Come! my brothers and sisters...sit down by my campfire so that we can talk about the days of long ago and about our cherokee heritage!   Here's a blanket to cover your shoulders in case it gets chilly ..............

I was born in the mountains of Tennessee.  My parents, Nettie Lois Woods and Ray Eli McCartha met when she was visiting her sister,Myrtle May Chadwell. Mother was 18 yrs old and my dad was 21.  He was born and raised in Crenshaw County,Alabama.  He came to Tennessee to work at the CCC camp .  To make a long story short..they fell in love and my dad wanted to marry her but my grandfather wouldn't allow it.  So my dad left and joined the Marine Corps and he also left my mom not knowing that she was pregnant with me.  He was shipped overseas in the Pacific.  My mom passed away in 1944 and I lived with my grandparents until my grandmother died of TB.  Then I went and lived with my aunt Myrtle Mae until my dad came and got me.  He had just gotten married to my stepmom,Annie Jo Stokes and he was still in the service..that was the last I saw of my mother's people until 1987 when I got into genealogy and wanted to find out about my mother and her family.  Here's what happened...... I was married and living on Maui and I wrote to my dad and told him I wanted so badly to find my mother's family in Tennessee and to find her grave..He wrote back and told me to come and we'd go looking for them.  So while I was getting ready to make the trip he put an add in the Lake City, Tennessee newspaper(they had a very old 1946 letter from my aunt Mae that they had kept and that was where she was living back in 1946.) The add stated that "Shirley Ruth McCartha Makekau was looking for her aunt Myrtle Mae" and gave the Beaufort telephone number to contact me. Well,I went   to Beaufort where my parents were living and we had planned on leaving for Tenn on a Monday and hadn't heard anything    from the newspaper add so Sunday night we all went to bed and around 10:30pm my stepmom came into my bedroom and said there was a telephone call for me...I thought it was my husband,Nakai, as he called it seemed almost every day.<grin>  I went to the phone and low and behold it was my aunt Mae! I was in total shock!! She said that a friend from Lake city,Tn. had seen the add in the paper and she called my aunt (who had moved from Lake City and was living in LaFollete, Tennessee.  Well, needless to say I was overjoyed to hear from her.   I had a hard time getting back to sleep as I was so excited to finally get to  see her again.  When we got to her place I was greeted by three more aunts(Reba, Edna & Nanny).One of which is four years older than me!   (That's my aunt Reba).   We had a joyous time.  I also met my uncle Jerry and of course all my cousins.  We drove over to Gainesville, Tennessee to Bryers Cemetary where my mother is buried next to my half brother,Russell Fox.  He died at the age of 1 1/2 yrs. My aunt Mae told me that when my dad came to get me she went to the train station with us and I was crying and holding out my hands to her crying"don't let them take me"!  I don't recall any of that as I must have blocked it from my mind. So 1987 was the last I saw of my mother's people although I did correspond with aunt Mae until she died.As far as genealogy work I was concentrating on the "Woods" side and didn't get very far with that and put it aside to work on the McCartha part of my line.  I didn't even try the Vanover side for whatever reason.  The wonders of wonders was when I bought my first computer and the ancestors guided me to a Ky list.  The list owner being Margy Miles whom I discovered really fast was a Vanover cousin and it is through Margy that my Vanover family was unveiled!    Her mother was a Vanover and there I discovered my Cherokee roots.  I had a full blood Cherokee,Abey Easterd/Easter who married Cornelius Vanover in Ashe County, NC. Since then I also was told by a Cherokee friend that my grandfather,Seaberry Woods was also Cherokee.  In corresponding with my aunt's regarding our Vanover,Raines,Perry,Higgenbotham and Woods Native American linage I was told by one of the aunts that they remember my grgrandfather,David Hayworth Vanover, as being a short,dark skinned man with long white hair. He also told them that he was "Black Dutch".   I was really wanting to know about the ancestor,Abey Easterd/Easter ...  so I went on the internet and joined a Native American list and found "Snowbird" who made me feel right at home with her ChiefJohnBrownband.   I was on another NA list and met a full blood Cherokee from a Missouri tribe and he introduced me to his cousin, Chief Two Wolves-aka-Debbie Lange.  I became a member of her Red Feather Band of the Chickamaugan Cherokee. She is the one who gave me the name "Stars Haven"(Noquisi-Nunayebisdana) through a naming ceremony.  Here is her picture:

Chief Two Wolves

Her 6xgreatgrandfather was Chief Attakullakulla and his son was the War Chief Dragging Canoe. She is the one who told me that my grandfather, Seaberry woods, was also Native American.(Seaberry is a native american name).   I had sent her a picture of my grandparents some time before and when she told me... I asked her how in the world did she know that!  She said "You always tell an indian by his eyes, big ears,nose and cheekbones." I have shown this picture on my other page but here it is again:

Seaberry Woods/Eliza Vanover

   Some time after my naming ceremony I had this dream: I saw this:

  A beautiful Native american woman with a black tattoo running down the right side of her face.

A rabbit running towards the woods

A bunch of snakes inside a circle and last I saw a

white wolf looking at me through the trees....

  I got in touch with Chief Two wolves and told her about this dream. This is what she said..the woman is the dream is telling that I belong to the wild potato clan of the Cherokee.  She asked me if I was sure it was a white wolf and I said yes..she said that it would watch over me.  She didn't say anything about that rabbit but did say that the dream revealed alot about me..Humm..she didn't say what it was. Not long after that I had another dream and this is the dream:

I was wearing a turban on my head and on top of the turban was a coiled back and white snake and it was raising its head up and out as if looking for something. When this dream happened my friend and cousin(so she says) Chief two Wolves had disconnected her computer and was in the process of moving to another state so I sent an email to ChiefJohnBrownBand and one of the sisters sent me an attachment with the below picture:

Cherokee Snake Mask

This is what it says about this Mask:

Mask making is another tribal custom that almost drifted into extinction.  It was the duty of the medicine man to carve the various masks that were used in ceremonial dances to scare away sickness,prepare for war or to aid in the hunt. Booger masks were used in the "Booger Dance" to portray people the Cherokee believed to be of questionable character, like the white man,black man and indians from other tribes.  The rattlesnake, considered sacred by the Cherokee,was carved on "Warrior Mask" and on the "Medicine Man Mask"

And now my brothers and sisters, Wado (thank you) for listening to my tales of long ago and of my Cherokee links to the pass.

Stars Haven -aka- Shirley with grandson,Kalani

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