Following a trail to Mount Zion

- Mount Zion Cemetery-

I decided to follow up on my Nettie West story by taking a trip out to where she was buried, the Mount Zion Cemetery, between Rotan and Hamlin.

Expecting to find something like the Hobbs Cemetery, with a fair amount of graves kept up regularly by caretakers, I was surprised to find a fenced off acre or so with about 25 graves scattered in small groups. It was mowed enough to walk through, the back quarter of it in pasture. The most recent grave I could find was from 2014, a good many being from the early 1900's.

The cemetery is not in ruins, though it looks unfrequented. It is situated on County Road 241, going north off of State Highway 92.

There are discrepancies in the information I've found about Nettie West and her family. The article from The Farm magazine cited Nettie as saying her brother Jim Tazewell died in 1942, but his headstone has 1944 as his year of death. She said she was born in Illinois, but the death certificate information on the Find-a-Grave website says she was born in Texas. The certificate text gives her maiden name was Tazwell, but it was spelled Tazewell on her father's and brothers' grave markers. Genealogical researchers must have headaches all the time from trying to sort out such stuff, just from errors alone.

That same website says that Nettie married Charlie Bailey in 1900, and Johnny West in 1947. 

The site lists 42 memorials for the cemetery. There are graves there marked for the Bates family, Nettie's neighbors who took her to town.

An article about an article: Nettie West

- Nettie West, 1955 -

In an ongoing state of serendipity, I'm always finding interesting items while in the search of others.

I came across an article about Nettie West, a past resident of Fisher County, in a 1955 copy of The Farm, written by R.J. McGinnis, the editor of the magazine at that time.

Mrs. West was 78 when the story was published, she being a country widow living alone. A search on Find-a-Grave shows that she lived to the age of 87.

Her maiden name was Tazewell, born in Illinois; later she was a Bailey, then died as a West. She outlived her father, two husbands and two brothers. There is no mention of children, but at the gravesite, among the Tazewells, is a small stone plaque, engraved with the initials M.J.B.

She mentioned some neighbors, the Bates, who would take her to town, Rotan or Hamlin, to shop and bank.

McGinnis wrote, that in 1953. Nettie benefited from royalties in the best well on the Round Top Field (Palo Pinto) at that time.