The Pickard Family

Today was gorgeous so we headed out on a drive to find more family roots.

My(Elaine) grandmothers maiden name ( my dad's mom) was Pickard and they came originally from North Carolina. Story is that he stole away on a ship out of Germany and once they landed he was sold to a plantation owner for his fare, John Pickard, the stowaway ended up marrying the plantation owners daughter and the start of a large ancestorial tree.

I had been told by some family members here in North Carolina approx. where to look for the original homestead and graveyard so off we went.

However there are oh so many roads here in the back country and we ended up first of all in Cane Creek and Snow Camp(only a mile apart), which happens to be where the original John Pickards grandson, our great great grandfather James Pickard was born.

It was a very historical area and this church sits on the original land that the first meeting(Quakers) was.

After a good look around we headed out once again to find the graveyard etc. it is about 15 t0 20 miles from Cane Creek to our destination.

I was amazed I found it in the woods, once we arrived the owner of the land now, came out and greeted us and took us into the graveyard. It is known as the Minnis/Pickard graveyard and was quite big for back then about a half an acre.

There were a few headstone markers, here is one of John Pickard probably James brother, most of the headstones were weathered down rocks as you will see below.



If you look hard you can see a few headstones.

Most of them unfortunately look like this below.


This is what the graveyard looked like from the road, and across the road looked just the same, those North Carolina relatives say that the land across the road from the graveyard is the original family homestead.

Our afternoon was great, I got a book, put on my shorts and sat out on my sun chair for a lazy afternoon, glory be.....