Trip Two, Carter County

The second trip i embarked on lead me to Carter County, Tennessee. This is a very historic county for the Kuhn family. The main town in this county is Elizabethton. Grandaddy said of Elizabethton that, "If I ever had a hometown, I guess this would be it." We first went to the graveyard on the land where Grandaddy spent the early years of his life at. I am not sure of the exacts of how long he lived there but I do know that he never worked the land there because he was too young. I heard Grandaddy say that he remembered playing in the yard around the small orchard that was there. Anyways, there is a grave yard on this land and this is the reason why we were there. I had been there once before about 10 years ago. In my mind I pictured a nice graveyard neatly kept with a few weeds here and there. I was wearing shorts and flip-flops which even more shows how unprepared I was. I walked up to the graveyard and was dumbfounded. What I had pictured in no way compared to the six foot high briers that covered the entire graveyard. I didn't really know what to do until i saw my dad (also wearing shorts) jump the gate and start looking then i decided to follow. Grandmommy and Grandaddy also helped and together we uncovered all of the Kuhn graves. My legs still have scrapes on them along with at least a million bug bites. The graveyard was in horrible shape. We were all dissapointed with the condition that it was in. Anyways we continued on and read the tombstones and I recorded and took pictures of all the tombstones. I was disappointed to only find the oldest people buried there were Grandaddy's grandparents, Millard Fillmore and Margaret Kuhn. I had hoped to find at least two more generations worth of graves there. The lady who owned the land was also there. She is grandaddy's cousin which makes her my third cousin, I think. Anyways, she has done some extensive research on the KUHN name. She threw a monkey wrench into my family tree when she said she had uncovered that Millard Fillmore was adopted at age 18. I wasn't expecting this but she had really good proof that this happened. She said she found paperwork that showed that John, Millard's father had filed for adoption with the courthouse in Carter County. This was very interesting so I decided to look into it. I believe it is true that he was actually the son of Savina and Joespeh before their marriage and was adopted at a later time by his original parents. Millard was born in 1851 shortly after his parents were married. Aunt Edna, grandaddy's older sister backs up this story that I just told, in that she believes he was born prior to their marriage. However this is still not for certain. The lady we talked to, Grandadydy's cousin, said his last name was Perry. I will not know for certain until i have been able to do more research for myself in regards to this matter.
After this trip we went in search of Sinking Creek Baptist church and the old Hendrix cemetery. This is a whole different story in itself.