Your family history is fascinating! Thanks for sharing all that. I bet the tales you heard growing up were richer than anything in the movies nowdays. :-)
Howdy, Texas lady,
There was quite a spell when "progress" was worshipped and people were ashamed of their ancestors. My parents were deep into it. This point of view, call it "progressivism", call it the modern plague, call it Leftism, was not yet very fashionable (except back east) in 1880 when my mother's father was born. The attempt to trash the past is mostly a 20th Century thing. Anyway, most family history has been willfully forgotten. Quaint, don't you know, embarrassingly not modern. Likely the generation born after WWI disrespecting their parents, since their parents were so old fashioned.
The records were hazy, the best thing I found were a family bible and some letters from before the WBTS. This stuff does not go back very far, not even 18th Century. That old graveyard opened my eyes.