My Sweet and Beautiful Baby! I am just getting home from Pearl's, so I wanted to check in and say that I hope your first day of school was a good one, uneventful in the best sense of that word. I'm sure it was a mad dash in some ways, too, especially after the relaxation of Summer, but I am sure you have that part down by now. I am gonna go over to Ancestry.com for a few minutes, cause my brother thinks he may have found a previously unknown relative on our family tree. He wants me to do some checking for him, because I am the geneaologist in the family.
I also have my own Family Tree : Adam and Elizabeth. Or if you prefer, Elizabeth and Adam.
I think it sounds good either way, my Lady.
I'll be back at the usual time, with more.
I Love You With All My Heart. :):)
(back in a bit)
11:10pm : The Ancestry thing is a trip, because in 2007 I spent months making this huge tree, and it was something I never expected would happen because when we were kids, my siblings and I didn't have a single extended relative. I think I told you this a while back, maybe last year. Anyway, we had no grandparents, aunts, uncles or cousins. All we had was Dad, Mom, and me and my brother and sisters, our nuclear family, because everyone else had died long ago. My Mom was adopted from an orphanage at six months, and never knew the identities of her birth parents until she was in her fifties. My Dad was raised by his Mom and his granny, and never knew his father. His Mom died of tuberculosis in 1937 when he was 17, so after that it was just him and his grandma. She died in the late 40s. Mom's adoptive parents were both deceased by 1943, and basically both my parents were kind of on their own, thrown into the deep end of life, when they were teenagers. But, they made it out okay, and it was all good (or mostly good) and for our family it was an interesting story, because when I was a kid, everybody had extended families, some large, some not so large, but everybody had at least one relative. Except us, we had none.
So, in 2007, when I set out to do our family tree, a chance made possible by the Internet and all the records kept by the Mormon Church (they are America's great geneaologists), I was surprised to discover what a large, extended family we had in the generations before I was born. I discovered a lot about my Mom's birth parents, their history, and on Dad's side I discovered a full American history for his Mom's side.
But we could never find out much about his Dad. Dad grew up without a father, and it was strong women in his life who raised him. And my siblings and I have always been curious about our history, so this eve my brother messaged me on FB to say that he found some info on Ancestry, a possible link to our unknown grandfather, Dad's father whom he never knew.
In the 1920s, there was much irresponsibility amongst young men, and young white men as well. Both my Dad's and my Mom's biological fathers ran away after getting their women pregnant. But there was a new twist in the story tonight. My brother found out, on Ancestry, that Dad's father had another family in Kentucky, a couple hundred miles from northern Indiana. And he had apparently ditched that family, and had relocated to Indiana, and married my grandma, who died in 1937 when Dad was 17. But the thing is, that the reason Dad never knew his father, is apparently because his Grandma, who owned the house his Mom lived in with this man, found out that Mr. Landers had another family in Kentucky, and she ran him out of the house. This is my speculation tonight, from long term knowledge of Dad's stories, and finally, from last pieces of the puzzle so many decades later, thanks to the Internet, and the persistence of memory.
My family is late in regenerating, I think I have mentioned that before. All the previous peeps have kids when they are 35 or 40. So, my grandpa William Landers, a man my Dad never knew, was born in 1880, a full 80 years before I was born.
It's most fascinating for me because of the time history. If I had a wish to meet any of my ancestors, it would be the women, the strong women like my grandma Louise, who died of tuberculosis in 1937, or her mother, my great grandma Katherine Kelly, who died not long after.
I would like to meet my Mom's adoptive parents someday, too. They died in the 1940s, long before I was born, but even though they are not part of my geneaology, they are heroes to me as well.
Blood is fascinating, and is part of who we are both biologically and in the backwards extention of the family tree.
But really, it is the strong people in your life who make you who you are.
I mean, you make you who you are, but you could never do that without those strong people to launch you.
I look back at the family history I never knew, and it's all good. We never knew the difference, so we never had any psychological burden of having no relatives. But now, thanks to research and modern technology, and most of all to people in other states who have kept records, we are finding who we are.
And we are strong.
I Love You, Elizabeth. Though we are our own, and individuals above all else, we are like those people.
We are strong.
Sweet dreams, my Angel. I will see you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxo :):)
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