FamilyTies

  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...

  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...

  I have 2 crafty grandmothers. My Gramma Jean, who passed in 2001 could sew, knit, crochet and could probably embroider. I would watch my Nana crochet and knit with the skill and speed of a professional fiber artist. When I was very small, they each took me under their wing and taught me what they knew about what I was interested in learning. They had learned from their own mothers and they joyfully taught me skills I still use to this day. And let me say, these two weren’t in competition with each other, nothing was bitter. It’s always been loving and supportive on both sides. They knew and respected each other, and they each knew/know how special they are to my brother and I. I don’t think that’s something a lot of people can say. And I’m full of gratitude for both of them. Not only did they each teach me - but I have something from each of them. I can’t recall whether it was a birthday or Christmas, but when I was six I finally got the afghan my Nana had been working on for mon...

  There is a theory among scientists that we are a collection of memories, lessons, trauma, maybe even talent stored deep in our DNA, called genetic memory. It's something I’d like to examine in my own experience in researching my family and is already something I see in my parents and my kids. In my family there are many different ways I could see this play out, from the dark things like alcoholism, to a love for the Smoky Mountains, to hobbies like wood working and music.  Above is a picture of the barbershop my great-grandfather worked in. His name was Hoyt Calvin Martin, but he went by Turk. I have no idea where that nickname came from, and I don’t think anyone else knows either. This exact photo was displayed in the Etowah Depot, which is a historic building in Etowah, Tennessee. I’m not sure it’s displayed there any more, but we would stop and admire it whenever we’d go to the 4th of July celebration Etowah would put on from the Depot every year. My Dad tells a story of ...

  My Nana called me after I’d written a piece about one of her ancestors to say how much she’d liked it, which of course meant the world. And in the meantime between now and when mom and dad bring the family tree up, she gave me a couple of missing people to find. She told me that her grandfather had an affair while married to her grandmother, who was beloved to my Nana, and her grandmother subsequently divorced him. We knew that the mistress had come to her grandfather, telling him she was pregnant and that the child was his. And we knew the child’s name. Other than that, she had no information and had always wondered what had happened to her. I went back to ye olde family tree and searched for this grandfather’s name. I found it. And I found his divorce record, his death record…as well has his marriage record to this mistress. I plugged in the name we’d had and found the missing daughter and all her half-siblings. My grandfather had married his mistress and spent the last three y...

  My Dad’s side of the family is full of gear heads and at least one truck driver. I grew up going to car shows, hearing about radiators and drum brakes and engines. I couldn’t really tell you one thing from the other, but I know enough to keep up with a conversation. I didn’t realize how many pictures I have of relatives posing with their cars till I started this research and really dug into all the archives of pictures. If you know what some of these cars are, please do tell! I don’t have my Grampaw on-hand to tell me, and I bet he knows every last one of them. Nana & Uncle Quinn Buying a car was a massive investment and a sign of social status, rather than the over-priced necessity it is today. We still use them as symbols of class and status, but in the brands rather than just the fact that we have one.  Grampaw Hoyt (HD) Every time my hubs has a day off, he does exactly what Grampaw is doing here, washing his car. I have very distinct memories of my dad washing his...

I have 2 parents.  I know. Weird, right? They each come from people. And those people made people. And so on. And I love them all, and their stories. Hence the creation of this whole entire blog ordeal. Mom & Dad ca 1988 I’m doing separate research on both sides of the family. So I’ve decided to organize the info on both of these sides into two labels, or tags. For my Dad’s side of the family, I’m using the tag “Family Ties” and for my Mom’s I’m using “The Grapevine” .  To be completely honest, Family Ties is the name of the blog and the family tree project because it was the first thing I came up with. I think I’m pretty well stuck with it now. The Grapevine is the name of my mom’s side’s genealogical blogs because of her home town, North East, PA being home to Welch’s vineyards. It was even the name of North East High School’s yearbook (on whose committee my Gramma served as a contributor).  So there we have it. To keep up with the large-scale family tree organiza...

  In learning about my family’s history and looking through the archive of pictures my aunt keeps, there are certain people who are just compelling. I can’t quite put my finger on why, the look of their faces, the mystery of their life, the glamor of it, or maybe even the sadness in their wake. Today’s spotlight is one that just caught my eye. I don’t know why, maybe because she’s so stunning. I’d love to introduce you to my great-great-grandmother, Bertha May Watson Sawyer. Bertha was born to George and Susan Watson in 1879 in Boston. She grew up well, going to the local schools and eventually an all girl’s school. She had one brother, Arthur, who was a businessman and consulate to, what was then, Arabia. She had 2 sons, my great-grandfather Richard and his brother Gilman. As you can see from these two pictures side-by-side, her health deteriorated rather quickly. My Nana told the story of how she had diabetes and it took her life very quickly. A mere 7 years later after her death...

One of the interesting things you come across when you start to research family trees is the massive difference in record keeping depending on the regions you’re looking in. I have to say that I'm a bit spoiled, not only from the work of previous generations, but because the majority of my family is from New England. I’m sure it’s because those states are much older and have been colonized for a longer amount of time. The family was based mostly in Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and a little bit of Maine. I even have some ancestors that immigrated from Northern Ireland to Truro, Nova Scotia as grantees. Evidently they helped to found the city. To my surprise, though maybe it shouldn't have been, while researching my husband’s tree, I found that every single person I came across, like 8 or 9 generations back on either side of his family, were LITERALLY ALL from Virginia. Like, ALL of them.  A place where all my research (and anyone else’s who has looked into it) has...

If you can believe it, I began talking at a very young age. My Mom says my first full sentence (and it *is* a full sentence, lest you forget) was “NO!” followed closely by “GET IT”. All of which TRACKS cuz ya girl can be opinionated and bossy. Again, I’m hitting with the one-two punches of multiple *shockers* in a row.  Growing up my aunt and my Nana lived together, and would often “kidnap” my brother and I for the weekend. Pretty much as soon as I began to use words my Nana taught me nursery rhymes. I’m not really sure why, but probably because she loves them and learned many as a little girl. She had an old record with nursery rhymes sung to cute lil tunes. I began singing them and begging to play that particular record. A record which, years later, I happened to find while rummaging through the recesses of a record store. The record has many songs I still sing to my kids - “Sing a Song of Sixpence” mostly, which was one of my favorites. Among the nursery rhymes I learned as a we...

  I’ve been sitting here staring at my computer screen for a hot minute, trying to figure out how to say what I want to say. That’s the trouble with writing. Why write if you have nothing to say, but conversely (and herein lies my problem), how can I possibly write when I have all these words in my head screaming to get out. As I sort through the thought tornado spinning wildly out of control through the grooves of my, today, insufficiently outfitted gray matter, I just decided to start typing. I just got a brand new keyboard that makes the most delightful typing sounds. I’m very happy with the tactile feel of the keys and the rainbow leds lighting it from underneath. My kids are somewhat occupied for the time being, somehow, so I have a moment to begin to collect my thoughts and ideas about how I want to move forward on this blog. . I have come upon a sort of project. I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this before, but I am utterly obsessed with genealogy. I constantly live with one t...