On Funerals and Family Trees

A Great-Great Grandmother Finds Rest

So my Great Grandmother passed away a few weekends ago. The weekend of my move, actually. But the woman had lived a good 104 years of life, so I guess she was entitled to a rest.

Of course, since I was in the middle of a move, I really couldn't make the trip. I mean, I wasn't about to reschedule the movers. But Pop had agreed a ways back to be a pallbearer (it was his grandmother), so he had to go. And Mom didn't want him making the trip alone, so she went along. The funeral was in Kansas.

Picking up the Family Tree Again

And Mom realized that this was probably the last time that a good chunk of that part of the family would be together in one place, and she'd kick herself later if she didn't take advantage of that situation to gather some priceless geneological information. Even though she'd gotten burnt out on the whole project when she got on the outs with her Mom.

So she took all of her files and huge sheets of family trees. She told me all about it when she got back home two days later. Evidently, you pull out a family tree, and folks start comin outta the woodwork. She hit a goldmine of information about Pop's side of the family. Including some second cousins who had an old, old family bible that was falling apart so badly they'd been reluctant to take it anywhere to get photocopies. But Mom had borrowed my digital camera, so she got several shots of birth, wedding, death announcements, etc.... many of which weren't in public record.

And the Lass Ran Away with the Coachman

She also heard, from several different sources, an old family story about how one of my ancestors came to America... the daughter of an Irish lord, who ran away with the coachman to come to America. One of the ladies Mom talked to told her that she had tried to track down a branch of the family in Dublin to confirm the story. She'd evidently missed the last of the line by a few weeks (they'd passed away), but the Dublin Postmaster actually remembered the story of a Lord's daughter who ran away with the coachman to America.

The whole story was pretty fascinating, actually. Evidently, her father tracked her down in America, and tried to convince her to move back to Ireland with her children. If she didn't, he was going to disinherit her. Well, considering we're all here and not there, she evidently told him where he could shove his inheritance... lol

Guess I just come by this orneriness naturally. *grin*