Entry tags:
Wordless Wednesday: Jo Duffie Williams
My maternal grandfather...
Jo Duffie Williams, age 6 months
Entry tags:
Photo Entry: August 1967
Left to right: Hattie (Chapin) Balding, Jo Carleton "Buddy" Williams, Sue (Keene) Williams, Russell Ellington "Linky" Balding, Judith Ann (Williams) Burris Neumann, Jo Duffie Williams, Lucille Balding.
Sadly, only one of those folks is still alive.
Entry tags:
Photo entry - who are these people and how are they related to me?
It happens every time I open the Williams family photo album.
More dry rot, and more photos falling out. It's to be expected from a photograph album that's soon to be 125 years old.
So I dutifully scan.
Andmutter under my breath cuss out loud as I do it.
Because Maxie hardly ever labeled a thing.
I get a work out researching photographers and when they were in operation.
( Click here to amble through anonymity with me... )
More dry rot, and more photos falling out. It's to be expected from a photograph album that's soon to be 125 years old.
So I dutifully scan.
And
Because Maxie hardly ever labeled a thing.
I get a work out researching photographers and when they were in operation.
( Click here to amble through anonymity with me... )
Entry tags:
Tell me my family didn't know how to celebrate a holiday...
Jo Desha and Maxie Leah Williams family, Christmas Day 1900
photo by McLeod, the Wild West photographer
Every time I see this one, I just dissolve into gales of laughter.
Can't you just imagine the dinner table discussion a couple of weeks before the holiday?
"Honey, what shall we do this year for Christmas? After all, it's the first Christmas of the new century."
Oh, I don't know. . .hey, why don't we get that McLeod guy to take a picture? We could dress up and go sit outside on some rocks."
"Marvelous idea, darling! And we could put Paul and Cedric on a couple of asses. They've been acting like asses for a few days now. It would serve them right. . ."
The back of the photo has an extensive ad for "McLeod, the Wild West Photographer. . . the man who made Happy Hollow famous the world over."
Entry tags:
Kids!
Walter Monroe Burris, 1882-1968 - photo about 1890
Cedric Hazen Williams (1892-1951) and Paul Meek Williams (1894-1979) - photo about 1900
Ocie Myrtis Burris (1901-1910) and Arkie Lucille Burris (1899-1913) - photo about 1909
Dora Emma Burris (1885-1982) - photo about 1890
Entry tags:
Katharine Leah Williams, 1899-1904
I love talking to other genealogists. I prefer amateurs like myself.
But I always get irritated when the discussion takes a turn I simply cannot understand. I'm talking about a fairly widely held belief that when our ancestors' children died, they did not feel their grief as deeply as do parents today who lose a child.
I'm calling bullshit on that one.
Yes, I realize that generally speaking, our ancestors had many more children than we do these days, particularly before latex condoms became widely available in the 1920s in the United States. I am also aware that rural farming communities required child labor that is illegal today.
But I do not believe that our ancestors loved their children less, or differently, than we do. Losing a child was no less tragic for them - one child could not "replace" another.
Katharine Leah Williams, 18 Jul 1899 - 8 Dec 1904
Katharine was the fourth child of my great-grandparents, Jo Desha and Maxie Leah (Meek) Williams. I don't know the exact cause of her death, but I know it was illness rather than an accident.
And it hit her parents hard - very hard. The monument erected to her memory provides a glimpse of their grief.
The Williams family plot in Oakland Cemetery at Russellville was a living memorial to her - a rose garden where her parents could go and sit quietly to grieve.
Oakland Cemetery, circa 1910
By 1920, my great-grandfather's grocery business had gone belly-up, and the family moved to Little Rock. Their hearts must have broken all over again when they had to sell that family plot at Oakland, and leave their Katharine behind.
But I always get irritated when the discussion takes a turn I simply cannot understand. I'm talking about a fairly widely held belief that when our ancestors' children died, they did not feel their grief as deeply as do parents today who lose a child.
I'm calling bullshit on that one.
Yes, I realize that generally speaking, our ancestors had many more children than we do these days, particularly before latex condoms became widely available in the 1920s in the United States. I am also aware that rural farming communities required child labor that is illegal today.
But I do not believe that our ancestors loved their children less, or differently, than we do. Losing a child was no less tragic for them - one child could not "replace" another.
Katharine Leah Williams, 18 Jul 1899 - 8 Dec 1904
Katharine was the fourth child of my great-grandparents, Jo Desha and Maxie Leah (Meek) Williams. I don't know the exact cause of her death, but I know it was illness rather than an accident.
And it hit her parents hard - very hard. The monument erected to her memory provides a glimpse of their grief.
The Williams family plot in Oakland Cemetery at Russellville was a living memorial to her - a rose garden where her parents could go and sit quietly to grieve.
Oakland Cemetery, circa 1910
By 1920, my great-grandfather's grocery business had gone belly-up, and the family moved to Little Rock. Their hearts must have broken all over again when they had to sell that family plot at Oakland, and leave their Katharine behind.