Date: Sun, 07 Dec 1997  From: jbradley@mail.trib.net (James W. Bradley)
>...  also was just today typing up some information about a Sale
>Bill and sale of 13 or so slaves owned in the Estate of John Wilburn (on
>1 Jan 1856 in Fulton, Missouri) who was the father of Tyra D Bishop's
>wife, Rebecca...  have placed that document out on the website with link in
>the Tyra Bishop family webpage...  you [Margaret Fullerton] or Gail [Haferkamp] 
>wouldn't happen to know any other tidbits of folklore about slaves in our 
>Bishop/Clement family ancestry would you?...  
>... for example I remember when I was out at the Liberty Church
>Cemetery once with Katherine Bradley and some others of the family
>(maybe when "Nanel" Bishop, my great-grandmother, was being buried there
>in 1957)... I heard the women mentioning that Tyra (possibly) had a
>slave...  and that the slave woman was buried right there with them I
>think...  maybe Jim Bradley remembers something about this?...
Yes Tyra and Rebecca had a slave by the name of Elvira and is buried half of
the rest of the graves in line I do know about where the grave is or I did.
I do have a picture of her and am going to get a jpeg file done with a guy
at work who has a scanner of some kind

Date: Mon, 08 Dec 1997  To: James W Bradley jbradley@mail.trib.net 
From: William F Bishop wbishop@tranquility.net
        I remember [Great] Aunt Nettie [actually my father's aunt - Nettie
(Bishop) Wyss] telling me that she was born on her grandfather Tyra's
farm...  Aunt Nettie was born 15 February 1890 and both Tyra (died 14
October 1905) and Rebecca (died 26 July 1899) were still living then so
that seems to fit with what she said...  Aunt Nettie would have been
nine years old when her grandmother Rebecca died and 15 years old when
her grandfather Tyra died...
        Also Aunt Nettie told me that Tyra's house was a stone's throw from the
Liberty Church and Cemetery near Shamrock...  looking at the 1897 plat
map for Township 49N, Range 07W...  and standing in the church yard... 
you would have to face northwest to do the stone-throwing...  (I see
that the map has dots where farm houses and buildings were located on
properties)...  and that Tyra's house was located immediately to the
northwest (across on the north side of the east-west running road) from
the Liberty Church and Cemetery...  also I remember being told that the
road in front of the Church was rerouted from the other side of the
Church a long time ago...  this is confirmed by looking at an 1876 plat
map and seeing the road coming from the south passing to the west side
of the Church and Cemetery with Tyra's house being on the west side of
that, but still north of the east-west running road...  right on the NW
side of the intersection of those two old roads...  yet in the 1897 map
that whole south-north road has been redone mostly being gone and
replaced with a road more on east-west and north-south lines...
        I guess you know that in 1853 Tyra and Rebecca Bishop donated some land
from their farm (2 acres I think it was) for the Liberty Church and
Cemetery to be built...  
        Also judging from what I was reading yesterday about John R Hassler
(who married Tyra's daughter Mary Jane Bishop on 21 February 1856)... 
and looking at the 1876 plat map...  I see that John R Hassler owned 120
acres (1876) immediately to the east of the church and cemetery...  John
(born 26 April 1834) became an apprentice for three years at the age of
15 (in 1849) when he went to work at Tyra's blacksmith shop on Tyra's
farm...  Tyra retired from the blacksmith shop in 1866 and John kept it
going there until 1878 when he moved the blacksmith shop to
Williamsburg...