Family history draws Minnesotans to Cape

Though none of them had ever lived in Cape Girardeau, Olive Adams and daughters Julie Strandberg and Carolyn Adams felt like they'd arrived in a familiar place when they visited the city last week.

The women and their families -- seven people in all -- came to research family history and trace their roots during a vacation.

"It was almost as if we were revisiting. It all seemed so familiar," said Olive Adams, the family's 91-year-old matriarch.

Adams' mother lived in Cape Girardeau until she was about 15 or 16 and told her children stories about the orchards off Big Bend Road, the riverfront and taking Communion at Old St. Vincent's Church.

"It seemed nostalgic," she said. "I was looking at things I'd heard her talk about."

Adams' mother left Cape Gir-ardeau and moved north before finally marrying and settling with her husband and children in Minnesota. But genealogy research drew the family back to Southeast Missouri.

"We came to fill in some gaps" in what they already knew and to find more connections as the generations moved forward, Strandberg said.

The women discovered through their research that they are related to the several prominent African-American families: the Sheppards, Cobbs and Ellises. One of Olive's great-aunts married John Cobb. Another relative was married to John Ellis, and there's a connection with Sheppards born in the late 1860s and early in the 1870s.

Now they're trying to find more descendants and make connections with other bits of information they already had. Strandberg said they'd talked about renting a motor home next summer and spending their time traveling the Mississippi to find family connections.

"We can go back for one more generation, but we don't know much about them," Adams said.

ljohnston@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 126