Saturday, July 30, 2011

With Nannie's help

   I never met Nannie Jeter. She died about a year and a half before I was born.
   That is . . . until today.
   I received a request through FindAGrave for a photo of her headstone in Midway Cemetery near Midway, Kentucky.
   The cemetery itself was easy enough to find even though I hadn't been there before.

   It's a lovely cemetery, but very big.  When I parked the car I said to my wife, "This is a waste of time. We'll never find it."
   I didn't have a map or a section number, just the name.
   But we got out and started to walk as we've done for years, scanning the stones we could see from the roadway looking for Jeter.
   No luck.

   Finally I stopped. "Come on, Nannie. Show me."
   I wandered rather aimlessly, I thought, repeating the mantra, "Show me, Nannie."
   Finally I stopped and turned and faced a row of stones. There about 10 feet away . . . was Nannie's stone.


   It was scary. It was chilling. It raised the hair on the back of my neck.
   Was it blind luck or . . . something else?
   I don't know and I don't wish to start a debate.
   But, "Thank you, Nannie!"

Saturday, July 23, 2011

Look on the back

   Since finishing reorganizing my research notes, I've tried to concentrate on scanning pictures from my mother's "Ancestor Albums."
   On a majority of the pages, particularly the first ones I worked with, the pictures were pasted down.
   But, the last few I've worked with my mother started using photo corners. With the pictures in corners, the options were to risk damaging the photos by taking them out or scan them in place.
   At first I opted to scan them in place but then I decided to try to get one out without damaging it.

   Holy Cow! Look what's on the back -- names and dates my mother had not written on the scrapbook pages next to the photo.
   This photo was the biggest treasure so far. When I got it out of the corners and turned it over I found it was a postcard which the woman in the picture, my great aunt Edith (Carrigan) Elliott had sent to her mother, my great grandmother, Rose Ann (Rogers) Carrigan.
   The stamp had been peeled off and the postmark date was unreadable, but my mother had identified the baby in the picture as Floyd Elliott, born 25 May 1911. It would seem from the age of the child that the picture was taken later in that year and probably mailed soon after -- perhaps November 4, 1911.

   The card was addressed to Mrs. Rose Carrigin, Georgetown, Illinois, RR.
   The message was "Hello - Ma what do you think of this picture why dont you cone up I have got a quilt in good By Edith"