Sarah, one of the cousins on the cemetery restoration committee (see prev. posts) mailed me a batch of old family photos she found when cleaning out her grandmother's attic in Mississippi; in hopes that I could identify someone. The only one we were sure about was this one.
Meet my great grandmother Julia. Julia was the tenth child of Boley and Annie and she married at age twenty and moved to Texas.
She is pictured here, with her is her first child Tennie (1881-1966). I never knew my great grandmother, she died before I was born. But, I did know my Great Aunt Tennie. Aunt Tennie grew up to be a dedicated teacher of the blind; almost going blind herself because of the habit of reading braille with her eyes.
Let's follow her descendants:
Tennie had two children, a boy and a girl.Her daughter Elizabeth was also a teacher. Son Paul was a war correspondent for the associated press, in the south pacific, during World War II. His son Bobby played for the NFL, and has not one ,but two super bowl rings. Bobby's son was signed in 2011 with the Seattle Sea Hawks (yes he's an NFL football player too). His beautiful daughter is an anchor for a national television network, and is a weekend co-host of a national News Talk Show. (in NYC).
I will bet that those two young people, my third cousins, (or is it first cousins twice removed?) have no idea where this little cemetery in Mississippi is, or that Boley and Annie Conner were even their ggg-grandparents. Should I contact them? Nope...you know my track record of getting a hold of celebrity relatives. Maybe one day they too will be fifty and wonder... Who came before me?...or hear that same "call" I did.
I am concerned that so many of these old photos are just "tossed" and that future generations will have no link to their roots. The computer storage of photos works for the terabytes of memory but there is nothing like an old-fashioned photo album with black pages and little corner gum stickers to hold the photos.
ReplyDeleteBises,
Genie