Genealogy, inspired!
Goodness, I just fell right off there once the A to Z Challenge was completed, didn’t I? Apologies. I guess that’s what happens when a hobbyist’s best intentions collide with present time necessities 🙂 Alas, I am still alive and kicking (or up and not crying, if you will) after a May filled with a…
Today marks the date in 1882 that Dr. Robert Koch announced his discovery of the bacteria that causes Tuberculosis, also known as TB or (for us family historians) Consumption. To commemorate World Tuberculosis Day, I’d thought I’d share a personal story about TB. A story about how it brought my maternal Grandma from her hometown…
Today marks the birth date for my maternal Great Grandpa, Scottie, born in 1883, but today we’re going to talk about his death.
William Oscar AKA Scottie, is still quite an enigma to me and has been hard to find definitive documentation for except for a few tidbits and a very tragic train crash we’ll have to talk about another day.
That being said, I recently found his Death Certificate, and with the help of the internet Hive Mind, I’ve gained deeper insight into Scottie’s cause of death.
Thanks to my maternal Grandma’s writing, I know that Nancy was a Quaker and very much a “woman of her time”. She was expected to do things a certain way and expected the same of her 13 children. Which is why, when Hannah came along and didn’t exactly fall in line, she began telling her how “bold and queer” she was.
On this day…
In a timeline where a birth date
can also become a death date,
by sheer will,
stood a man determined
to make it so.
On this day…
117 years ago,
my maternal great grandparents,
William Oscar and Una June
were married in Jasper, Missouri.
William was 23,
Una was only 16.
While I’m still waiting to hear back from the Groundskeeper at the cemetery my Grandpa is buried at, I received follow up documentation the other day from the New York City Health Dept. in the form of his final medical report. It turns out our family story was correct, his immediate cause of death was…
I often wonder why it is that the people closest to us, in physical proximity and in heart space, are the ones most often taken for granted…
Why we assume we know the facts or, at the very least, have bits and pieces of facts clear enough in our heads that it’ll all come together easily and turn out just fine in the end.
I find myself currently in this liminal space with my maternal grandpa, Phil, who lived and died before I came earth side.
After years of thinking about it, I finally ordered and received my Grandpa Phil’s death certificate last week and goodness was that exciting!
Funny, isn’t it, how excited we can get about documenting our ancestors…
Seeing the details in black and white…
Reflecting on the circumstances that led up to that final moment…
Contemplating all that came before and all that transpired after?