In July 2002 my grandmother Susie Willis Hughes Mawyer died in Faber Va. We were very close and at the end of her life, she told me her only regret was never finding out anything about her Grandmother who died shortly after giving birth to her Mother, Susie Willis Higginbotham Hughes. After her death, I made it my mission to find out everything I could about her grandmother and her family. That began my journey. I discovered her grandmother was Sue Henry Llewllyn Higginbotham who was buried in an unmarked grave in Thornrose Cemetery, Staunton, VA. Finding her grave is what started my obsession with finding family burial. My children were 1 and 2 years old at the time and for 3 years we spent as many days as we could exploring old family land and photographing the burial plots.

I had uploaded all the photos to Rootsweb where I had a family tree and got busy with raising my boys and basically forgot about genealogy for 20 years. My children are grown and I am returning to genealogy and have discovered that many of the graves I found and photographed back then have been photographed and registered here. I am currently (August 2023) trying to find all the photos I took and hope to upload any that are not already available here.