The article from "The Paris News" newspaper about Sgt. John Stakely survived time and the elements thanks to the intervention of a fellow Genealogy Researcher. I asked how she came to be in possession of it and this was her response on Sept 27, 2000:

"We live in a rural part of Lamar County, TX (NW part, to be exact) and have a lot of older people in the old communities round about. About 15 years or so ago, a friend of the family was going to a nursing home. This was a bachelor.

When we went to help him in to town to the home, we helped him pack up what he wanted to take with him and decided to burn the house down with the rest (That tells you the kind of shape the old house was in).

My historical nut innerself couldn't stand to burn all those newspapers he had stacked all over the house when I saw there we some almost 30 years old. So I grabbed a couple of boxes and started throwing them in as fast I could.

Rats had made nests in a lot of them. When I got them home, I didn't dare bring them into my house! So we stored them out in the barn until they could de-bug. Well as things usually go, the boxes eventually got covered up with other things ∓ were forgotten.

About 10 years ago, we built onto the house and I was cleaning out the barn to move some things out there, when I discovered my forgotten treasures. So I moved them in the house, but had to put them up in the attic until the remodeling was finished. Well, they were forgotten again (I know it sounds awful, but this a farm, also 2 kids, 2 grandkids, 2 town jobs, and a chimney sweep business. So busy is the word around here).

Anyway, last week I was in the attic looking for something else and saw those pitiful boxes again. So I got one down and started going through them. Lots of 1958,1959,1960 dates.

I do a lot of volunteer research for others as well as my own, so I contacted the local cemetery expert on our local genealogy site. He asked me to type up all the obits and send them to him so he can post them with the cemetery records. Dumb me agreed. (When am I ever going to learn to say no?) This will take me forever to do in my spare time.

But anyway, I looked through each paper as I do the obits. I was very excited when I found the picture and article about the Stakely Civil War Soldier. I have quite a few Confederate soldier ancestors and I'd give my eyeteeth to find something like this on one of them.

So I left off my typing obits, opened my Internet and began searching the Civil War sites to find any one with the name Stakely. Didn't find one, so I decided to look in the Hawkins County, TN web site, just in case. Yours was the only Stakely listing, so I took a chance.

Blessings & happy hunting. Mary Magnuson"