Mary Hames lived in the 1850 household with her mother Lydia Fowler Hames, her maternal grandmother Nancy Moseley Fowler (d. after 1850), widow of Ephraim, and her brother Francis Hames (1828-1903).

Mary Hames had another brother, Coleman Hames, (1814-1887) who lived nearby with his family.

The names of the neighbors — Lemuel Fowler and wife Milly, Mary White (another daughter of Ephraim Fowler, the Gaults, the Gallmans, the Kelly family — allow me to pinpoint with certainty the 1850 location of these people. They lived in the Pea Ridge/ Kelly section of Union County.

Mother Nancy Moseley Fowler and daughter Lydia Fowler Hames died in the decade between 1850 to 1860.

Coleman Hames moved himself and his family to Cherokee County, Georgia.

Francis Hames married, started his family, and stayed put in Union County.

Cross Keys is an important crossroad community in the history of Union County. The Cross Keys House built by Barrum Bobo is there, famous for the Davis family who lived there in 1865, and who unknowingly hosted and served lunch to the President of the Confederacy — Jefferson Davis — and his Cabinet as they fled from the Union Army at the end of the Civil War.

The Elijah Dunaway family settled near Cross Keys at Keenan’s Bridge which crossed Fairforest Creek. The location is solidly proven by his presence next to Nimrod Sharp in the 1860 census and the document printed in the paper in 1877.

By car today, the drive from Cross Keys to Pea Ridge is thirty minutes, being a distance of twenty miles.

In the 1850s, a meeting and then a courtship between a young Mary Hames and Abraham Dunaway would not have been a small undertaking.

Still, Mary Hames did meet and marry Abraham Dunaway (1830–1864), a son of Elijah Dunaway and wife Elizabeth. This marriage likely took place in 1859.

In 1860, Abraham “Abrom” Dunaway and his new bride Mary Hames lived next to her brother — Francis Hames and his family..

The location of the Abraham Dunaway family appears to have been closer to the town of Union. I say this because the occupations of the neighbors surrounding the family were those of city dwellers: doctors, and merchants, and clerks, and preachers, students, and carpenters… with a few farmers thrown in for good measure.

Abraham and Mary Dunaway were in the 1860 census record childless, but that would soon change. A son was born in 1860, and a daughter in 1862. No more children would follow. The reason? The Civil War.

In the winter of 1861-1862, Abraham Dunaway left his family behind to join other young men of the South Carolina 18th Infantry Regiment; marching off to war, marching away from their loved ones as the faint notes of Dixie drifted in the wind.

Did Abraham Dunaway ever make it back home… just one more time… to see his family? I do not know.

Abraham Dunaway died on the 25th of June in the year 1864 in Petersburg, Virginia.

Mary Hames Dunaway was left a widow with two small children. She and her children were found in the 1870 household of her father-in-law, Elijah Dunaway.and his wife Elizabeth.

Elijah Dunaway was head of household in the 1880 census. His daughter-in-law Mary Hames Dunaway was there still, as was her son Robert Dunaway. Two members of the home were absent: Elijah’s wife Elizabeth Dunaway had died, and Mary’s daughter Jane Dunaway had married.

Robert Liggon Dunaway was the only son born to Mary Hames and Abraham Dunaway. His 1860 birth, the soon-after enlistment of his father in the Civil War, and the 1864 death of his father in faraway Virginia determined that he would never know his father.

Young Robert was raised — along with his sister Jane — by his widowed mother Mary in the home of his paternal grandparents, Elijah and Elizabeth Dunaway. He lived the majority of his life in the Cross Keys community.

He married Martha J. “Mattie” Lawson (1868-1890) daughter of William Lawson (1815–) and Parthenia Edwards (1825–).

From the May 17, 1889 issue of the Weekly Union Times: Robert L. Dunaway of Cross Anchor and Mattie J. Lawson of Cross Keys were married May 14th, by Rev. C. Smith at the Yarbourgh Chapel Parsonage.

A daughter, Mary Alma Dunaway, was born on March 18, 1890.

Martha perhaps died in childbirth, or shortly afterwards, for Robert Liggon Dunaway was next married to Louisa B, Kelley by 1894.

Three sons and two daughters were born to Robert Dunaway and Louisa.

The Robert Dunaway family moved from Cross Anchor to Woodruff, South Carolina in the decade between 1910 to 1920.

Robert Liggon Dunaway died on July 13, 1927 in Beech Springs, Spartanburg County (now known as the town of Wellford). He was buried at Yarbourgh’s Chapel United Methodist Church Cemetery near Cross Anchor.

He shares a headstone with his wife Louisa. The headstone of their son Irving Christopher Dunaway (1885-1954) is adjacent to theirs.

I drive by there often, and more often than not, stop by to see the final resting place of Robert Liggon Dunaway. Someone put flowers on his grave a few years back. The flowers have somewhat survived, battered by the wind and the rain, the heat of summer and the cold of winter. But they are there, a reminder that someone once thought of this man.

Below are photographs of the church, the graveyard, and the graves of Robert Liggon Dunaway, Louisa Kelley Dunaway, and son Irving Christopher Dunaway.