A family messenger chat today brought up some heritage connections, and my older sister, who took this photo, shared it.
The younger people in the photo are my mom, my brother, and myself. My sister is behind the camera. In the bed is my mother's father's father's mother, i.e. my great-great grandmother. This photo was taken on the one and only trip in which we met. She had been four years old when Abraham Lincoln was shot. She regaled us with stories of the black borders around the newspapers in her home state of Illinois following that event.
My sister brought up that her parents had been married in England and immigrated to the US with three children. This young lady was one of six children born to them on these shores.
She was 101 in this photo. I was not yet ten, which would make my brother not yet seven. The camera wielding sister was going on 12.
This was an amazing trip. One highlight for me was visiting a home that Abraham Lincoln's family had resided in at some point in his life (probably when he was a state senator?) and feeling the horsehair upholstery on one of the chairs. Impressed that they let us touch it!
Great great gram passed away the following April, shortly after her 102nd birthday.
My brother's daughter had started the chat with a question about whether the sister behind the camera and I had been alive when Kennedy was shot, and every time that sister and I think about Kennedy's assassination, we also think of Great-great-Grandma, who died just half a year before that event, and how we connected the historical dots with our own family tree.
Trying to get the story saved off before everybody who remembers it is gone, as of the four people in this photo, I'm the only one left breathing at this point (and the sister behind the camera, of course). Glad she re-shared it today.
Life is good. It is good to remember that history is made up of family stories, our own and others', and we're all just humans, trying to live our lives, raise our children, and hopefully help one another along the way.
That is some amazing family history. To be alive when Lincoln was assassinated is incredible. My mom was in high school when Kennedy was killed. Every generation has there "Where were you moment". As a Gen-X it would have to be the Space Shuttle Challenger. I was in middle school then and we watched it like so many schools did.
ReplyDelete(((BIG HUGS)))
Oh, I remember the Challenger... my son was barely two years old, and he had a little ride-on space shuttle. When the Challenger blew up, I took that shuttle and put it away for several years.
DeleteThanks for sharing this. Memories and photos together are my passion!
ReplyDeleteHow wonderful you met your 2-great grandmother.
As soon as I saw your mother, I saw you today. Ace resembles her. too.
I've plenty of 'where were you' moments under our belts. One of my firsts was I remember scanning the night sky for Sputnik, assuming we were going to get blasted from space.
I didn't go watch for Sputnik, but I did scan the skies for Echo! Yes, this started me down the rabbit hole of "where were you" moments. Oklahoma City, Columbine, 9/11 (of course)... but many, many, many more. Which is pretty much what my niece said when I said Kennedy was my generation's "the world stopped" moment, that every generation seems to get one. (My mom's was Pearl Harbor day, when she would have been a teenager.) The niece said it seems as though my sister and I had lived through quite a few! True, but the Kennedy one was the "end of innocence" one for us.
DeleteImportant lessons are that we survive and move on!
p.s. That shot of Mom is not me today. It's me several years ago!
DeleteThat is great that you are putting memories like that down. It is so very important.
ReplyDeleteI thought of you when I put this one up! You did such a great job with yours! I did not want to lose this photo... my sister has the only physical copy. Most of her photos have been digitized and saved in the geneology data bases.
DeleteThank you! :D
DeleteThese are the kinds of stories that were shared in our family when my brother, the cousins, and I were youngsters. None of today's technology...just a few black and white photos. Family history and legacies were verbally handed down to the next generation. It's a blessing that you are able to pass these memories along to those who are yet to come. 💞
ReplyDeleteWere it not for those old black and white physical film photos, we might "lose" the stories, too. And it will be easy to lose them in the digital universe if we don't make a plan to pass along web sites, user ids, and passwords to those who follow us!
DeletePHOENIX1949
ReplyDeleteAs a genealogist one of my favorite sayings is "Maybe stories are just data with a soul . . ." ~Unknown. Pair the story up with a photo and one has a priceless treasure. Thank you for sharing this one.
I like the concept: data with a soul.
DeleteSo wonderful to have those memories. It's so nice to keep family memories alive. I LOVE Dr. Henry Louis Gates "Finding your Roots" It's always interesting what you find out researching your family history.
ReplyDeletehugs and thanks for sharing!
barb
1crazydog
That is a fascinating show. I'm not a big researcher, myself, but my sister (the one behind the camera) has done a great job of preserving family records (and stories, transcribing letters from 100 years ago).
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