Yesterday, I received a very nice comment from a reader about The Graveyard Rabbit of Attala County and the stories there. One post in particular, the story of the lone gravestone of Mary J. Byne, impacted the reader in such a way that she did some research on her own. This is a portion of this dear reader's comments:
"I particularly liked your story about Mary J. Byne, so I decided to do a little bit of research on her and here is what I found. A headstone depicting the lone figure of a woman symbolizes a widow, and the initial "J" most likely stood for her maiden name. On the 1850 US Federal Census Report I found the Joseph Youngblood family living in Marion County, Mississippi. Living with them was a 30 year old white male farm laborer from Georgia named F.M. Byne. My guess would be that the Byne's were related to the Youngblood family...though obviously not closely related since they didn't know when Mrs. Byne's birthday was!"
Not only did I learn something new about gravestone symbols, but thanks to this reader, someone searching for the Byne family in Mississippi now has another link to the past.
Reader's comments are valuable to me, and I welcome all of them!
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