A 136-year-old pencil sketch of a North Carolina slave cabin that
sent a mother and daughter from central Kentucky on a genealogical
quest ended a dozen years later last week on a street in College Hill.
Since 1998, Irene Rucker, a retired Keebler factory worker, had been
trying to dig up the story behind the fragile piece of paper she found
tucked in an antique history book that cost her 50 cents at a mission
thrift store in Estill County.
In neat cursive, the artist identified the drawing on the folded half
sheet paper. Signed "H.W. Tate," it read, "The Cabin in which I lived
when a slave in Clay County, N.C." The back side of the paper was dated
November, 1874.
Curious to find out more, Rucker turned to her computer savvy daughter,
Penny. Years after she put out feelers through a Warren County
genealogical Web site to try and solve the mystery, her search paid off.
You can read the full story at http://news.cincinnati.com/article/20100118/NEWS01/1190327/Slave+cabin+sketch+mystery+solved.
