Last night, Gary and I pulled out a box of photos. They came from his godmother’s house. Stella’s been gone three years, and her husband, Arch, even longer. Arch took family genealogy seriously. We’ve got a pile of his pre-computer research; he traced every line in both sides of their family carefully. This photo caught my attention: This is Mollie Johnston, Arch’s great-aunt. From everything I can find, Mollie was not a scandalous woman. She was born in 1878 in…
Farmer Gary and I recently attended what is now, I believe, an annual reunion of cousins on his mom’s side. The two of us gave presentations to the group of 40 or so (mostly) retirees. And no, for some reason I didn’t take photos. But there will be a video. Here’s last year’s: The cousins are the offspring of Mike and Rose Mehling’s progeny. The photo below is from 1924, so Gary’s mom isn’t in it. Rita was born in…
My latest “Your famous ancestor” listing on the Ancestry.com app nearly made me cry. Why? Because I wanted to call Dad and hear his reaction. As you may recall from The Maine man (sadly, the final story Dad and I worked on together), he reacted unexpectedly when I shared with him that his grandfather George was once accused of arson: “Oh, boy! Ever since I was I kid, I’d hoped there was a criminal somewhere in our family tree! Not…
While looking into Farmer Gary‘s story about “The tuberculous house” last week, we climbed a little higher on the family tree to take a look. It was there we found a tiny branch, reaching out for sunlight. We found Peter. Born on May 2, 1848, Peter was one of nine children born to Lorenz and Catherina Dilger in what is now Baden-Württemberg, Germany. Peter’s sister Theresia, who was six years older than he, grew up to be the paternal grandmother…