The Home Place

By

Pamela Perry Blaine

© January 2005

It was a long time ago, yet it really happened.  There was a place in time where 

people lived, worked, and played just like we do today.  Oh, they may have had 

different modes of transportation, dressed differently, and had a slower 

pace of life, but they were a lot like us in our hopes and dreams.  

We look for them as so we search for what I call our home place.

The home place often began when a man bought a small plat of ground to work.  

He took a team of horses, some tools, and brought his new bride 

to the house he had built with his own two hands.

In time, the farm or ranch would grow and expand. There would be a 

large barn and other outbuildings to hold the increase of the land.  

A room or two would sometimes be added on to the house to handle a growing family.  

The house became the home place where love and refuge were found.

Life was often difficult and families coped with hard times as best they could. 

It was a time when losing loved ones was common.  Babies, children, and the elderly 

succumbed to illnesses that are preventable in today’s world.  There were 

hard times with suffering and even the loss of life from accidents and disease.

These were the people from which many of us descended.  We look through family 

photographs, visit cemeteries, shuffle through boxes in attics, and visit genealogy 

sites on the Internet in search of our home place. 

Some people search to trace their lineage, thinking that perhaps 

they might find a link to someone of great importance, even royalty, so they 

themselves might feel a tie to their home place. Others do it out of 

curiosity or to actually find someone that they feel they have lost connection 

to because of situations such as adoption or divorce.  At any rate, 

there is something within us that often wants to know about our beginnings 

as we search for our  home place.  It brings us perhaps a sense of security 

in belonging to something greater than ourselves and just the here and now.  

It is like having an extended family that we are linked to even though 

they are no longer with us.

For some people the search for home doesn’t take them far at all, while others 

search long and hard.  Perhaps the search for our home place is a desire 

that God created in our hearts, a longing for more than 

what we have or see with our human eyes.

Like me, you might find many home places.  There is the home place where 

I grew up that I often drive past ever so slowly, and for a moment 

I remember the days of my childhood.  I have also found the home place 

of my father and that of my husband’s father. 

The houses no longer exist but there are pictures of them. 

I can show you the pictures of all of these and perhaps you have a picture 

of your home place too.  Yet, the search for our home place remains 

for there is a home place that is not of this world.

 I beleive Jesus spoke of the ultimate home place when He said, 

"In my Father's house are many mansions". 

Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, 

the things which God hath prepared for them that love him.

(1 Corinthians 2:9)

The William Blaine Home Place (once located near Bible Grove, Missouri)

 Artist, Margaret Blaine (Granddaughter)

The Home Place of my Grandparents, William Richard and Eva Mae Perry

 once located near Locust Hill, Missouri

(Pictured left to right are eight of the ten children: Ralph (my father), 

Eva Mae, Estelle, John, Bill, Clarence, Lola,  Alice, and Julia)