Two weeks ago, we had visitors at the Old Post Office Museum & ArtCenter. I have been in contact with these two men concerning their family history because their great-grandmother and my wife’s great-grandmother were sisters. I emailed them a photo of their grandfather that they had never seen. The photo was of their grandfather working in the Fore Brothers Magneto Shop located on Elm Street in Graham with his two uncles–Bud and George Fore. The visitors asked lots of questions about the Marlow Brother story. Their great-grandfather, Marion “Mal” A. Wallace, was the Young County Deputy Sheriff and jailer from 1888 to 1889. One more connection, their great-great-grandfather was Young County Sheriff Marion D. Wallace.
It was a cold and windy Friday, but the two visitors, Jayne Beall and I, all went to see some of the sights and stand at the graves of their ancestors, where they had never stood before. Our visitors gave me some tapes to digitize with the memories of their grandfather for the Archivist Project. They let me hold the gun and holster of their great-grandfather. You don’t see guns like this every day. It’s not so much the gun as it is the history behind the gun. If that gun could only talk. Last week, I had three visitors come to the museum. One of the women had emailed me asking me if I could identify a photo. She knew one of the men but didn’t recognize any of the other eight men. I quickly identified the photo and gave her the names of the men because I had seen that exact photo from the 1930s in the newspaper. The other two women brought their family photo album for me to see, and they contributed two rare, limited edition books on their family history for our project. I know you want to know who the other two women might be and what photos I was able to see. Well, their great-grandfather was another Young County Sheriff from our past, but that’s another story.