In search of my roots...

Before my Aunt Millie passed away, she had a lot of stories to tell about my family tree. One of the most prominant characters in her stories was my great-great grandfather, Levi Bryant Jones, aka L.B. Jones, of Paint Rock, Alabama. I spent several years researching this branch of my family tree and eventually my dad and I went to Paint Rock, where his mother was born on the family's plantation, and located several of the gravesites, including that of L.B. Jones. Even though he had an older brother, L.B. became the patriarch of the family. He married three times. His first two wives were sisters and the third wife was a cousin. He had six daughters, two from each wife, but only one daughter from each wife survived. One of those daughters was my great grandmother, Nancy Ann, aka Annie Pearl. C. JONES

I believe this is L.B.'s older brother.

The lines at the bottom of the gravestone read

"Loving husband of Mary, dear

lies buried here."

This is me posing in the graveyard. We found several graves here, but were unable to find the old plantation site where the family graveyard would have been. I think there's a railroad or a highway running over it now. Paint Rock is now only a few roads on either side of a highway. I don't think there are even any stoplights! But as we drove around the area, I tried to imagine how it was when my grandmother was born there in 1898. When I saw this dirt road leading back to a farm with the foothills of the Tennessee mountains in the background, I had to take a picture. And this picture is what comes to mind whenever I think of Paint Rock and my roots there.