My Story

Update! The Search for my brother Johnnie R. Kincaid is over. A Kincaid Cousin living in West Virginia has located my brother Johnnie's Foster Family. The result of his search was not one that I wanted to hear, but I was in many ways prepared for. Johnnie R. Kincaid (AKA: Henson) died in 1981 according to Social Security Death Records found online at the Family Tree Maker's Site. This cousin being a wonderful researcher did with the families permission furnish me with Johnnie's Obituary, listing Johnnie's wife's name and his children. He also provided me with four pictures of Johnnie, as a boy and as a Navy man for which I'm also thankful to have. I have placed a picture of Johnnie farther down this page. I am very grateful to this wonderful person who took it upon himself to solve this mystery in my life. I will be forever grateful that now at last I know, Johnnie has been found. I will endeavor to find out more details of my brother's life which I did not share and hopefully be able to build a relationship with my new found nieces and nephew. I have information to share with them about their aunts, uncles and cousins if they are interested in finding out. I hope to be able to visit WV where Johnnie R. Kincaid grew up which wasn't too far from the area I grew up in. It's been a long search for me, but I'm very happy it's over and I can lay to rest the wondering if Johnnie R. Kincaid is still out there somewhere. There were six of us siblings and now there are two that remain. I hope this brings closure to this chapter in my life and that I can move forward, no longer wondering what happened to my brother. Again, I want to express my deepest heartfelt thanks to the Kincaid cousin who did such a wonderful job. I thought many times, what I communicated on this page about my family was too personal, and that maybe I shouldn't have been that personal, but I always thought that maybe just maybe someone someday would come across my webpage and just might make a connection or know something that had been lost so many years ago, and would put me in contact with the right people and that I would find Johnnie R. Kincaid alive and well. But that was not to be and I am grieving the death of a brother I never knew and he never knew any of his siblings. At least I had the chance to know two of mine growing up, although they were much older than I and weren't around much as I grew up, but I did know where they were and what was going on in their lives, for which I am grateful to my foster parents and to God for keeping the three of us connected although it wasn't a close connection. I'm also grateful to my brother Frankie who was encouraging me to find my sister Dolly Louise and to continue hunting for Johnnie. Although Frankie didn't get to see his brother Johnnie, he remembered him well, for Frankie was twelve years of age when we were all separated. Frankie died in 1983, which started my search for my family with a determination I had not had at all before. I am thankful that I found my sister Dolly Louise living very close to where Johnnie R. Kincaid grew up, and she so desperately wanted to find him. I hope and pray for others in my same situation that their searches will not last as long, and that the outcome will be a happier one.

I'm still searching for my niece Keitha Ann Kincaid, born April 1950 in Raleigh County, West Virginia and who was legally adopted in that county in 1951. I hope that someday someone will run across this page again and know who she is.

My name is Sherranlynn Kincaid Nichols. I was born in Prince, Fayette County, West Virginia. I was an abandoned baby at age 2 months and hospitalized in the Oak Hill Hospital with rickets and malnutrition.

In that Oak Hill Hospital was the man who was to become my foster father. I was told how he would take me from my crib into his room. After hearing I had no family, this man and his wife began to investigate a little about me. When I was well enough to leave the hospital, Carl and Elizabeth Williams Lazarsky took me home to live with them in Minden, West Virginia.

A little while after this, The Fayette County Social Worker came and asked the Lazarskys if they would consider keeping my oldest brother Frankie and my oldest sister Wilda (Biddy) until they could find permanent homes for them. They agreed so Frankie who was 12 years of age and Biddy who was 7 came to live there also. Homes were never found, so I sort of grew up with them both even though they were 12 and 7 years older than me.

In researching I found out that my sister Louise and my brother Johnnie were in other homes before our mother left us. I met Louise who lived at Wolf Pen, West Virginia. I'd not been successful in locating my brother. I also had another brother Charles who was blind and was sent to Romney School for the Deaf and Blind. He came to visit us one year on the Farm. I never saw him again..I would still love to find out what happened to my niece, Biddy's daughter Keitha Ann, who was born in Raleigh County in April 1950, and was adopted in 1951.

My first awareness was during WWII and Frankie was in the Navy at age 16. Before that Biddy and I both contracted polio. I just remember a lot of illnesses in my life. We lived on Bunker Hill Road and went to school in Oak Hill. I never knew I was not the Lazarsky's daughter until I was a teenager. In fact people remarked how much I looked like my mother. I had some sort of anemia and had to eat lots of bananas, and they were rationed, so people around would give mom their rationing stamps so she would be able to supply me with the bananas.

Some neighbors I remember from Bunker Hill days were Betty June Armstrong's family who lived next door to us. Our house was rented, (from a Mr. Treadway) like many houses at that time there on Bunker Hill. I've went back and the house still looksed like I remember it. Anothr family of Treadways lived up on the hill above us, and this Mrs. Treadway helped mom when I was really ill.

My foster dad worked at the mines in Summerlee then and walked back and forth to work.. We had no indoor plumbing so a big wash tub was always ready for him each evening to wash the coal dust off. All you see of the miners coming home were the white rings around their eyes. I always ran to meet him because he always saved me something in his lunch bucket to eat. Those were wonderful, carefree memories.

We later moved to East End of Oak Hill, when my foster parents became caretakers of the Fayette County Poor Farm, (which was dissolved in January 1952, when it became the State Police Headquarters), and now is the State Road Commission.

We moved there sometime during the war, because I remember Frankie coming home from the Navy and he took me to the drugstore in Oak Hill to celebrate with a milkshake. I enjoyed the Farm, and the people who lived there became the aunts and uncles and gramdparents I never had. I helped out with mealtimes, washing and drying many, many dishes, carrying trays down that hill to the patients that were not able to come to the dining room, riding the horse as daddy plowed the fields, or pulling a chain in the rows after the lime was put in it, before he planted the seeds and of course carrying lots of water for them to drink.

The property across the road from the farm belonged to the farm and there wasa little Grave Yard saon the top of the hill. I used to lay on the grass and watch the clouds making pictures in the sky above. In the wintertime, I would go sledding down that hill. Now, I wonder who was buried on that hill, with the graves already sinking down. Genealogy changes one's ways of thinking I guess. I did hear from a researcher who said they had traced their families property to that land that became the Faytte County Poor Farm. It was in the Dietz family.

After I got into genealogy I began to wonder who some of the residents I knew were and why they were living there. I began to trace some of them. That's how I found out that the younger Fox resident who was like a member of our family was actually a cousin to me.

I spent many hours at the Movie Theater in Oak Hill, watching my favorite cowboy pictures on Saturdays with a girlfriend and when we came home, my girlfriend Regina Reedy and I would pretend to be cowgirls and ride the ponies in the apple orchard.

I walked down Summerlee Road to visit and stay the weekends with Mammie Griffith and her family. She had a house full of children and lived in the Lockgelly coal camp. Mammie made the best banana pudding. She worked as a cook for the Poor Farm. Her aunt Viola Craft was a resident I was very close to. When my foster dad died in 1964, Mammie and Viola came to his funeral in Oak Hill.

Another resident Cora Prather Wilshire, I was close to, having visited them before he her husband passed away. They lived a couple roads over in a house that sat in the backyard of one of their daughters. My foster mom knew her somehow, I believe they may have known each other in Minden. She crocheted all day. She taught me to crochet dollies. She made beautiful things for people. She had long coal black hair, down to her waist and it had no dye on it. She lived at the farm until it closed. She had a daughter younger than me and twin sons, about my age and they lived somewhere in Lewisburg, West Virginia area. (I thought that was so far away, like going to another country), They came to visit her some, The daughter's name was Mary Ann, and the sons, Buddy and Jimmy. After we moved to Adrian, Michigan when the farm closed, I remember Buddy and Jimmy showing up in Adrian. There were living with an older sister who married a Benscoter and had moved to Adrian also. After that I lost tract of them though.

I used played with Sue Richardson, and her cousins Elta Richardson. and Ray Richardson. My best friend was Kay Speers, who was also a cousin, to Sue and Elta. They all lived two roads up from the FARM. The last I heard from Kay, she was married, and living in New Jersey and her cousins also lived there. I would love to find her again. She had a sister Brenda and a brother Jimmie. Her dad was Bill Speers, who was a carpenter. He built houses and remodeled homes in the area. I remember her mother was Carrie Witt Speers from Kentucky, and her mother visited in Kentucky once in awhile. Carrie was a sister to Elta's mother.

One year there was a tent revival at the bottom of the hill, across Summerlee Road, and the evangelist was Rev. Oliver Rushing, and his wife Myrtle. They had 8 children and came from Nashville, Tennessee. He was a Nazerene minister, and began a building fund, and a church was built there. The family lived in Oak Hill downtown, and had a radio broadcast from their home on WOAY. They all played instruments and sang as a family. I used to go visit them and they came to many Sunday Dinners at our house. When he was traveling, with the older children, mom kept their youngest kids. Ruby, Edna and Nancy were close to my age and we spent many days together. I remember Norma was the oldest girl, then Rachel and there was Junior, and Justine and their youngest was Dorsey. Norma's husband became the pastor at that church. He preached the funeral of my foster dad in 1964 and Norma sang his favorite song "In The Garden". I have a picture of them while they were doing a broadcast at the radio station at Hill Top.

From 1989-1998, we lived in Pulaski, Tennessee, and someone told me Norma and her husband were pastoring a church in Dixon, Tennessee, which was not too many miles away, but I did not get to contact her. I have pictures that would be dear to someone researching this family. While living in Tennesse I became involved with the first "GenWeb" put on the internet. I did research on Giles County, Tennesse and I ran across a mention of a Rev. Rushing coming to Pulaski, Tennessee as an evangelist, before the time he was in Oak Hill, West Virginia. I wondered could it be the same Rev. Rushing? So of course I set out to research his family, and it had to be the same Oliver Rushing, for he lived in the next county over from Pulaski, Tennesse before coming to Oak Hill. I traced his family to Alabama.

Charles died in 1964, but I didn't know until the 1970's when coming back from a vacation at Myrtle Beach I decided I wanted to come through Romney and see him.

Frankie had a massive heart attack and died in 1983, while living in Adrian. He was divorced from his wife. His chldren found an unopened Christmas Card dated 1970 in the trunk of his car and from that I began researching. Making many yearly research trips to WV counties. I met a lady living in Prince who was a friend of my mother's and she told me about what happened in 1937. She was Mrs. Roy (Macie) Plumley. She had worked with my mother at a hotel.

Biddy lived in Lorain, Ohio and we visited some. She died in 1991 at the Veterans Hospital in Grand Rapids, Michigan. She had entered the Navy in 1951 and came to live in Adrian in 1955, and went to live in Ohio a year or so later, married and had a son. Her husband died in 1977. She came to live in Adrian in 1986.

Louise died in 2007, I only saw her about 3 times on my research trips to West Virginia. She had been legally adopted at age 16 by the Kirby's of Baileysville, West Virginia.

Johnnie Reif Kincaid went by the name of Johnnie R. Henson, being raised by that family in the Mullens area.

I met my father's grandson who was a minister at Abraham, West Virginia. He said they never knew my father had other children.

I met a cousin Biddy Walker living in Springdale, and she filled me in on what she remembered, since my mother had lived with her family some. She was a double first cousin to Frankie and Charles.