A renewal of spirit and renewal of the search

I had to step back from the initial discouraging knowledge that my great great grandfather was dishonorable and that my dear friend Carolyn was correct.  My family secrets of indian fighters, confederate loyalists and murders were coming to light.  It was a blow, but to watch my father get discouraged about his family was disheartening.  A family that had been unknown to him but in only stories and a few photographs.  He assumed, as I did, that because our family was honorable collection of nurses, paramedics, military, business women, game wardens and police officers that the ancestors would also be honorable.

 I went to the one place that I seem to find peace and that is the Haby farm.  The territory is untouched except for the pathway of the combine and the slow waving fields of planted maize.  I love this country and breathe deeply the fresh air.  

They have an old german house on the property I refer to as the Haby Baby House because I heard that in the pioneer days, women from all over the settlement would come have their babies at this house.  I imagine it was because someone who lived there knew a thing or two about birthing babies.  It doesn't take my imagination much to drift back to pioneer days, when settlements were at risk of attack, kidnapping, murder, illness, and starvation.  I insert also the things that don't easily capture our bloodlust.  Simple things like the cooking, the quilts, the lovely old samplers I have seen.  The dances and the community.  I remember that there is good and bad in every family and good and bad in every person.  My sister reminds me that the one we feed is the one that grows.  
So I sat by the field and began to think again about the Griffin Children.  Specifically Horace, being the oldest and having more knowledge of the Owens. I thought about what happened after WSB escaped from Uvalde, Texas.  Did the Griffin family go with him?  Obviously, I needed to find a historical timeline.  At some point, they were free, right?  What year?   The Courthouse shooting occurred in March 18, 1865, that June 19, 1865 or as it is referred to now as Juneteenth (just three months later) Major General Granger landed in Galveston to alert Texas to the fact that the Slaves had been emancipated.  Something that Texas refused to acknowledge to their own slaves.  The Major General was there to insist that Texas would follow Union Laws and free their slaves.  What if they stayed?  What if the Griffin children stayed in Uvalde, Texas.  I could find their genealogy, their tombstones and birth certificates.  I could find their family....their mother.  My heart stopped.  Could I reunite this torn family.  This no longer became the search for my ancestors, but a search for redemption.