The Dragoo family’s frontier story reveals a different side of the American Revolution: one shaped by contested land, fragile settlements, Native resistance, family loss, captivity, and renewal along the Monongahela River.
What if caring for family history is not looking backward at all, but a way of becoming more fully alive, now? Preserving stories, places, records, gardens, and memories is how we live with love, purpose, and belonging every day.
Re-membering is the gentle art of gathering what time has scattered, a return of love, grief, and heritage to the center of our lives, where the dead are not lost but continue within us, shaping who we are and who we are becoming.
Every family tree hides a little wonder. Among its branches and leaves, past the names and stories, there is sometimes a bit of unexpected fruit—sweet, bright, and waiting to be discovered. Now Ridge Haven offers online access to its digital harvest, inviting family members to gather treasured stories with just a click.
Step into the hearth-lit kitchens of the 1750s–1780s. In Colonial Comfort Foods, Michael Dragoo turns authentic recipes and cooking methods into a vivid bridge to family history—helping us taste what it was like to be our ancestors, one dish at a time.
A Century of Family Voices. Imagine discovering a time capsule filled with letters from your ancestors — stories, hopes, and blessings written just for you. Their words would be a gift through time, a bridge between lives … Now, it’s our turn to be that bridge.
Before the Barrackville bridge crossed Buffalo Creek, a boy named John Dragoo stood between two worlds. Born to a Shawnee mother and a captured settler father, his story flickers at the edges of recorded history—brief, brave, and half-forgotten, like footprints along a shifting, ancestral riverbank.
We live among the silent ones, the forgotten ones. They are silent only because we do not have ears to hear. They are forgotten but not erased. They are there, in the deep, in the background, continuing their journey through us.
In the borderlands of 1786, survival rewrote identities—a capture, a return, a name that shifts in the telling. William Dragoo’s story begins where certainty ends.
We sometimes find that our different family lines have a funny way of speaking to each other across the generations. They send secret messages back and forth, like little classroom love birds, waiting for the teacher to turn her back.
While some folk will do almost anything to avoid family get-togethers, the Dragoo Family descendants will do almost anything to hang out and talk with each other.
Our Carr Davis family is a potpourri of wordsmiths and creative artists. Among them, one of the most prolific is Vi Parsons. A true weaver of words and history, Vi is the author of five books and countless published articles.
The one thing that is consistent about life is that it always changes. With the help of the previous generations, we ready ourselves for Family Re-membering.
On her 93rd birthday, our friend LaVerne Grell told us her secret to a long, healthy, joyful life: “eat your dessert first and celebrate everything!”
It used to be called Arm Chair Travel–an exploration of exotic lands and interesting people. But this pictorial guide is more than just visiting far away exciting places, it is a travel back in time.