FamilyTies

  When I was in high school, we were very poor. We had almost nothing to our names and we lived in this tiny 864 square foot house in the middle of the Charleston, Tennessee countryside. I’ve never lived in a more beautiful place, but those were bittersweet times for my family. In the fall of 2003, my senior year of high school, I had the opportunity to go to London with my high school band. Being as poor as we were I would have never been able to afford to go without the loving generosity of our neighbors, who have been family friends for decades. I won’t ever forget the kindness that allowed me to go on that trip. It didn’t exactly go to plan. I didn’t think about the fact that I am terribly prone to motion sickness and how that would translate to air travel. Apparently I get altitude sickness. And apparently it takes arriving back in the States for me to get over it. The band marched in the New Year's Day parade, and being a non-marching member of the band, I marched in the fron...

  I can’t tell you how much I love, how beautiful of an escape it is for me, to walk the trails my ancestors have left for me. To research them is to research myself and truly learn more about who I am. Their stories have informed my own and I love to see these connections. I wish I had more to write about in this interim, but I’m excited to slowly explore people and subject. I know the first few weeks I dropped a lot of info, but I’d collected that information years ago. Now I’m collecting new information and forming new ideas, so it’s going to take a little longer. I hope you’ll forgive the long pauses between posts, but I promise to try to make it worth the wait. I have someone new to introduce to you today. I hadn’t known he’d existed till a few years ago, and I decided to delve into who he was and his story. Aaron Bradshaw Goodwill is my 3x great grandfather and he’d enlisted in the Civil War and died while in service. I hadn’t thought to look into his regiment or his activiti...

  My brother is probably one of my best friends. He understands me in a way that few people do, can irritate me quicker than anyone but also is a comfort in his way. We always know how to make each other laugh and have more inside jokes than we know what to do with. We have some fantastic examples in our lives of siblings who are always there for each other in my parents’ siblings. I think it’s probably a rare thing to grow up close to all your aunts and uncles and cousins the way we got to. My dad has one sister and we were always up at her house spending time with her and my cousin. My mom has 4 sisters and a brother and they’re ALWAYS talking to each other - it’s a wild group chat.  There's a long history in our family of close siblings, on both sides of the family. Even if they lived far apart, there are stories of support and generosity between them. Our grandfather had a ton of siblings, our grandmothers each had one brother, and our other grandfather has one sister. All...

  Divorce isn’t an easy thing to face in the best of times, no matter the circumstances.  While I’m doing research on my family I have found many couples that have split, and none of them were easy or painless. One such split was a mystery to me, as it was always spoken of in hushed tones and laced with generations of bitterness. Of course I wasn’t present for the marriage and its subsequent dissolution, but I’d like to give a little detail and insight to one such moment in the family. James and Alice Montgomery were my 2x great grandparents. I had never really known much about either person until I’d begun digging a little. All I’d heard was that James had abandoned his family after his son had died, leaving Alice alone, in and out of institutions for years. Which painted a picture of a villain and the wilting helpless victim. I definitely had Alice’s number wrong. And I think humanizing James would help the family heal, so let’s dive in a bit. James, or JB as he was known la...

  One of my favorite things about starting this blog is that my Nana has called me three different times in 2 weeks, my uncle called me to say how much he’s enjoying all the stories, and even my dad has texted about it. And he doesn’t do the texting so much. I’m so glad they’re enjoying the stories - which I admittedly get very geeky about. And hopefully you’re enjoying them, too. Otherwise you wouldn’t be here in the first place, putting eyes on this lil blog of mine. I have another story for you today. On one of my phone calls from the Nana, she asked me about her great uncle. She couldn’t remember his name but told me who he was. I looked him up while I was on the phone with her, and said his name, which she said YES that’s him. She told me he’d gone to Harvard and had lived overseas in Sweden, she’d thought. So I went ahead and did some digging on the guy to see what we could find. I found him really interesting, so I’d like to introduce you to my 3x great uncle, Harris Eastman...

  It’s a rare thing that I’ll do a spotlight on an ancestor that I’ve actually met. Today is one of those days. I was 10 years old when my great grandfather passed and I remember meeting him several times. It was always a treat when he and my great grandmother would come to Tennessee to visit. We all enjoyed them so much. I remember them both being so good at telling stories - and I know grandpa in particular was known for spinning his yarns and was intelligent and well-spoken.  Larimore Karns Montgomery, or Grandpa Montgomery, as we called him, was born in 1903 to JB and Alice Montgomery, who had just married the previous year. As a young child he suffered many illnesses which stunted his growth and deeply impacted his home life. His baby brother died when Larry was 14, and his parents divorced soon after. His mother spiraled into depression and they were soon living with his grandparents on their farm close by. At 26, in 1930, he was living on his own working as an insurance...