About the author

Garland Lacey, author of this LACEY book, began his collection of family history some years ago but let it sit idly on the shelves until prodded into action by interests from Clay and Marion Counties in Illinois.  Action is a mild term to describe the efforts of Mr. Lacey in gathering everything he could read and talk about, and, yes, even research about his LACEY heritage.

 

He is pleased but not finished just regrouping his energies.  This LACEY search taught Garland Lacey more history than any education acquired in high school or university classes.  He had to walk back down the National Trail (the turnpike built from Cumberland, Maryland to Vandalia, Illinois) into the Ohio Country, to the Revolution and then into Ten-Mile Country of Virginia and Pennsylvania, all for the local history of Marion, Clay and Fayette Counties in Illinois, following elusive ghosts of LACEY people.

 

This LACEY book focuses on Hiram G. LACEY and his wife Sophia SELL, as they moved from Ohio to Illinois with their children and families.  It includes many pictures and information but leaves the door ajar, thus, inviting further research in Pennsylvania and back to England and the Magna Carta.

 

To the Baron John deLACY, son of Roger, who signed the Magna Carta in 1215, LACEYs should direct their search for earlier ancestral beginnings.  The Magna Carta Society should have additional information.  The Magna Carta sought the right of men to be free of English law, giving liberty to the common man.  It dissolved the feudal state and from this document evolved the Bill of Rights.

 

As the Magna Carta decreed, Garland Lacey found the LACEY families establishing and exercising their freedom, liberties and privleges and accepting the responsibility of the western movement.

 

Now to Mahala, who could not marry her choice, so did not marry, to the fours sons of Hiram who fought in the Civil War, and, to those who returned to Illinois to the land, this book is for LACEYs everywhere to enjoy and for everyone to share the information.

 

Nice job, Garland... and from our common education ---

 

Patricia A. Smith Hoyt