Category Archives: family

genealogy

Help From the Genealogy Guys

I’ve left voicemails and e-mailed comments in to podcasts before, but I still go all a-squee when I hear MY E-MAIL being read on the air, so to speak.

Last week, I e-mailed the Genealogy Guys about finding Great-Aunt Phoebe’s service station. (Actually, she’s my great-great-aunt, but who’s counting?) Today, I listened to George and Drew give me (and hundreds of other genealogy buffs) some clues about where to go next:

  1. City directories? Establish the year it was founded and the year it went out of business or changed hands.
  2. Land and property records; perhaps a mortgage?
  3. Florida Secretary of State: Bureau of Measurements’ annual inspections, incorporations.
  4. Florida State Archives for archived gov’t records?
  5. Local genealogical society or historical societies
  6. Sanborn fire insurance maps? Chipley might not be large enough of a city to appear in one of those.

So, that gives me a pretty good start. The city directories were something I’d thought of myself, but I hadn’t considered going to the Secretary of State. Good idea, George!

Other fun things: Drew actually pronounced “Schnuth” correctly, and George started out by giving a mini-plug of my podcast, as I’d decided to sign my e-mail with my podcast’s name, as well as my own. Any publicity I can get is fine with me. 🙂

I’m off to go search for some Washington County libraries online…

genealogy

Pictures To Prove It

As we were swapping family photos over e-mail, a newly-discovered relative of mine told me, “I love photos also. In fact, when I am doing work on a family, I like to have their photo to look at. I think it brings reality to the numbers.”

I took that to heart this week and decided to research one particular photo I’d found online a few years ago. My great-great-grandmother, Grannie Maudie, two of her sisters, and her daughter pose in front of a 1940’s era service station. From what I read, Maudie’s sister, Phoebe, actually owned the station, but the researcher who posted the information didn’t know where the station was located.

Luckily, I discovered this back in 2001, and had plenty of time to approach Memaw about it before she passed. Maudie was Memaw’s grandmother, and Memaw had spoken enough about “they was a bunch of girls in that family” that I figured she might know something about the service station. After all, she used to say that Aunt Miney (MY-knee) was the first person in the family to own a car, and I believe she said it was a Model T. (I’m still not sure who Aunt Miney is, but I’ll piece it together someday.) So, I wasn’t surprised when she knew exactly what I was talking about, and told me that the station had been out on Route 10.

After that, I didn’t think about the service station for quite some time. I always knew I’d come back to it eventually, though.

This week, as I was pulling out family photos to inspire me in my genealogical research, I came across a print of the service station picture, and decided that I wanted to make it the cornerstone of my current project. I want to get as much information as possible about the women in the photograph, the service station, and how it came to be.

In getting my facts straight, I realized that I’d had a couple people recorded in the wrong families entirely, and that I didn’t have much information on these ladies. I had dates, thanks to Mrs. Smith’s research, but no sources. And I’ve become a stickler for sources lately.

So, tonight, I’m requesting death certificates for three of the four women in the picture: Phoebe, Delia, and Ida. I already have Maudie’s. I’m hoping to see whether they had Social Security Numbers — if they did, I can order up their Social Security Applications. Those will tell me where they were employed, if anywhere, at the time they applied for the SSN; their home address; their places of birth and their parents’ names; and a few other random goodies. Unfortunately, I’m fairly positive that Maudie never had a SSN, as her death certificate lists none, and she died in 1950, before it became mandatory for all U.S. residents to have a SSN. Phoebe also died relatively young, in 1957, at the age of 64; however, she may have had to have a SSN, since she was the owner of the service station. I have high hopes for Ida and Delia having SSNs, as they seem to have survived a little longer, and I think I’ve found them both in the Social Security Death Index.

I think I’ve geeked out on genealogy long enough for one night. I’m off to write three $5 checks to the Florida Department of Vital Statistics, record the requests in my research log, and get them ready to go in the mail tomorrow.

I’m hoping that having some focus in my research will help me untangle this confusing web of multiple marriages and not-quite-legal adoptions and divorces and separations and step-children and OMG. Why couldn’t these women be a little less strong-willed and a little more marriageable? 😉

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Sucked In

I can’t stop reading this diary.

I don’t want to go make my lunch. I don’t want to watch TV. I don’t want to exercise. I just want to keep reading.

It’s not even about me anymore — at this point in the diary, Memaw and I (except Mom called her Grannie then) have flown to Florida to stay with Granny and Charlie for a while, and Mom is hanging around Medina, staying with friends until the paternity suit against my father.

That was my first plane ride, and was my only plane ride until a few years back, when I went with Mom and Gary and Philip to visit Gary’s family in Fort Worth.

I love taking these one-page synopses of Mom’s days and trying to imagine what her life was really like. Moving out of the apartment to a couple other friends’ places. Missing me so much. Trying to get a job. Trying to “get her head on straight.”

We’ve both come so far.

I love you, Mom.

family

Every Little Freaking Detail?

Are you tired of it yet?

I blew one of my weekly goals tonight: I didn’t do my PUSH workout. Note to self: six almonds is not a sufficient evening snack if I intend to snack at 4:30pm and eat dinner at 7:30pm. So I ended up coming home and making dinner before my workout… which meant I never got around to the workout. No biggie. It’s a learning process. I’m still going to exercise tomorrow and Friday; I’m not going to blow off the rest of the week just because of one off day.

Made it to work on time again today. Almost didn’t — clocked in at 8:05am — because I had a minor emergency with my new seedlings. Had to flip them around close to the window because their grow light went out, and had to water them because I removed their cover, so they lost their little greenhouse effect. But I digress.

I’ve been doing pretty well with not adding extra snackies into my day, and sticking to my prescribed menu. Today I substituted spinach for the salad I’d scheduled for myself — mainly because I didn’t want leftover spinach sitting in the fridge, and I know Aaron won’t eat it. He hates spinach.

A lot of my evenings lately have been spent reading Mom’s journal (ostensibly my “baby diary”, but also Mom’s “I’m lonely and want a man” diary, too). At age 22, she had all the guys looking, even with a baby at home. I don’t want to air Mom’s 30-year-old dirty laundry to the entire world, but suffice to say that it seems she was always lonely, but rarely really alone.

As a parallel: when I was 19, there was one semester when I went out with five different guys. That’s the closest I can come to understanding what my mom went through in the late 70s. I really feel for her, as she was back then.

If I write any more on this, I may as well just write Mom’s memoirs myself and post them to the internet. So I’ll shut up now. 🙂

Truth be told, I’m going to be disappointed when I get to the end of this diary. I’ll be jonesing for Volume II. Guess I’ll have to get Mom to sit down and actually write me some memoirs… although I promise not to post them to the internet.

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Thirty Years Ago Today

Several years ago, Mom gave me the small “baby diary” she’d kept during the first year after I was born. She started it in July 1976, when I was 10 weeks old. It’s really a fascinating look into my Mom’s life as a single 21-year-old mother in the 1970s.

July 14, 1976:

Today Bonnie and I went to see the lawyer. I know it will be hard for you to understand why your father doesn’t want to admit you are his. I hope it can have a happy ending for all of us.

Well, we took you to have your picture taken. And you heard a squeeky toy for the first time. And you smiled real big for the man. Mommy was glad you smiled.

Your Uncle Donnie held you and you talked to him. He played a harmonica, but you didn’t like it.

Good night,
Mom

(It’s a small book. That filled up the whole page for July 14.)

Actually, now that I’m older than he was at the time, I can understand. I don’t agree with his reaction to the situation, but I do understand. He was 25, messing around with his 20-year-old girlfriend. He wasn’t looking for any of this. When he found out, it was probably easier to deny all responsibility. Although I don’t know if I can understand his offering to pay to have me aborted. (Sorry, abortion rights activists, but I am pro-life by default. No matter what I might have said when I was 15, I truly am glad to be alive.)

It’s been interesting growing up fatherless. I don’t think I was scarred by it — of course, I really don’t have a basis of comparison. I learned at some point in my youth when it was OK to talk about my parentage, and when I should just let people draw their own conclusions about how I came to live with my Mom and my grandmother. As I got older and more open with people, and as single parenting became less of a stigma, I began telling more people in more situations. Now I’m to the point where I can discuss my bastard nature with co-workers who are younger than me — and who, surprisingly enough, share very similar stories of their own unusual parentage.

I’ve never met my father face-to-face. It would be interesting, if awkward, to have a discussion with him about that stretch of time in 1975 and 1976 when he so vehemently denied being my father. I’m just curious if he really believes that he isn’t the one. I wonder if he ever thought about it, years later.

On a lighter note, I look forward to reading this while I blog about my own (still unconceived) child’s first year of life. Or maybe I’ll get a little diary and write a few words in my own hand after she goes to sleep at night. I know I’m enjoying reading Mom’s (and Memaw’s, sometimes) handwritten thoughts, thirty years after the fact.

Update, 9:40pm: Continuing to read through the diary. Some of these entries are making me all misty. Dammit. 😉