ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, April 17, 1997 TAG: 9704170013
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: BETH MACY
SOURCE: BETH MACY
These are the facts known about Sallie Weaver Robertson, who died in 1937 at the age of 95.
She was one of the last Roanoke members of the Real Daughters of 1812, an organization dedicated to promoting patriotism. Her father was John Weaver, a private in the War of 1812.
Sallie was a widow in 1930, the year she went to live at the Mary Louise Home, Roanoke's now-defunct refuge for women who had nowhere else to turn. She had no children.
Until last week, there wasn't even a marker on her grave.
`One of us' is enough
Don Wilson, general manager of Evergreen Burial Park, hoped to learn more. At the library, he came upon the name of Jimmie Ruth Eash, a San Antonio, Texas, woman who is chairman of marker and grave locations for the group, now called the National Society United States Daughters of 1812.
Wilson wanted, finally, to mark the grave site of Sallie's plot - in exchange for the three empty plots still owned by the home. When he noticed Sallie had been a Real Daughter, he wrote to Jimmie and the group, which insisted on holding the marking ceremony last week.
``When we can find them, we mark them,'' Jimmie said in the cemetery office, flanked by two other officers. They had driven in Jimmie's Lincoln Town Car to Roanoke from Washington, D.C., where their 5,000-member group had just held its annual conference.
The ladies knew nothing of Robertson's life, either.
Asked why they went to such ceremonial lengths for someone they knew nothing about - complete with the ROTC color guard - the women looked dumbfounded.
Patricia Trolinger, who has traced her German roots back to the 1500s, adjusted the back of her floral-accented black hat and said:
``Because she's one of us.''
Celebrating their heritage
For these principles, our forefathers battled with wilderness and gained independence ... Alexandria member Nancy Harris conducted the 10-minute ceremony, forgoing her coat in the whipping wind so her uniform and insignia would show.
A high-school trumpeter played ``Taps.'' Pledges of allegiance were made to the flags of the United States, Virginia and the Flag of 1812.
After the ceremony, Jimmie and her best friend, Darlene Rogers, a retired day-care director, were headed to a Roanoke post office to mail home their dress-up clothes. Then they were off to North Carolina to search their favorite haunts: courthouses and cemeteries. They weren't sure when they were going home to Texas.
The two women plan to be buried next to each other, with their husbands flanking them.
Best friends since the second grade, they have turned up histories - for their own families and others - in a Mormon library in Utah, in a courthouse in Mongtomery, Ala., even on a front porch in Bruceville, Ind., which turned out to belong to a distant relative. (``She apologized because the old family home had been razed, and that this one had only been built in 1840,'' Darlene said.)
Jimmie has traced her own roots back 139 generations. To Tiberius.
Sometimes, she said, you discover things you wish you hadn't. Such was the case when she learned an ancestor had bought seven of this country's first 21 slaves.
And sometimes, as in the case of Sallie Weaver Robertson, you learn nothing. You simply honor.
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