The Ten Tribes of David Stiles
I grew up in a different time zone from today. I grew up with a whole lot of older people who were family. They entertained us kids, and each other with stories about their growing up and about people who were long gone, but alive to them. Their stories made me feel like I almost knew those people. I never knew Uncle Ed, Lafe Stiles, Stackhouse Gaddie, Uncle Demas and many other people, but I feel like that if I met them on the street I would have a kinship with them and I would know their personalities. I feel like that I was "shaped" not only by those people who were alive, but also by those people long gone. After the genealogy bit, which is necessary, I want to go back and add personalities to the people that I know about. I want people who access the site to feel compelled to send in information to share with others the family they know."
Joanne grew up on a farm that is part of the original Stiles land grant at Stiles (now Howardstown), KY, and lived in the house that was built by her father’s uncle, Charles G. Stiles. Her father, George Gray Stiles, was the Treasurer of the Kentucky Stiles Family Reunion Organization. According to Sue Lane, her neighbor and cousin, she was the oldest child, and was always involved in the history of the Stiles Family.
Joanne was extremely smart. She went to the one-room school house in the valley by the church, which was taught by Laverne Harned, a cousin, and then went on to Bardstown High School where she had to spend the week in Bardstown. She held various pharmacist jobs in Elizabethtown and New Haven, KY.”
Joanne was devoted to the preservation of our Stiles heritage and gave generously of her time, effort and resources to ensure that the cemetery was taken care of and to secure the church as our meeting place even as it has suffered from dwindling attendance over the years. It was Joanne who authored the introductions of our annual newsletters, often providing much of the historical content and reminding us of our responsibility to our ancestors. She was passionate about honoring our Stiles heritage and rallying her cousins to come to the aid of maintaining the ground where lay the bones of our forefathers and foremothers. To quote Joanne regarding the cemetery, ‘To some of us, the cemetery is almost a family tree. My father, my grandfather, my great grandfather, and my great-great grandfather and David, my great-great-great grandfather are all buried in that cemetery.’”
I grew up in Stiles, Kentucky (yes, we even had a post office back then and our address was actually Stiles, KY!). The farm that my parents owned and that I lived on was a part of David Stiles’ original land holding and our next door neighbor, my grandfather, lived on the exact spot of David’s home. Our immediate family was surrounded by an extended family. There were cousins living on their part of the David Stiles land holding all up and down our road and in the summer and on weekends each home in Stiles had families that had moved away from our community come back for visits. Stiles, KY had its own grocery store with a gas pump out front, two churches and the school house. All the kids in the community went to the Stiles School and to one of the two churches. I went to Union Band Baptist which sat next to Stiles School. The school was not affiliated with the church – it was a public school, but the church and school shared the playground. As a result, we all went to school together and most of us even went to church together.”
Joanne created the original KYstilesfamily.com website a few years before she died, but it had to be abandoned after her death. You can find some of her historical writing about the English Stiles brothers, David Stiles and his descendants, including a detailed tour of the Stiles cemetery with lots of Stiles stories of David’s children and their offspring, at the Union Band Baptist Cemetery Tour.
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