Becca and Stephanie's Family History Extravaganza : The Rebephanie Show

Well, we had a fun video diary to share with everyone tonight, but it wouldn't let me upload it. I was pretty bummed about it. I've been messing around with it for the past hour but nothing seems to work. Please make sure you look at my facebook page for videos we took today from our adventures!

We decided that since we are creating our very own "Who Do You Think You Are?" show, that we would be cool like the celebrities and create our own "celeb" name...hence the name "Rebephanie". We had a cool intro on the video, much better than my explanation here, but oh well!

Today we decided to drive up to Culpeper, which is about an hour and a half northeast from Richmond. Spotsylvania County is where we first found Indentured Servant Timothy. Orange County was formed from part of Spotsylvania County, and later Culpeper County was formed from Orange County. Basically, all three counties once were all considered Spotsylvania County. We know Indentured Servant Timothy at one point had several acres of land in Culpeper County.

When we got into town we stopped at Burgandine House, which is the last standing house from the 1700s in Culpeper. The people there were very kind and had lots of information to share with us. The woman that runs the property told us to write down all the spellings of Holdaway that we have and she would do some research for us and then contact us if she found anything. That was pretty cool.

We drove around Culpeper for a bit. It's a fairly small town, at least the downtown, historic area is. We drove around Mountain Run, which is a creek that runs through a good chunk of the county. We know from some records that Timothy owned land near Mountain Run so it is very likely that we were driving and walking on what was once his property.

We then drove up to what's called Little Fork Church. It's an old church and a historic landmark. Confederate soldiers stayed there at one point during the Civil War. It is here that I had a pretty awesome experience. I was recording a video and Becca was across the yard taking pictures. I went to look at the sign at the front of the church where Becca was because she said that the sign said this used to be St. Mark's Parish. The significance of this is great because we have a record of Timothy Holdaway being part of the Parish in 1744. The Parish was founded in 1731, but had a different building, as the one we were at was not built until 1753. The church then burned down in 1773 and was rebuilt in 1776. It is almost 100% likely that this is where Timothy Holdaway attended church and where he walked. While taking the video, I mentioned how cool it was to be walking on the the land that our ancestors once walked on. Right when I turned the camera off, I started crying. The exact same thing happened last year at the Family History Center. I have no doubt in my mind that was the Spirit, perhaps my mom, that was letting me know that we were in the right place and heading the right direction with our research. I then called out to Becca and said "Uhh Bec, I got that weird feeling again." She said that me starting to cry out of the blue like that is our barometer for knowing if we are doing the right thing. :) It was a great experience and I'm grateful it happened!

That pretty well sums up our day. It was fun exploring Culpeper and made us excited to head back to the Library of Virginia tomorrow to continue our research. We are just hoping and praying the "plumbing" emergency is taken care of....

Rebephanie out...goodnight everyone! Thanks so much for following us along on this journey!