Ever since I first laid eyes on this wedding photo from 1926, I’ve wondered: Who is that second couple? A newspaper article detailing my paternal grandparents’ wedding revealed the happy couple’s attendants were Mr. & Mrs. Haag. But who were the Haags? They’re not part of our family tree, but they were there for Grandma and Grandpa on a very important day. It may well be that a newspaper ad Grandpa designed for his workplace provides an important first clue….
One hundred years ago, Grandpa Vayo was counting down the days until he married. He’d already moved to Paducah, Kentucky, and started his new job in advertising. He even authored a daily poetry column, Songs of Life, in The Paducah Sun newspaper. I wonder if he warned Grandma (his betrothed, Lucie Plante) how often her new surname would be misspelled and mispronounced. After all, “Vayo” rhymes with “mayo.” Sometimes, the condiment won out: This poem of Grandpa’s caught my eye…
Thanks to my second-cousin Mark, I just came upon a dozen or more poems Grandpa Vayo wrote shortly after he relocated to Paducah in 1926. He was the new Advertising Manager at the J.A. Rudy & Sons department store. Grandpa must have been so lonely! Paducah, Kentucky, is far away from Brewer, Maine. And this was a century ago. It was months before Grandma traveled all those miles to marry him on Thanksgiving Day. A poet, musician, and artist, Grandpa…
There’s a handy-dandy feature on Ancestry‘s app that keeps the user up to date on birthdays and anniversaries. As long as the person is in your family tree, their name will pop up a day or two before that special day to remember. Noticing that Grandma Vayo‘s maternal grandparents’ anniversary was today, it felt like a good time to write about them. Only their anniversary was yesterday. That’s according to one document: Onze Juillet. Another marriage document: Douze Juillet. Onze…
Admittedly, my approach to genealogy is scattershot. Whether it’s an interesting photo, one of Mom’s poems, or a geographic location, when something interesting catches my eye, that’s the rabbit hole we scamper down for hours and sometimes days. And then there are the overriding questions about our ancestors’ origins. Case in point: How far back on Dad‘s side of the family must we go to find ourselves in France? We know they came to Maine by way of Canada several…
I heard from Mom’s cousin Patty this week. She lives in New Hampshire and emailed that they were under a weather alert to watch for tornados. Tornadoes in New England. Crazy stuff! Here in southern Indiana, we had some wicked thunderstorms a few days later. It’s been very hot and those pop-up storms came and went all night. “That Mother Nature – she’s sure in a mood!” I might have said to Farmer Gary more than once. As a Tiller…
This is a real head-scratcher. Whose ring was this? The story starts back in the 1960s. I remember Mom coming into my bedroom and giving me a little white plastic box. She told me it was Grandpa Vayo‘s childhood ring and that he wanted me to have it. It was a beautiful ring. Although I treasured it, I don’t think I ever wore it. Fear of losing a family heirloom was high up on the list, plus the worry that…
“You’ll never guess what I found today!” It was the winter of 2021, when Dad spent nearly every afternoon going through the boxes in the attic. Mom had been gone a bit more than a year, and he felt it was time to see what they’d saved over their lifetime, both together and even before they met. “My baby book!” I had to laugh at the thought of it. He promised to tuck it away for me to see during…
Mom was an apron wearer. She wasn’t a messy cook. Not at all. The wearing of the apron may have come to pass due to a combination of tradition and an attempt at preserving her clothes from showing wear as she leaned against the edges of kitchen counters and tables. I think she also liked finding interesting designs and patterns. Mom had a Christmas apron or two, plus at least one apron to represent each season of the year. Apparently,…
It’s only just now occurring to me that Dad‘s love of the song “Waltzing Matilda” might be because his mom’s middle name was Mathilda. He’d sing over and over: Once a jolly swagman camped by a billabongUnder the shade of a Coolibah treeAnd he sang as he watched and waited till his billy boiled“You’ll come a Waltzing Matilda with me” If you’re not familiar with Australia’s unofficial national anthem, here’s a 1962 recording by Dad’s favorite folk musician, Richard Dyer-Bennett:…