All My Ancestors

Everything’s up to date in Kansas City, y’know.

It really is a great conference. I’ve spent some of the time working in the OHS booth which is great fun–I love discussing their Oklahoma relatives with folks.

So far, my best find came from the goodie bag with a copy of Everton’s Genealogical Helper inside. There’s a very small 1″ ad at the back of the magazine, advertising a CD version of the May-Keith Families of Arkansas by John Schlaud. Cousin Kitty and I have been trying for ages to reach this man to see if we could buy a paper copy. And here’s the new phone number and email. The Helper may have just earned another subscription.

Yippeee.

One of the purposes of posting the stories from one’s families is to generate even more. And I’m thrilled to say that has happened.

Months after posting the pictures of my 4th great-grandparents I heard from a woman who had the wagon train story as part of her family lore. Her husband’s ancestor evidently purchased one of Dr. Ball’s farms in Iowa and they had handed down the story of Martha Jane’s rescue.

And after I posted the story of my great-grandmother’s suicide, I heard from my Cousin Kitty, whose mother Katie was one of my grandmother’s little sisters, who’d told Kitty a story about my grandmother’s mother-in-law. Neither Kitty nor I know the amount of truth in the story, as Kitty notes. But here’s the story she tells:

I just read your blog. My mother told me this story of your great-grand mother. My mom was only 11 when she died so I don’t know how accurate this is and may be you have been told this one too. When your grand parents were first married or just before:

Your great grand mother Unruh offered Lide (as a gift) as many chickens as she could kill and clean in a time period - don’t remember for sure but think it was a couple of hours. Thinking Lide was a “prissy” city girl her new mother-in-law was surprised when her chicken population was quite diminished at the end of the day.

For what it is worth that is the story I was told.

I don’t know why great-grandmother Matilda would have thought my grandmother Lida wouldn’t have known how to dress chickens. She was an oldest child of 12 children, was a “hired girl” in a neighborhood family, and her family, ironically enough, lived in a chicken coop–trust me, they were not city folk. They were poorer than church mice.

But the point is this is a story I’d never heard because the suicide overshadowed everthing. I laughed when I heard the story because I remembered the morning in South Dakota when I was probably about 10 or 11 when Grannie dragged me out of bed one morning to help her dress 10 chickens. She had 9 cleaned and dressed by the time I had 1 done. I guess I made a small contribution–I mainly remember the camaraderie and the lessons–we dressed them outside, going inside to heat the galvanized buckets of water and to singe off the pin feathers on her huge old O’Keefe & Merritt range.

But there was never any doubt in my family as to who was the master of the chicken and I guess she knew it at at early age.

Here’s a response I got from my first cousin once removed, Kitty, about the “My Granny’s Sisters” post with the photo of my great-aunts on the horse at Knott’s Berry Farm. Kitty had the good fortune to grow up in California around the majority of my Gran’s sisters, and, of course, her mom Katie was one of them. Kitty has great stories from her life on the west coast and I’ve decided, with her permission, to just transfer some of her emails to the blog since one of the goals is to record the stories. Thanks so much for sharing your part of the family story, Kitty.