Contributed by Karen Mabry Rice



************************************************
Copyright.  All rights reserved.
http://usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm
http://usgwarchives.net/la/lafiles.htm
************************************************
 

  


Why am I the Archives Coordinator and the Listowner for Union Parish?  I never 
lived there a day in my life.  I visited there 3 times in my life - twice as a 
young kid, and once as a young adult.
Those visits as a kid were wonderful.  I visited with my great uncles,
Lucien and Ernest Coplen (Copeland) - both of whom lived in a dogtrot cabin out
in the woods.  I got to go to a big white clapboard schoolhouse with my
cousin Jeanette Long at Farmerville.  It was May and it was hot, and I was
wishing I was outside running down the dusty street barefooted.
My southern roots run deep.
My g-g-g-g-g-g-grandfather came from Ireland to S. Ca.  He was a wagonmaker,
and they called him (oddly enough) "Wagonmaker Billy Moore."  He's the
progenitor of the Moore family  of Union Parish - George Washington Moore,
Richard Tubb Moore, et al.  Most of them are buried at Shiloh.
My g-g-grandfather Thomas S. Cook owned a carriage manufactory in Milltown,
AL before the Civil War.  One of his young apprentices was William Pierce
Mabry.  He built wagons, too.
His son, my grandfather, who married two wives in Union Parish before moving
to Texas, then Oklahoma, worked with wood too.  He made cabinets some, but
mainly he made coffins.  Most of the people in the little tiny cemetery near
what is now almost a ghost town called Elmer, OK are buried in coffins made
by my grandfather.
I have a big old wooden chest of tools used to a well-worn sheen by him and
William P. Mabry, and for all I know, Thomas S. Cook.  I love to work with
wood, too.  It pleases my hands and my soul.
That's a few of the many reasons my heart lingers in Union Parish - what are
yours?

Karen Mabry Rice

#   #   #