Samuel was the husband of Chloe Osborne. He was one of the first white settlers in Harlan County.
Samuel was one of the men that helped to build the Harlan County Courthouse and a plaque there has his name listed on it.
Moved to Resthaven Cemetery at Baxter..also his wife and child.see news WYMT,May 12,2017.
----------
Remains removed from Wix in November 2016.
Laid to rest at Resthaven Cemetery in Baxter, Kentucky.
Chloe Howard
May 2017A few words at the ceremony for the reinterment of the graves of Samuel and Chloe Howard and their infant child.Samuel Howard 1762-1840andChloe Osborne Howard1765-1843Good morning everyone. It's so good to be with you all here today. Samuel and Chloe Osborne were my great-grandmother's great-grandparents who lived and died here in in Harlan County. I was not born here in Harlan but so much of my family is from here, I spent many weekends here.My father graduated here at Cumberland High School where he played basketball. His mother, my mamaw, Vicie Fairchild made the best biscuits in all of Harlan County at home and in the cafeteria of the high school where here five boys attended. Her husband was a welder for the coal mine, a skill he learned welding the Liberty Ships used to defend the world from Axis forces on World War II.My mother was born here in Harlan County at the Benham Hospital. Her father, Ben Barton was the train agent, head of the L&N here at the Lynch Train Station. My mother's mother, my other Mamaw :) was a first grade teacher at the Cumberland School here in Harlan. You all may remember the old store and gas station my Great Uncle Coburn and Great Aunt Cora owned down the road in Ross Point. Oh how I loved helping Aunt Cora in their store. Uncle Charlie and Aunt Roxie lived across the road from the store. We all never thought those days would stop running in the orchard, cooking together, it was paradise for us all. My maternal grandmother and her six sisters and one brother loved their mother dearly, all the rest of us called her Grandma. Her name was Mary Howard Hensley. She is the great-grand daughter of Samuel and Chloe Howard. Grandma would love this, to know you are all here, perhaps she does know. I want to welcome family and also welcome the many viewers online, we wish you were here with us. .We call this an interment but this is, essentially a funeral. We have pallbearers, caskets, remarks from ministers and family, and beautiful music. How often do we experience a funeral for someone some 177 years after their death. We do not know of the of America all those years ago, during Sam and Chloe's first funeral was undoubtedly a far different place. No sounds of trucks, no news stations, their mornings were far different than ours was we prepared to come here today. The sounds of nature around them dominated their experience. I want us all to transport ourselves to their time. Listen in your mind to their world. Close your eyes if your wish. Samuel Howard and Chloe Osborne were born three years apart, in1762 and 1765, in the American Colony of Virginia. King George III was the king and ruler of their land, but by the end of Sam and Chloe's lives King George nor any English monarch would be the ruler of this land. Imagine it in your own life. Just think of what it would have been like when you were little to live a childhood like theirs. They overheard their parents and grandparents talking of King George. To out it in perspective for us, today's Queen Elizabeth II of Britain calls this King George her three times great grandfather. It follows for all of us here, like Queen Elizabeth, we have a third, fourth, and, the young ones here, fifth great-parents to a relative in that same generation of our Sam, Chloe, and King George. It is fun to think this through… King George became the king of England two years before Samuel was born 1759. Three years later, in 1765, Chloe was born in , the same year that King George raised taxes in American colonies by imposing the Stamp Act without any American representation in the English Parliament. When Chloe and Sam were 8 and 11, American colonists protested the British taxes by having a party you may have heard about, throwing the King's tea 1773 into the cold December water of the Boston Harbor. Imagine yourself as a 8 or 11 year old hearing that your fellow colonists had defied the king of your land. Imagine how you and your friends would have talked about your king and how he was threatening to send his soldiers to crack down on the rebellion.In 1775 the first shots rang out at Lexington, Massachusetts. Sam was 13, Chloe 10 when a ragtag militia prevented 700 British soldiers from confiscating their weapons. A year later, on July 4, 1776, the American Congress defiantly passed the Declaration of Independence, but the fighting would not be over for another five years. Our Samuel enlisted in the war in 1778 when he was only 16 years old. When he was 18, a musket ball passed through his hat during a battle with British soldiers that came to be known as "The Skirmish at Dismal Swamp."According to Naomi Howard Spillman, a family historian, the Harlan Enterprise, and Samuel Howard himself, when the American Colonists finally had Lord Cornwallis surrounded at Yorktown, the Americans nearly starved, as well as the British. Whenever they would kill a deer, they were glad to eat the insides and all. And if a man received a piece of beef the size of his hand, it was considered good rations. Samuel said the ground was low and swampy, so they would build up a brush heap, pile blankets on the top and sleep that way. He said when the British surrendered, Cornwallis took the point of his sword and handed the hilt to General Washington. Samuel said he could have touched them. General Washington took the sword, examined it and returned it to Lord Cornwallis with the comment that it was a good blade. This signified the end of the Revolutionary War, and Samuel Howard was right there to witness it when he was a mere nineteen years old.After the war, Samuel and Chloe married in 1784 at the ages of 22 and 19, They went on to be the first Colonists, and now American citizens to arrive here in Harlan. They already had a few children and went on to have around 12, with 10 children surviving to adulthood. Harsh winters, hunting, gathering, and gardening while living in a mud roofed log house made up their existence here. Imagine these mountains filled with only nature. When they first came to Harlan, they had bad luck with crops and corn would not ripen because the frost always caught it. They killed bear for their summer bacon. They said that up on the head of Beech Fork Creek, where the bears fed, Mr. Howard camped one night and the next morning killed seven bears for his bacon. He said, "You could hear them feeding and munching the mast a good ways off." Sam died when he was seventy-eight. Now, fast forward to summer 2016....a random phone call from my beloved aunt Linda interrupted a busy day. She said, "I'm reading that there are graves at a cemetery In Harlan that may fall into the river. Can you call and check on the situation? I think they may be our relatives." As I look back on that conversation, I realize again, that it is indeed life's interruptions that often lead to meaningful endeavors. As is often goes with interruptions, I thought of it at the time as a bother. I think most of us treat an interruption as a inconvenience instead of a surprise door to a blessing. I now see that these many months on this project had lessons to offer. I couldn't see then what I see now. I didn't know that I would meet and learn much from my new friends at the Army Corps of Engineers, Valerie, Dana, Bob, Dan, Mike, Sharon, and Fran. Our calls were engaging and personal as they shared stories of their own ancestors and training for engineering, military science, and archeology. I look back on the conversations of last summer with all my aunts and cousins now as delightful opportunities to connect in a meaningful way, to reflect on the efforts a married couple with twelve children made over two hundred years ago that affect our lives today. We don't often stop to do that these days. I hope we can notice that life's interruptions often lead to life's treasures, and help us anticipate them with opened hands. The phone conversations with family were fun....We all would say to each other. "Who are Sam and Chloe again?" "I've heard he fought with George Washington. He was our third great grandfather right?" I remember Uncle Coburn saying something about him: "Oh yes, he was the one who
Samuel was one of the men that helped to build the Harlan County Courthouse and a plaque there has his name listed on it.
Moved to Resthaven Cemetery at Baxter..also his wife and child.see news WYMT,May 12,2017.
----------
Remains removed from Wix in November 2016.
Laid to rest at Resthaven Cemetery in Baxter, Kentucky.
Chloe Howard
May 2017A few words at the ceremony for the reinterment of the graves of Samuel and Chloe Howard and their infant child.Samuel Howard 1762-1840andChloe Osborne Howard1765-1843Good morning everyone. It's so good to be with you all here today. Samuel and Chloe Osborne were my great-grandmother's great-grandparents who lived and died here in in Harlan County. I was not born here in Harlan but so much of my family is from here, I spent many weekends here.My father graduated here at Cumberland High School where he played basketball. His mother, my mamaw, Vicie Fairchild made the best biscuits in all of Harlan County at home and in the cafeteria of the high school where here five boys attended. Her husband was a welder for the coal mine, a skill he learned welding the Liberty Ships used to defend the world from Axis forces on World War II.My mother was born here in Harlan County at the Benham Hospital. Her father, Ben Barton was the train agent, head of the L&N here at the Lynch Train Station. My mother's mother, my other Mamaw :) was a first grade teacher at the Cumberland School here in Harlan. You all may remember the old store and gas station my Great Uncle Coburn and Great Aunt Cora owned down the road in Ross Point. Oh how I loved helping Aunt Cora in their store. Uncle Charlie and Aunt Roxie lived across the road from the store. We all never thought those days would stop running in the orchard, cooking together, it was paradise for us all. My maternal grandmother and her six sisters and one brother loved their mother dearly, all the rest of us called her Grandma. Her name was Mary Howard Hensley. She is the great-grand daughter of Samuel and Chloe Howard. Grandma would love this, to know you are all here, perhaps she does know. I want to welcome family and also welcome the many viewers online, we wish you were here with us. .We call this an interment but this is, essentially a funeral. We have pallbearers, caskets, remarks from ministers and family, and beautiful music. How often do we experience a funeral for someone some 177 years after their death. We do not know of the of America all those years ago, during Sam and Chloe's first funeral was undoubtedly a far different place. No sounds of trucks, no news stations, their mornings were far different than ours was we prepared to come here today. The sounds of nature around them dominated their experience. I want us all to transport ourselves to their time. Listen in your mind to their world. Close your eyes if your wish. Samuel Howard and Chloe Osborne were born three years apart, in1762 and 1765, in the American Colony of Virginia. King George III was the king and ruler of their land, but by the end of Sam and Chloe's lives King George nor any English monarch would be the ruler of this land. Imagine it in your own life. Just think of what it would have been like when you were little to live a childhood like theirs. They overheard their parents and grandparents talking of King George. To out it in perspective for us, today's Queen Elizabeth II of Britain calls this King George her three times great grandfather. It follows for all of us here, like Queen Elizabeth, we have a third, fourth, and, the young ones here, fifth great-parents to a relative in that same generation of our Sam, Chloe, and King George. It is fun to think this through… King George became the king of England two years before Samuel was born 1759. Three years later, in 1765, Chloe was born in , the same year that King George raised taxes in American colonies by imposing the Stamp Act without any American representation in the English Parliament. When Chloe and Sam were 8 and 11, American colonists protested the British taxes by having a party you may have heard about, throwing the King's tea 1773 into the cold December water of the Boston Harbor. Imagine yourself as a 8 or 11 year old hearing that your fellow colonists had defied the king of your land. Imagine how you and your friends would have talked about your king and how he was threatening to send his soldiers to crack down on the rebellion.In 1775 the first shots rang out at Lexington, Massachusetts. Sam was 13, Chloe 10 when a ragtag militia prevented 700 British soldiers from confiscating their weapons. A year later, on July 4, 1776, the American Congress defiantly passed the Declaration of Independence, but the fighting would not be over for another five years. Our Samuel enlisted in the war in 1778 when he was only 16 years old. When he was 18, a musket ball passed through his hat during a battle with British soldiers that came to be known as "The Skirmish at Dismal Swamp."According to Naomi Howard Spillman, a family historian, the Harlan Enterprise, and Samuel Howard himself, when the American Colonists finally had Lord Cornwallis surrounded at Yorktown, the Americans nearly starved, as well as the British. Whenever they would kill a deer, they were glad to eat the insides and all. And if a man received a piece of beef the size of his hand, it was considered good rations. Samuel said the ground was low and swampy, so they would build up a brush heap, pile blankets on the top and sleep that way. He said when the British surrendered, Cornwallis took the point of his sword and handed the hilt to General Washington. Samuel said he could have touched them. General Washington took the sword, examined it and returned it to Lord Cornwallis with the comment that it was a good blade. This signified the end of the Revolutionary War, and Samuel Howard was right there to witness it when he was a mere nineteen years old.After the war, Samuel and Chloe married in 1784 at the ages of 22 and 19, They went on to be the first Colonists, and now American citizens to arrive here in Harlan. They already had a few children and went on to have around 12, with 10 children surviving to adulthood. Harsh winters, hunting, gathering, and gardening while living in a mud roofed log house made up their existence here. Imagine these mountains filled with only nature. When they first came to Harlan, they had bad luck with crops and corn would not ripen because the frost always caught it. They killed bear for their summer bacon. They said that up on the head of Beech Fork Creek, where the bears fed, Mr. Howard camped one night and the next morning killed seven bears for his bacon. He said, "You could hear them feeding and munching the mast a good ways off." Sam died when he was seventy-eight. Now, fast forward to summer 2016....a random phone call from my beloved aunt Linda interrupted a busy day. She said, "I'm reading that there are graves at a cemetery In Harlan that may fall into the river. Can you call and check on the situation? I think they may be our relatives." As I look back on that conversation, I realize again, that it is indeed life's interruptions that often lead to meaningful endeavors. As is often goes with interruptions, I thought of it at the time as a bother. I think most of us treat an interruption as a inconvenience instead of a surprise door to a blessing. I now see that these many months on this project had lessons to offer. I couldn't see then what I see now. I didn't know that I would meet and learn much from my new friends at the Army Corps of Engineers, Valerie, Dana, Bob, Dan, Mike, Sharon, and Fran. Our calls were engaging and personal as they shared stories of their own ancestors and training for engineering, military science, and archeology. I look back on the conversations of last summer with all my aunts and cousins now as delightful opportunities to connect in a meaningful way, to reflect on the efforts a married couple with twelve children made over two hundred years ago that affect our lives today. We don't often stop to do that these days. I hope we can notice that life's interruptions often lead to life's treasures, and help us anticipate them with opened hands. The phone conversations with family were fun....We all would say to each other. "Who are Sam and Chloe again?" "I've heard he fought with George Washington. He was our third great grandfather right?" I remember Uncle Coburn saying something about him: "Oh yes, he was the one who
Samuel was the husband of Chloe Osborne. He was one of the first white settlers in Harlan County.
Samuel was one of the men that helped to build the Harlan County Courthouse and a plaque there has his name listed on it.
Moved to Resthaven Cemetery at Baxter..also his wife and child.see news WYMT,May 12,2017.
----------
Remains removed from Wix in November 2016.
Laid to rest at Resthaven Cemetery in Baxter, Kentucky.
Chloe Howard
May 2017A few words at the ceremony for the reinterment of the graves of Samuel and Chloe Howard and their infant child.Samuel Howard 1762-1840andChloe Osborne Howard1765-1843Good morning everyone. It's so good to be with you all here today. Samuel and Chloe Osborne were my great-grandmother's great-grandparents who lived and died here in in Harlan County. I was not born here in Harlan but so much of my family is from here, I spent many weekends here.My father graduated here at Cumberland High School where he played basketball. His mother, my mamaw, Vicie Fairchild made the best biscuits in all of Harlan County at home and in the cafeteria of the high school where here five boys attended. Her husband was a welder for the coal mine, a skill he learned welding the Liberty Ships used to defend the world from Axis forces on World War II.My mother was born here in Harlan County at the Benham Hospital. Her father, Ben Barton was the train agent, head of the L&N here at the Lynch Train Station. My mother's mother, my other Mamaw :) was a first grade teacher at the Cumberland School here in Harlan. You all may remember the old store and gas station my Great Uncle Coburn and Great Aunt Cora owned down the road in Ross Point. Oh how I loved helping Aunt Cora in their store. Uncle Charlie and Aunt Roxie lived across the road from the store. We all never thought those days would stop running in the orchard, cooking together, it was paradise for us all. My maternal grandmother and her six sisters and one brother loved their mother dearly, all the rest of us called her Grandma. Her name was Mary Howard Hensley. She is the great-grand daughter of Samuel and Chloe Howard. Grandma would love this, to know you are all here, perhaps she does know. I want to welcome family and also welcome the many viewers online, we wish you were here with us. .We call this an interment but this is, essentially a funeral. We have pallbearers, caskets, remarks from ministers and family, and beautiful music. How often do we experience a funeral for someone some 177 years after their death. We do not know of the of America all those years ago, during Sam and Chloe's first funeral was undoubtedly a far different place. No sounds of trucks, no news stations, their mornings were far different than ours was we prepared to come here today. The sounds of nature around them dominated their experience. I want us all to transport ourselves to their time. Listen in your mind to their world. Close your eyes if your wish. Samuel Howard and Chloe Osborne were born three years apart, in1762 and 1765, in the American Colony of Virginia. King George III was the king and ruler of their land, but by the end of Sam and Chloe's lives King George nor any English monarch would be the ruler of this land. Imagine it in your own life. Just think of what it would have been like when you were little to live a childhood like theirs. They overheard their parents and grandparents talking of King George. To out it in perspective for us, today's Queen Elizabeth II of Britain calls this King George her three times great grandfather. It follows for all of us here, like Queen Elizabeth, we have a third, fourth, and, the young ones here, fifth great-parents to a relative in that same generation of our Sam, Chloe, and King George. It is fun to think this through… King George became the king of England two years before Samuel was born 1759. Three years later, in 1765, Chloe was born in , the same year that King George raised taxes in American colonies by imposing the Stamp Act without any American representation in the English Parliament. When Chloe and Sam were 8 and 11, American colonists protested the British taxes by having a party you may have heard about, throwing the King's tea 1773 into the cold December water of the Boston Harbor. Imagine yourself as a 8 or 11 year old hearing that your fellow colonists had defied the king of your land. Imagine how you and your friends would have talked about your king and how he was threatening to send his soldiers to crack down on the rebellion.In 1775 the first shots rang out at Lexington, Massachusetts. Sam was 13, Chloe 10 when a ragtag militia prevented 700 British soldiers from confiscating their weapons. A year later, on July 4, 1776, the American Congress defiantly passed the Declaration of Independence, but the fighting would not be over for another five years. Our Samuel enlisted in the war in 1778 when he was only 16 years old. When he was 18, a musket ball passed through his hat during a battle with British soldiers that came to be known as "The Skirmish at Dismal Swamp."According to Naomi Howard Spillman, a family historian, the Harlan Enterprise, and Samuel Howard himself, when the American Colonists finally had Lord Cornwallis surrounded at Yorktown, the Americans nearly starved, as well as the British. Whenever they would kill a deer, they were glad to eat the insides and all. And if a man received a piece of beef the size of his hand, it was considered good rations. Samuel said the ground was low and swampy, so they would build up a brush heap, pile blankets on the top and sleep that way. He said when the British surrendered, Cornwallis took the point of his sword and handed the hilt to General Washington. Samuel said he could have touched them. General Washington took the sword, examined it and returned it to Lord Cornwallis with the comment that it was a good blade. This signified the end of the Revolutionary War, and Samuel Howard was right there to witness it when he was a mere nineteen years old.After the war, Samuel and Chloe married in 1784 at the ages of 22 and 19, They went on to be the first Colonists, and now American citizens to arrive here in Harlan. They already had a few children and went on to have around 12, with 10 children surviving to adulthood. Harsh winters, hunting, gathering, and gardening while living in a mud roofed log house made up their existence here. Imagine these mountains filled with only nature. When they first came to Harlan, they had bad luck with crops and corn would not ripen because the frost always caught it. They killed bear for their summer bacon. They said that up on the head of Beech Fork Creek, where the bears fed, Mr. Howard camped one night and the next morning killed seven bears for his bacon. He said, "You could hear them feeding and munching the mast a good ways off." Sam died when he was seventy-eight. Now, fast forward to summer 2016....a random phone call from my beloved aunt Linda interrupted a busy day. She said, "I'm reading that there are graves at a cemetery In Harlan that may fall into the river. Can you call and check on the situation? I think they may be our relatives." As I look back on that conversation, I realize again, that it is indeed life's interruptions that often lead to meaningful endeavors. As is often goes with interruptions, I thought of it at the time as a bother. I think most of us treat an interruption as a inconvenience instead of a surprise door to a blessing. I now see that these many months on this project had lessons to offer. I couldn't see then what I see now. I didn't know that I would meet and learn much from my new friends at the Army Corps of Engineers, Valerie, Dana, Bob, Dan, Mike, Sharon, and Fran. Our calls were engaging and personal as they shared stories of their own ancestors and training for engineering, military science, and archeology. I look back on the conversations of last summer with all my aunts and cousins now as delightful opportunities to connect in a meaningful way, to reflect on the efforts a married couple with twelve children made over two hundred years ago that affect our lives today. We don't often stop to do that these days. I hope we can notice that life's interruptions often lead to life's treasures, and help us anticipate them with opened hands. The phone conversations with family were fun....We all would say to each other. "Who are Sam and Chloe again?" "I've heard he fought with George Washington. He was our third great grandfather right?" I remember Uncle Coburn saying something about him: "Oh yes, he was the one who
Samuel was one of the men that helped to build the Harlan County Courthouse and a plaque there has his name listed on it.
Moved to Resthaven Cemetery at Baxter..also his wife and child.see news WYMT,May 12,2017.
----------
Remains removed from Wix in November 2016.
Laid to rest at Resthaven Cemetery in Baxter, Kentucky.
Chloe Howard
May 2017A few words at the ceremony for the reinterment of the graves of Samuel and Chloe Howard and their infant child.Samuel Howard 1762-1840andChloe Osborne Howard1765-1843Good morning everyone. It's so good to be with you all here today. Samuel and Chloe Osborne were my great-grandmother's great-grandparents who lived and died here in in Harlan County. I was not born here in Harlan but so much of my family is from here, I spent many weekends here.My father graduated here at Cumberland High School where he played basketball. His mother, my mamaw, Vicie Fairchild made the best biscuits in all of Harlan County at home and in the cafeteria of the high school where here five boys attended. Her husband was a welder for the coal mine, a skill he learned welding the Liberty Ships used to defend the world from Axis forces on World War II.My mother was born here in Harlan County at the Benham Hospital. Her father, Ben Barton was the train agent, head of the L&N here at the Lynch Train Station. My mother's mother, my other Mamaw :) was a first grade teacher at the Cumberland School here in Harlan. You all may remember the old store and gas station my Great Uncle Coburn and Great Aunt Cora owned down the road in Ross Point. Oh how I loved helping Aunt Cora in their store. Uncle Charlie and Aunt Roxie lived across the road from the store. We all never thought those days would stop running in the orchard, cooking together, it was paradise for us all. My maternal grandmother and her six sisters and one brother loved their mother dearly, all the rest of us called her Grandma. Her name was Mary Howard Hensley. She is the great-grand daughter of Samuel and Chloe Howard. Grandma would love this, to know you are all here, perhaps she does know. I want to welcome family and also welcome the many viewers online, we wish you were here with us. .We call this an interment but this is, essentially a funeral. We have pallbearers, caskets, remarks from ministers and family, and beautiful music. How often do we experience a funeral for someone some 177 years after their death. We do not know of the of America all those years ago, during Sam and Chloe's first funeral was undoubtedly a far different place. No sounds of trucks, no news stations, their mornings were far different than ours was we prepared to come here today. The sounds of nature around them dominated their experience. I want us all to transport ourselves to their time. Listen in your mind to their world. Close your eyes if your wish. Samuel Howard and Chloe Osborne were born three years apart, in1762 and 1765, in the American Colony of Virginia. King George III was the king and ruler of their land, but by the end of Sam and Chloe's lives King George nor any English monarch would be the ruler of this land. Imagine it in your own life. Just think of what it would have been like when you were little to live a childhood like theirs. They overheard their parents and grandparents talking of King George. To out it in perspective for us, today's Queen Elizabeth II of Britain calls this King George her three times great grandfather. It follows for all of us here, like Queen Elizabeth, we have a third, fourth, and, the young ones here, fifth great-parents to a relative in that same generation of our Sam, Chloe, and King George. It is fun to think this through… King George became the king of England two years before Samuel was born 1759. Three years later, in 1765, Chloe was born in , the same year that King George raised taxes in American colonies by imposing the Stamp Act without any American representation in the English Parliament. When Chloe and Sam were 8 and 11, American colonists protested the British taxes by having a party you may have heard about, throwing the King's tea 1773 into the cold December water of the Boston Harbor. Imagine yourself as a 8 or 11 year old hearing that your fellow colonists had defied the king of your land. Imagine how you and your friends would have talked about your king and how he was threatening to send his soldiers to crack down on the rebellion.In 1775 the first shots rang out at Lexington, Massachusetts. Sam was 13, Chloe 10 when a ragtag militia prevented 700 British soldiers from confiscating their weapons. A year later, on July 4, 1776, the American Congress defiantly passed the Declaration of Independence, but the fighting would not be over for another five years. Our Samuel enlisted in the war in 1778 when he was only 16 years old. When he was 18, a musket ball passed through his hat during a battle with British soldiers that came to be known as "The Skirmish at Dismal Swamp."According to Naomi Howard Spillman, a family historian, the Harlan Enterprise, and Samuel Howard himself, when the American Colonists finally had Lord Cornwallis surrounded at Yorktown, the Americans nearly starved, as well as the British. Whenever they would kill a deer, they were glad to eat the insides and all. And if a man received a piece of beef the size of his hand, it was considered good rations. Samuel said the ground was low and swampy, so they would build up a brush heap, pile blankets on the top and sleep that way. He said when the British surrendered, Cornwallis took the point of his sword and handed the hilt to General Washington. Samuel said he could have touched them. General Washington took the sword, examined it and returned it to Lord Cornwallis with the comment that it was a good blade. This signified the end of the Revolutionary War, and Samuel Howard was right there to witness it when he was a mere nineteen years old.After the war, Samuel and Chloe married in 1784 at the ages of 22 and 19, They went on to be the first Colonists, and now American citizens to arrive here in Harlan. They already had a few children and went on to have around 12, with 10 children surviving to adulthood. Harsh winters, hunting, gathering, and gardening while living in a mud roofed log house made up their existence here. Imagine these mountains filled with only nature. When they first came to Harlan, they had bad luck with crops and corn would not ripen because the frost always caught it. They killed bear for their summer bacon. They said that up on the head of Beech Fork Creek, where the bears fed, Mr. Howard camped one night and the next morning killed seven bears for his bacon. He said, "You could hear them feeding and munching the mast a good ways off." Sam died when he was seventy-eight. Now, fast forward to summer 2016....a random phone call from my beloved aunt Linda interrupted a busy day. She said, "I'm reading that there are graves at a cemetery In Harlan that may fall into the river. Can you call and check on the situation? I think they may be our relatives." As I look back on that conversation, I realize again, that it is indeed life's interruptions that often lead to meaningful endeavors. As is often goes with interruptions, I thought of it at the time as a bother. I think most of us treat an interruption as a inconvenience instead of a surprise door to a blessing. I now see that these many months on this project had lessons to offer. I couldn't see then what I see now. I didn't know that I would meet and learn much from my new friends at the Army Corps of Engineers, Valerie, Dana, Bob, Dan, Mike, Sharon, and Fran. Our calls were engaging and personal as they shared stories of their own ancestors and training for engineering, military science, and archeology. I look back on the conversations of last summer with all my aunts and cousins now as delightful opportunities to connect in a meaningful way, to reflect on the efforts a married couple with twelve children made over two hundred years ago that affect our lives today. We don't often stop to do that these days. I hope we can notice that life's interruptions often lead to life's treasures, and help us anticipate them with opened hands. The phone conversations with family were fun....We all would say to each other. "Who are Sam and Chloe again?" "I've heard he fought with George Washington. He was our third great grandfather right?" I remember Uncle Coburn saying something about him: "Oh yes, he was the one who
