Family

A Little More About Me

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Well according to my blog stats, I think I’ve had at least a couple of visitors (hopefully it’s not counting every time I get on there to change something lol) so I decided I’d take a little bit of time and tell you more about myself. I am a middle aged (god I hate that term, but I can’t think of anything better) single woman who is learning to love my life as it is and not always looking for something better. Since I was 14 years old I have been diagnosed with one chronic illness after another. For a long time, I’ve hated my body because of this but I’ve become more accepting as I get older. I’ve become more appreciative of my life in the past couple of years. I have a great family that loves me, kids that love me like a mom (most of the time, 🙂 ), and pets that love me no matter what happens or how I feel. I’m very fortunate to have not just one family but to have three. I have my parents who raised me living next door to me (they are precious to me), I have my biological mom and two brothers, and I have my biological dad, stepmother and a brother and sister. I don’t get to see my biological family as much as I would like to because I can’t travel very much but I love them, and they know it and that’s the most important thing I think.

As far as my kids go (well they’re actually becoming young adults now) I met them in 2012. They were good kids then and they’re becoming great parents and still learning exactly what it takes and how to be adults. But they’re all working hard to make their lives something they can be proud of. And I have them to thank for my grandkids! My only son, A, has a 16-month-old son, M, who is absolutely adorable, and he knows he’s adorable! A is a great young man who is going through a hard time right now and still trying to find his way out of it. But I have faith that he will come out of his problems a better and stronger man.

My oldest daughter, D, is one of the sweetest, most caring young women I’ve ever met. She cares about everyone and everything no matter what they’ve done for her or to her. She has a 4-year-old son, L, and he is a riot, he has absolutely no problem telling you exactly what’s on his mind. He’s the first grandbaby of the family and had a short run as being the only grandbaby. D is currently due any time now with her second little boy and she can’t wait for him to come, just not today (today is L’s birthday and she hasn’t gone into labor today, so he’ll still have his birthday to himself).

I think I’ve written enough for now so I’ll write more later about my daughters, T and L2.  Have a great night!

Family, Thankfulness

Gratefulness in Spite of Problems

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I normally spend Saturdays trying to focus on things to be thankful for. One of my support groups calls it Graturday but today it’s just not happening. I’ve only had my Explorer for 15 months. I got October 2016 with the money I got after my Buick got totaled. Today I’m coming down the highway and tapped my brakes. When I hit the gas again nothing happened, it just rolled like I didn’t even have it in gear. I managed to “roll” it off the main highway into a gravel lot. Every time I tried to put it in gear (reverse, drive, neutral, it didn’t matter which one) after that it made the most atrocious grinding noise I’ve EVER heard and to top that off when I put it in park it kept rolling so I had to use the emergency brake to keep it in place. Now I’m no mechanic but to me it sounds and acts like the transmission has gone out, I don’t know. So, I called our regular mechanic and asked him if he could come and tow me to his shop. I waited two hours, but he was nice enough to come get me even on his day off. I rode back to his shop with him and waited for my dad to come pick me up. I didn’t even ask what he might even think is wrong with it because I knew my dad would. Sure enough when my dad got there he asked D what he thought was wrong and D told him he really couldn’t tell anything just by listening to it that he’d have to put it up on the rack Monday and look at it to find out. Now I do have two cars I use my Explorer on a daily basis, but I do have my Jimmy which is four-wheel drive and used mostly during the winter. I knew that the Jimmy battery would need to be charged because I haven’t used it lately but what my dad and I found when we raised the hood was UNBELIEVABLE!!! We raised the hood to attach the battery charger and somebody had come on my property and STOLE MY BATTERY!!! Right out of the Jimmy, a big empty space where the battery should have been. I’m still in shock over that, I mean who steals a battery out of somebody’s care? Why would someone do that? It makes no sense to me and that just pisses me off to no end. So, on top of the repairs I’m going to have to pay for now I owe my parents for buying me a new battery. Ugh I’m never going to catch up.

I guess looking back at what I’ve written I do have a couple of things for Graturday after all. I’m grateful that my mechanic took time out of his off day to come and rescue me. And I’m grateful that my parents love me enough to not only come and get me but to also buy a battery for my Jimmy so that I have a car to use.

52 Ancestors, Family History, Genealogy

52 Ancestors Week 3 – Longevity, Part 2

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The more I thought about longevity regarding my family I think I finally came up with something. My story about longevity is about the longest (and best) kept secret in my family. This secret was kept for 56 years. My grandmother was born in 1915 and because of the time period she was marked as illegitimate because her mother was single. We knew that she had been in an orphanage and was fortunate enough to have a family take her in when she was in her late teens. This family cared enough about her to stay involved with her for her entire life. What we didn’t know was that the “mother” in this family WAS my grandmother’s biological mother. My mom (like me) can be a little bit nosy when it comes to mysteries. When I was about 13 years old (in 1990) my mom sat my grandmother down to talk to her about her biological mother because my mom had done the research and found out who my grandmothers biological mother was, without my grandmother’s permission. When my mom told her, my grandmother replied with something along the lines of “I knew that already, why are you so nosy?” That floored my mom because my mom was upset that she never got to know her grandmother. So, she asked my grandmother to explain what she meant by that. My grandmother went on to explain that sometime around 1934 or so when she went to her gynecologist appointment the doctor mentioned that he remembered delivering her, he went on to tell my grandmother who her mother was. Even though she found out she never told her mother that she knew (remember she was living with her mother by this time). My grandmother’s opinion was that since her mother hadn’t told her she wouldn’t tell her mother she knew. She never found out who her father was though. So, my grandmother found out the truth in 1934 and my mom uncovered the truth in 1990, my grandmother had kept this secret for 56 years. In my opinion that is definitely longevity.

52 Ancestors, Family History, Genealogy, Uncategorized

52 Ancestors Week 3 – Longevity, Part 1

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Ok so I got the prompt for week 3 – Longevity, yesterday. But even though I got some examples on how to use the prompt; Who was or has been the longest living person in my family, who has held the same job for the longest time in my family, who was married for the longest time in my family and whom has it taken you the longest time to find? I’ve been looking at these since I got them yesterday and I’m at a complete loss. I can’t even think of one person to even look at to see if this will fit. I think what I’m going to do is just go back over the family tree one more time to see if something jumps out at me and if not, I’ll just have to skip it and come back to it later. At least when I got this week’s prompt she included the prompts for weeks 4 & 5 as well. Week 4 (January 22-28) is “invite to dinner” and week 5 (January 29 – February 4) is “in the census”. I think (and I may be wrong) but I think that week 4 means if I could invite someone from my family tree to dinner who would it be and why. Week 5 I’m REALLY not sure what “in the census” means. It could be what ancestor was in the earliest census record I have found or maybe which ancestor was in the census the most or even which ancestor was found in the census records (not in the same year of course) in the most locations. So, I don’t know yet what to think about those. I did email the leader to ask for some guidance so hopefully I’ll hear back from her tomorrow. Until tomorrow then!

52 Ancestors, Family History, Genealogy

52 Ancestors Week 2 – Favorite Photo

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This is one of my favorite photographs. This photograph was taken in Golden Springs, Calhoun County, Alabama on 24 Mar 1977. The picture is of me, my Nanny, and my Papaw on the day of my christening with the Methodist Church in Anniston, Alabama. After the christening my Nanny & Papaw came back to my parent’s house for a small luncheon. This is one of my favorites simply because my Papaw passed away when I was 5 so I don’t have too many memories of him and I don’t have many pictures of him either (especially of the two of us together). My mom kept this photo in her albums while I was growing up but then she passed the albums down to me about two years ago when I started working on our family history. So now I have the family photographs.  There are several others that make my top 10 photos list but this is very close to the top.IMG_9883

 

I included one photo with my original post, but I want to add a couple more to it.  The first one is a photo of my mom and I just a few months after she and my dad adopted me.  I can’t really give a definite reason why it’s one of my favorites but I’ve always had it with me no matter where I’ve been and it just brings me comfort every time I look at it.  If I have to give a reason it would be because I can see how much love she has for me just by how she is looking at me (not everybody may see it, but she still looks at me like that to this day).

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The next one is of my dad, my granddaddy, and me.  My granddaddy was always a very active, very friendly man.  He was raised on a working farm and then had a working farm of his own that he raised my daddy on.  I have memories of going out to his farm as a child to pick fruits, feed the fish and my favorite activity was feeding apples to his hogs.  His hogs were huge, about 500 pounds each according to my dad, but they looked bigger than that to me because I was so small at the time.  When I was 12 my granddaddy had an accident with a lawnmower and lost his right foot.  He didn’t adapt to his prosthetic foot very well and in the end, he lost his freedom and his spirit as well.  For several years he had to split his time between our house and my aunt and uncle’s house so he could have 24-hour assistance.  Eventually, it became too much for everybody to handle at home because he was needing more physical help than any of them could offer so they had to move him to a nursing home.  This picture was taken during Christmas break my sophomore year of college and it’s the last picture taken of us and the last time I saw him before he passed away. I’m so glad I’ve got this photo to go along with my memories of him.

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This last photo is unique to me being an adopted child.  This is the only photo I have of me with both of my biological parents.  I have plenty of photos of me with each of them individually and with my half siblings, but this is the only one of the three of us.  It was taken at a restaurant in Birmingham, Alabama on the day my biological mom took me to meet my biological dad for the first time.  It was an awkward meeting at first but a great visit by the end.

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Have a great day!

Family History, Genealogy

52 Ancestors – Week 1 “START”

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I’m participating in the 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks challenge on WikiTree.  Each week participants are given a prompt and asked to respond to the prompt.  Week 1 (01 Jan 2018 – 07 Jan 2018) the prompt was “START”. We could use the prompt any way we wanted as long as it contained an explanation for how it related to the prompt.  I chose to use the prompt to explain how I got started researching family histories and genealogy.  My grandmother was the reason that I started researching our family history and genealogy.  She was born in 1915 to a single woman, if you know anything about that time period then you know this was a big no.  According to the oral history of our family my grandmother’s biological mother gave my grandmother to a friend of hers to raise.  My grandmother and her new guardian then moved to Chicago, Illinois.  When my grandmother was about 8 years old her guardian sent her back to Alabama to live with a different family.  After just 2-3 years there my grandmother was sent to an orphanage to live.  From there the oral history gets confusing.  One story is that my grandmother lived at the orphanage until she was adult.  Another story is that my grandmother’s biological mother and stepfather came and took her home with them to live.  Right now I don’t think either of the stories are entirely true, I think there are elements of each story that may be true but I don’t know yet.  We were never told if her first guardian legally adopted her or not but I think I’m close to finding that out.  I don’t have copies of adoption papers yet but after she passed away I found her US Social Security Application and Claims Index, 1936-2007, I found her listed as if she had been legally adopted with the guardian’s last name and the birth location changed from where she was actually born to Chicago, Illinois. I’m hoping that finding this will help me in furthering the history of her early years.

Family History, Genealogy

Family History is more than Genealogy

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I’m adopted which gives the terms genealogy and family history another definition than usual. When most people begin their search into their genealogy or family history they start with two parents. When I started my search, I had four parents to research. This drove me nuts when I first started out because I was getting confused on what information went with which family. I finally realized that to ease my confusion I needed to set aside certain times to work on each family. So now if I’m going to work on both families in the same week I’ll set aside say Monday, Wednesday, and Friday to work on my adoptive family and Tuesday and Thursday to work on my biological family. But from there I break it down even further. If I’m working on my adoptive family Monday, Wednesday, and Friday I’ll dedicate say Monday morning to work on my maternal grandmother and Monday afternoon to work on my maternal grandfather; Wednesday morning to my paternal grandmother and Wednesday afternoon to my paternal grandfather; then I’ll spend Friday morning researching and trying to get through any mysteries or brick walls I’ve found in my maternal grandparents histories, Friday afternoon will be dedicated to any mysteries or brick walls in my paternal grandparents histories. I break down my work on my biological family the same way on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Now I certainly don’t spend every day working on this but that was the easiest way to explain my process.

Back to my title of this post “Family History is so much more than just genealogy”. I say this because if you think about it anybody can sit down and do the genealogy for a family. But it takes a family member or someone close to the family to write a family history. A family history is more than just the names and dates that are recorded in a genealogy. A family history includes the names and dates, but it also includes stories about the members of the family. Whether it’s a memory from or about a family member, a recipe that’s been passed down through the family, the history of a photograph, or even information or clipping from a newspaper that included the family member all of it is information to be passed down through the family. I love hearing stories about my ancestors from other family members or even finding stories in old newspapers about them.

I have been working on my family tree on WikiTree and each week (or month) they have different challenges for the members. I have taken on a yearlong challenge this time called “52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks”. Each week we are given a prompt for the weekly challenge. The first week the prompt was “START” so I wrote about my maternal grandmother, Marie Sessions, who’s life history is one of many questions, so she started my interest in my family history. Week 2 the prompt is “favorite photo”. I found an old photo of my maternal grandparents, Tom & Marie Sessions, and me after my christening at the Methodist Church. I’ll post my actual responses to these prompts on another page.

This blog will be about more than just my family history and genealogy. It will also be about me in general and just about anything that comes to my mind that I feel like sharing. 🙂  I don’t know if anybody will find this and read it but if you do thanks so much for taking the time to read it!