- Walking a Mile in My Ancestors’ Combat Boots
Genealogy and a family trip have made the sacrifices of members of the military and their families more real for me. I was tasked from the prompt at the end of this essay to write about how finding out something about an ancestor had changed how I view that ancestor. I’m deviating from the script somewhat and instead addressing how expanding my ancestral tree–along with a trip to a historical site–changed how I view world events in general but, specifically, the casualties of war. During the American Revolution, my 5th great-grandfather Michael Antoine Garoutte (1750-1829), above, fought for the Colonies… Continue reading Walking a Mile in My Ancestors’ Combat Boots - Picher: “America’s Most Toxic Town”
When your birthplace is designated a superfund site, you truly can’t go home again. If you ask my father where he comes from, he would say Joplin, Missouri. He lived there from a relatively young age, graduating from Joplin High School. Sometime after he graduated, my grandparents moved to Lawrence, Kansas. I remember visiting them there for many years. But after my grandfather retired, he and my grandmother moved back to Joplin, a place I associate with more recent memories of them. My father was not born in Joplin, however. He was born in Picher, Oklahoma, in 1937. My grandparents… Continue reading Picher: “America’s Most Toxic Town” - A Three-Generation “Hand Me Down”
My granduncle’s car saw the country, well after his death. Tasked with writing about something “long-lasting” with regard to my ancestors, I thought that I had a compelling subject. In researching the essay, however, I discovered that the story I remembered was not the real story. My granduncle James Williamson (1912-1981) died when I was a freshman in college. He never married and, thus, when he passed away, most of his few possessions went to his sister–my grandmother. His vehicle, however, ended up becoming my father’s. As with all of his cars, James had purchased this car new and paid… Continue reading A Three-Generation “Hand Me Down” - Do Not Utter a Word
In the 1960s, 1970s, and before, family members’ previous marriage(s) were rarely discussed. When I was in elementary school, there was a locally-produced children’s television show called Uncle Zeb’s Cartoon Camp. It aired from 1969 to 1979 and was broadcast live from KTUL-TV in Tulsa, Oklahoma, every weekday afternoon. It appears many others of my generation in the greater Tulsa area watched it too, because a quick Google search revealed an almost cult-like following, returning Reddit threads, YouTube clips, and a post on the Facebook group “The Tulsa We Remember” that posed the question, “Did anyone walk across the bridge?”… Continue reading Do Not Utter a Word - Mystic Sweet Communion
E unum pluribus. Out of one organized religion, many ancestors have I found. I’ve written many different essays on my maternal ancestors’ Scots-Irish heritage and, in particular, their Scottish Covenanter beliefs and religious practices. Here are just a few of the topics related to my ancestors’ involvement in the Covenanter/Reformed Presbyterian communities in which they lived that I’ve touched on: What I have not written about is what an extensive and invaluable resource these tight-knit religious communities have proven to be for me in my genealogy research. So many of my ancestors were baptized into and married within the Covenanter/Reformed… Continue reading Mystic Sweet Communion
