Day 14: Paducah to Cookeville TN

First stop today: Dirt Cheap Cigarettes. Jim was ecstatic. Cigarettes are half the price here and they even pass out free lighters. The clerk assured him that Kentucky is a "smoking friendly" state. Feeling welcome, we got back onto I-24 and headed towards Nashville. The countryside dotted with fall colors is very pretty. We are in hilly country with lots of lakes and rivers.

I've extended my list of "interesting" place names to include Cheatum County Tennessee and Wannalosa Lake Missouri. I think these would be great locations for casinos.

When we got to Nashville, we made a quick in-out taking I-65 back towards Louisville and headed to Gallitan where Jim's great X 4 grandfather and grandmother are buried as well as his great X 3 uncle.

Jim's grandfather fought in the Revolutionary War and received a land grant in Tennessee for his service. The city of Gallitan is located on that land. His uncle, William Trousdale, was an early governor of Tennessee and his house has been preserved as the Trousdale Place.

We got lost trying to find the city center and ended up at the corner of North Water St. and North Water St. ( the street made a 90 degree turn at the intersection ). So we stopped at a BP station and went in to ask directions. The clerk had trouble with the English language and directed us to the restaurant next door run by "locals." So we went into Mary and Arleen's Family Restaurant.

The restaurant did have a lot of local flavor. We ordered "Buba's BLT with onions" and asked for directions to the "City Cemetery." The city has several cemeteries, but they were able to direct us to the right one. Just turn left at Krystal's (hamburger place) and right at Wendy's. So we followed instructions and found we were turning onto Cemetery Ave. -- a good sign. And indeed there was an old cemetery several blocks down where the street dead ended.

The cemetery was larger than we expected. We had a picture from "Find-a-grave-dot-com" that we thought was the headstone and prepared ourselves for an extended search. Fortunately, before too long we found the ground keeper's office and asked him to help us find the grave. Turns out the picture we had was of one of the gate posts at the entrance to the cemetery. The Trousdales were together inside a wrought iron fence, not 10 feet from where we originally parked.

We then managed to locate Trousdale Place on Main Street not far from the cemetery. It was an impressive two-story colonial brick house. One of William's descendants had given it to the city and dedicated it to the soldiers of the Confederacy.

Feeling quite successful in our ancestor quest, we headed south to Interstate 40 and turned west towards Knoxville. We got off at Cookeville, found a room and then headed into town to find the Chamber of Commerce to get a Putnam County map and hopefully some information on the Cowen Farmstead and the Cowan Cemetery. We got a map and directions to the city's historical museum. The woman at the museum directed us to the library. The librarian directed us to a room with old census and outer county records.

We found some information, but not exact locations. The County map shows a number of small cemeteries in the area -- none with names. So our plan is to head for Buffalo Valley tomorrow (it is the only area there with a post office) and ask there about the Cowen house. Then proceed north to try and find the cemetery. Tomorrow is looks like an adventure into rural Tennessee.