This wooden chair was carried on a covered wagon by my great-great-grandfather, John Judy, from Virginia to Missouri in the 1860s or 1870s. John Judy was born in Virginia in 1846 to Abraham and Catherine Judy. Hannah Virginia Wampler, his wife, was born in 1856 to Isaac and Mary Wampler, and also moved to Missouri from Virginia. They were married in Mound City, Missouri in 1876 and had four children. Unlike some of the other migrations in my family history, we don't know the reason for John's move. My aunt says that her mother, my grandmother, was an avid storyteller of family history, and would have mentioned if anyone in the family fought in the Civil War, especially if they were abolitionists, because she would have been proud. My aunt suspects that John and Hannah may have sympathized with slaveholders in Missouri, and that it was shame that kept my grandmother from talking about the reasons behind John Judy’s migration to Missouri. That may well be the case, but any possible verification is lost to time. After the chair moved from Virginia to Missouri with John Judy, it was moved to Nebraska, then Michigan, then Maryland, with each successive generation. It now resides in North Carolina with my third cousin. I think the fact that the chair keeps moving shows that there is a bit of a family "tradition" of migration. My ancestors came to the U.S. from Europe, then their descendants gradually moved west, and now my family is spread from coast to coast.

– Riley Edwards

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