Discovery in Nashville

We are friends with a family who is very familiar with their roots in the South. This fascinates me, and I have often wondered about my heritage. OK, let me level with you. Really, I wanted to have a confederate veteran somewhere in there, so that I could possibly go to a hoop skirt ball one day!

There was extremely fast internet in our hotel lobby, so I decided to check it out on Saturday afternoon. I found a very distant cousin or uncle who had posted a great deal of helpful information.

It turns out that my direct relatives were some of the first settlers in Kosciusko, MS. In fact, the town was named by a great x ? grandfather, Samuel Dodd, because of the fondness an ancestor had for Thaddeus Kosciuzko, a general for George Washington. Before coming to MS, the family had been touched by the revivals in the 1700s in Virginia. Apparently, they were a godly family with a Christian heritage. These relatives were actually descendants of the first baptist preacher in the US (Roger Williams from Rhode Island).

My great, great, great grandfather, Robert B. Webb, did not participate in the war between the states, He was against the expansion of slavery into new territory, and chose not to fight. This ended up working in his favor, because he was then allowed after the war to serve as sheriff, treasurer, and in other capacities.

Although I did not have any direct descendants fight for the Confederacy, it turns out that R.B. Webb's father, my gggggrandfather Micajah Webb, was somehow related to General Robert E. Lee through his mother's side of the family! Can't get any more Confederate than that!

R.B. Webb's wife, Matilda Boyd Webb, had a very complimentary eulogy in the newspaper. It seems that she was a kind, godly servant of Christ.

R.B. and Matilda had a daughter named Evelyn Webb Dodd. While at school in Oxford, MS, she and two other friends started Delta Gamma Sorority. There is even a historical marker on her headstone in the Kosciusko Cemetery! Evelyn Webb married Samuel Lapsley Dodd, a banker, and one of their daughters was Mary Dodd.

Mary Dodd married Jefferson Ward Crosier, from Ohio. They had one child, Lapsley Ward Crosier. Mary died when my grandfather, Lapsley, was still a boy. Jefferson Ward Crosier remarried a lady, and apparently she "took the money and ran" with the family inheritance that should have gone to my grandfather. (It was through my grandfather's mother.) My great grandfather died the year I was born, so I don't remember him. At some point, he and his wife had moved to Memphis and become co-owners of the yacht club. Lapsley grew up and married Van Chaney Crosier, and they had 8 children. My father was the baby of the group! His name is Robert Lapsley Crosier... now we know where the Robert and the Lapsley came from!

I thought this was a great experience in giving history a face. Sometime in the next week or two, I plan to go to Ole Miss and see if the Delta Gamma house has any pictures or information on Eva Webb. This summer, I want to take the kids and head down to Kosciusko to check out the cemetery and visitor's center. The first baptist church is built on the homeplace of my ggggrandparents, and I thought they might have some historical information as well.