Bead-Weeping Mary Gold Copper Glass Circle TB

I maintain records on my trackables. For a US-based trackable, this one is unusual for its longevity and movement. In the six-year period, 2010-19, the owner released a total of 3,793 trackables in the United States (96%) and Europe (4%). This trackable is one of the 5% of the total that circulated for at least 5 years and had been moved at least 25 times. That is a target rate of at least five drops per year for five years, or a drop every 73 days. The average drop rate of my trackables in the US is 124 days, in Europe it is 71 days. As of 18-Mar-24 this trackable had survived for 8.8 years and had been moved by 27 cachers, for an average drop every 119 days, or 3.1 drops per year. Please keep it moving, then drop it in a safe place!

No permission is needed to leave the U.S. While in the U.S., please drop it at an event, in a Premium Member only OR a rural cache near a busy trail or road. Do not place it in an urban, non-premium cache. Transport the bug in the original plastic bag for as long as the bag lasts; the bag keeps the trackable clean and dry, protects the number and prevents tangling with other items. Otherwise, take the trackable anywhere you wish.

This is one of a series of large beads obtained from different places and converted into travel bugs.  They are named for Texas towns with interesting names or histories.

Weeping Mary is in southern Cherokee County.  The community was probably first settled soon after the Civil War by freed slaves from neighboring plantations.  It is said to have been named for Mary Magdalene's weeping at the tomb of Jesus. Alternately, variations of a local legend state that a black woman named Mary wept from the devastating loss of her land to a white man or that the woman, after making a pact with the area's freedmen that no one would sell their land to the white settlers, wept over the loss of the community when that promise was broken.  

Residents established a Baptist church.  A local school for black children was operation by 1896, when it had enrollment of forty.  In the 1930s Weeping Mary had a school and a few houses. The school was closed around the time of World War II, but in 1990 a church and a few scattered houses still remained in the area. The population was forty in 2000.