Early on in the year, genealogist Amy Crow of No Story Too Small challenged all blogging genealogists to write about one ancestor per week for 52 weeks. This is my first entry in the 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks Challenge. I think it’s fitting that the first ancestor I blog about in the 52 Ancestors
How are you guys today? I am pleased to write that I am tolerably well and I hope you are well, too. (Sorry, I can’t help it. After getting buried in all of these old West family letters I want to talk like the writers do!) This letter is from my 3rd Great Aunt Edith
I’m so very excited to be posting the first in a series of four transcribed letters from the family of my 4th great-grandfather, George W. West (b. abt. 1819 in Spartanburg, SC – d. 1895 in Forsyth County, Georgia.) I received these letters from Ron West, a distant cousin I recently reconnected with. He’s of
Thanks to my long lost Arkansas cousin, Ron West, whom I located through FamilyTreenDNA.com, I have just read 5 letters written from relatives in the family of my 4th great-grandfather, George W. West (abt. 1819-1895). One letter was even penned by my 4th great-grandmother, Jennet Cowen West, herself. If I can stop bawling my eyes
Last Thursday night, this happened less than a mile from my house: That’s the EF1 tornado that hit Canton, Georgia on June 13, 2013. There’s even a very unsettling video on Facebook of the tornado FORMING OVER MY HOUSE AAAHHHHHHH! (In other news, don’t you love how just about every tornado video includes some form
My ancestor George W. West and his wife Jennet Cowen often had people outside their nuclear family living with them in census years. I’ve already written about Isaac Suthard, the 14-year-old black farmhand. And there was also their grandson, Lightner West (who left his biological mom and step-father to live with his grandfather) and their
Mom and I have been archiving my Granna’s things and she found this: This is mom and dad’s wedding punch, as prepared by my Grandmama, Barbara Dunn. It sounds pretty tasty, doesn’t it? I think I’ll make it for my next party. 🙂
Last week was an amazing week genealogically! I received DNA results for my father and maternal grandfather (Edward West). The Wests are Vikings! (Okay, that’s a simplification, but we are haplotype I-M253 with origins in Scandinavia, and I’ve been reading about Vikings lately so I’m claiming it.) I also got in touch with a member of our “long
I know, right? War is hell. And from the transcripts of the interview you are about to read, you’ll see that that my grandpa, WW2 vet Edward West’s, experiences were extremely hellish. But he was also very fortunate in that, having a relatively late date of birth, he wasn’t drafted at the end of the
So this little known footage from c. 1969 actually stars some very special child stars – my mother, Luanne West, her brothers, Jeff, Jason and Joby West and their cousins, Danny and Ray West. There’s even a very special guest appearance by my every-day-very-much-missed Granna, Ellabel Duncan West. If there were DVD extras on this,