link |.
on that page, scroll down to mcpherson cemetery and a small topo-map will open up. i have also just learned that the cemetery is variantly called the rogers cemetery.

for a better overview of the area, use this link to a google map (the cemetery is not marked, however): | link |

McPherson Cemetery
roane county, tennessee
variant name(s) Rogers Cemetery
USGS 7.5′ x 7.5′ map: rockwood, roane county, tennessee
355001N
0844059W

and don’t forget that you can see my photo album of the other mc pherson cemetery - the one on the other side of the river. is it on the farm owned for a time by daniel’s son andrew barton “barton” mcpherson and barton’s wife parthenea hale. barton and parthenea/parthenia and many of their relatives are buried there. | link to cemetery album | their farm was located in what is now meigs county, about a mile north of the ten mile road intersection with highway 58.

for more cemetery photos, use the link to my cemetery pages on the menu in the sidebar.