|
Post by stc1993 on May 7, 2024 17:10:19 GMT -5
I’m into family history. That’s why I took a recent trip to the Abacos. I find it very interesting. While most of my ancestors were originally English, Scottish, German, Swedish and Spanish I found that I have a little Cherokee Indian blood too.
|
|
|
Post by pinman on May 7, 2024 17:28:20 GMT -5
As we age I think we want to know more about our past. Im 62 YO. My Great-grandparents on my Moms side had a hotel in Central Kentucky. I have Oak tables with chairs and some dishes that were used in the Hotel that are now placed with my kids. I have a Grandfather clock that has writing on it indicating it was the 1st wedding anniversary gift for my Great Grandmother from her husband, my Great Grandfather. Dated 1894. My Great Grandparents on my Fathers side lived in a cave in Tennessee while they built a house. I have visited the site along with my children when they were young but another trip there and to Kentucky is in order. We dont know much about my Grandfathers lineage on my Dads side as my Grandfather left home about age 15 because his Father (my Great Grandfather I guess) would get drunk and beat him. Its interesting that every Family has a story. I take comfort in knowing that I will see them some day as I have accepted Jesus Christ as my Lord and Saviour. My Dad sent me "signs" that everything would be Ok after his passing in the form of the number "66" showing up everywhere, the number of books in the Bible and a doubling of his birth year. My biggest fear is leaving those whom I love so much behind.
|
|
|
Post by One Man Gang on May 7, 2024 17:53:42 GMT -5
I only knew a paternal grandmother. My oldest daughter knew her grandparents well. My two youngest never met any of them. They have little interest in learning about their past.
Nobody looks at family albums. A few people occasionally want to see some giant fish I've caught but my ex has all the good vids and pics of that part of my life. She ain't givin' it back either.
When it comes to my own mortality, I don't worry about death. My only concern is to live long enough to see all of my kids reach adulthood and become successful in their careers.
|
|
|
Post by bullfrog on May 7, 2024 19:06:32 GMT -5
I knew 3 of my biological great grandparents and 6 that were step great grandparents. My last one died no more than 5 years ago. I knew my great great aunt and uncle well and inherited their farm as they had no children (not my current farm). The great great uncle was a Pacific vet of WWII, while my paternal grandfather was a WWII vet of Europe. There was a WWI vet that lived into my lifetime. I remember his face and visiting him in the nursing home in the early 80s. I inherited his purple heart and played with it as a child.
My paternal grandmother steeped me in family history. She grew up in Morriston. Her mother died when she was a baby. I knew her father, my great grandfather. His name was Rhett. He was a DOC chain gain guard. Killed some fellows for running. My great great uncle who I previously mentioned was Rhett’s brother-in-law and he too was a chain gang guard with my great grandfather.
My grandmother was married sometime around 14 and had her first child at 16. My grandfather was in his mid 20s and just back from Europe. His brother married my grandmother’s older sister. Those two stayed married their entire lives and had many children. Grandma has 5 children. My grandfather would beat her bad for various reasons. One was because she kept black friends. She went to work in the 60s at a diner in Williston. A young GFC officer would stop in on occasion to try to pick her up but she always rebuffed him. One day my grandfather beat her so bad she came in bruised up and trying to hide her eyes with sunglasses. The young officer found her and convinced her to leave him, so she did and she married the officer, who is the person I called my grandfather. He ended up being the regional commander of law enforcement for Central Region of the old GFC. That’s the man who raised me. My biological grandfather changed later in life. He never remarried and by my understanding he became a kinder man in his last years. He died Christmas morning in car accident near his home in the early 80s. I remember opening Santa’s presents that morning and my aunts coming into the house upset and delivering the news. I am told he favored me greatly and doted on me in early childhood when I visited him, but I do not remember it.
I could write a book about our family stories, best I can recall them as grandmother told them to me. For instance, in Williston we had a feud with a prominent family for generations. As we were told, great great grandpa so and so punched the other family’s great great grandpa off of a horse when he showed up at the homestead drunk and being disrespectful in front of the women folk. That started a century-long feud that ended Romeo and Juliet style when one of their children married one of ours.
Another good one is that we had family treasure hidden around the periphery of Gulf Hammock where a bunch of the young men of one of the branches of the family rustled a fortune’s worth of cattle in Gulf Hammock during a single drive and buried the ill-gotten proceeds.
One story I know is true is that a great great great (great?) grandpa of mine was the only confirmed panther attack victim that has ever been. The FWC will report now that there are no confirmed panther attacks, but the attack on that grandfather was confirmed and documented by witnesses of the era and is preserved in a book where a circuit court judge investigated it and confirmed it happened. Although the family legend about it differs dramatically than the confirmed facts.
One of my great whatever grandfathers kept a Seminole squaw slave as his concubine and supposedly that infused NA traits into my genetics. Its common for people in my family to come out with dark skin and flat noses. Used to be problematic in earlier times. Now it gets them scholarships.
|
|
|
Post by garycoleco on May 7, 2024 19:14:00 GMT -5
We all want to be selfish and wish they wouldn't leave us. If they're believers they're going to the place they always dreamed about. It's always a balancing act.
|
|
|
Post by jmarkb on May 7, 2024 20:38:22 GMT -5
It's true. Dust in the wind. I heard something on talk radio the other day that made sense to me. How many of us know about the lives of our great grandparents? The point of the hosts story was it only takes two generations before most of us are totally forgotten. Your grandkids children will know little or nothing about your life. In my case I had two grandparents die before I was 3 years old and I know very little about their lives. Now.... If my last name was Rockefeller that would be a different story. I know a lot about 2 of the 4, and a little about one of the other pair. I come from a LARGE country family. I personally knew my greats on my mom's dad's side, and my dad's mom's side. I knew my mom's mothers side also, but she passed away while I was still young. I had about 20 years with the first ones. I never realized how blessed I was to have a family like mine until I started losing them. We had a family reunion yesterday for my mom's side. About 60 people there. 40 years ago there would have been 200. Yeah, actually got some Cherokee in my family, too. Enough to get the business registered as a minority contractor. But too much work to verify it. Lot's easier to do it through your wife.
|
|
|
Post by gogittum on May 8, 2024 10:50:40 GMT -5
Don't know much about father's family. He and mom divorced when I was 3, but I had a strong sense of family and visited him frequently when young and up to the point of making a special trip to Vancouver when I married, to introduce him to my wife.
What burns me to this day is his brothers. I visited him frequently, as I said, even into my adulthood. Neither he nor any of his 4 brothers ever once called to say hello, never a happy birthday or Merry Christmas, yet all 4 condemned me for being a "bad son." Dunno, but I'm very bitter toward the whole bunch.
I do know that they emigrated from England back in the '30s. Never knew that grandmother - she passed when I was very young. Grandfather was a profane lower class Englishman.
My maternal grandfather had a stroke in 1945 that left him otherwise fine but destroyed his short term memory and made him incapable of living on his own. He lived with mom and I until the '60s when he died at 84 . I'm told both grandmothers doted on me but both died when I was very young.
I wish I'd listened more to grampa's stories when I was young. His 2 brothers and his father beat up on him until he fled home at 15 from London. He wouldn't speak of them or their life, other than the beatings.
He went to work on a Norwegian sailing ship, carrying coal to Majorca and citrus back to England. Then, somehow, (this is where I should've listened) he and a buddy jumped ship in Boston around 1900 and "hiked" (he never walked) to the "State of Maine" and went to work as a logger.
Then another blank and he ended up prospecting in Nevada and I did manage to trace out a nearly disastrous episode near Tonopah, Nevada.
I stopped at a Ford dealer in Tonopah for a part for my van while on a trip and while there asked about his story. Salesman got a tech from the shop who knew the whole area to listen:
He and his partner left Tonopah on foot and figured to water up at a small lake NW of town. When they got there it turned out to be alkaline; they were out of water and started back, knowing they wouldn't make it. By chance they came across a group of freight wagons whose crews bailed them out and saved their lives.
The tech at the dealer listened, then said there's a dry lake something like 15 miles NW which is the only place it could've been. I found that lake, sat on a bluff and tried to picture the old man in that situation.
Next, he ended up in the Lytton/Lillooet area of south/central B.C., Canada prospecting and working on the Canadian Pacific RR...living off the land in the mountains. He was a tough old bugger, even into his old age. I admired him greatly.
Then he met my grandmother when she was on a "tour of the colonies" in Ocean Falls, B.C. where he was working. She was a wealthy heiress from Leatherhead, Surrey, England and was dis-owned by her family when she took up with him and left the tour.
They settled in Vancouver, raised 4 kids and his job with the post office carried them thru the depression. He'd been wounded at the 2nd battle of Ypres in WWI - his right elbow was shot out and hampered him, but he still built a 3 story house in spite of it.
I wish more now than ever that I'd listened to the old man and gotten more detail of his life - I've lived a fair chunk of it myself....logging, commercial fishing, etc., etc.
|
|
|
Post by TRTerror on May 8, 2024 13:00:18 GMT -5
All I know of my Great Grandpaw was that he was a Fruit Farmer from Washington county Alabama that move to central Florida in his late 40's Mom's side came from overseas and settled in Mass in the mid 16 hundreds. Eventually they worked their way South as well. One of them was the Mayor of Detroit way back when. He was somewhat famous for putting down brick pavers in downtown Detroit. It was a mud strip till then.
|
|
|
Post by gardawg on May 8, 2024 13:32:41 GMT -5
my father's family came from Manchester England
my mother's family came from Sheffield
in the late 1700s
my mother was the youngest of 18 children. I have aunts, uncles, and cousins I've never met or know anything about. mom's parents were dead by the time I was born.
my father was the oldest of 9 children. his father died in 1918 from the Spanish Flu. my grandmother, Zulabelle Bird, was the only grandparent I ever knew. I did know all his sisters and his one brother.
|
|
|
Post by conchydong on May 9, 2024 18:36:09 GMT -5
While most of my family immigrated to Key West from the Bahamas my grandfather on my moms side was a genuine Florida redneck cracker born in Altha. He was in the navy or coast guard and stationed in Key West when he met my grandmother. They were divorced by the time I was born but I still cherish the trips we made to Quincy where he raised hogs and Fox Hounds. He was even on the cover of the Red Ranger Magazine which is like being on the cover of the Rolling Stone for some. So even though I am mostly Conch, I still have some redneck blood.
|
|