Another Day For Family History

Today I enjoyed the fact that I could sleep in - and I did. Sophie is so sweet, she waits for me to get up. She sleeps not far from me till I decide it's time to get up.

Went over to Cherry's and had some tea. We chatted for a little over an hour. Mom had called and I called her back when I got back home. She was having trouble with her Pogo account. It's something when I can fix it here instead of going to her place and doing it.

I cleaned up the kitchen, then I headed down into the computer room. I added newspaper clipping and family history to my files. I have over 10,150 names in my Taylor Tree. Wish I had that much in the Wiltzius Tree but no such luck. I'm getting there though. Today I was working off the ELDER family. Found a Carrie A ELDER who married ALEXANDER. They were missionaries in Egypt from 1876 to 1906. She was there when she and her husband met and married.

Can you imagine being 21 years old in 1876, and going to Egypt?! She had a degree, so I'm sure she did research. It's amazing how strong she must have been. On top of that, she had 8 children, 4 of whom died in Egypt. They were buried in a Protestant Cemetery in Dronka, near Assiut, Egypt. The returned to the states around 1906. 30 years in Egypt. Wow! I think it would be hard to leave your children that far away. But then, once they are gone, they are in your memories and that's what keeps them close.

I also worked on some of Patrick's BANTA family. That family is interesting as well. I have found highly respectable people in that tree.

Mom and I chatted about her Tree. It amazes me that my grandmother married my grandfather. My grandfather's WINELAND family was well respected. They had money, they had land, they had it all. When granddad married grandmother (MATHESON), that family was so broken. My grandmother was the oldest. She ended up taking care of the others most of the time. She had to go to court and testify against my great grandmother. She was so mad at her father from that point on, she never talked to him again. The MATHESON family didn't have much. They were different. My grandmother's family, well, they didn't get along. Grandmother's sister was kidnapped when she was 16 years old. They didn't know where she was till she was close to 30 years old. One brother was in WWII, came home to find his wife 8 months pregnant with someone else's child, and 6 months later died of a brain cancer, another brother stopped talking to his mother and when he died, she was not allowed to see him. Yet another brother was so full of "BS" that he got money from my grandmother and great grandmother on a regular basis, and yet he worked for Bowing! He then filed bankruptcy on my grandparents and his mother so he would have to pay back the money he borrowed.

So, you can see, I have one wacky family!! Yet, I have family that has been here for over 400 years. They are the ones I'm learning about. They are the ones that were massacred, kidnapped, and served in this country. I'm finding that the US has always been in one form of a war or another. Many they don't talk about in history and they need to be taught. We continue to make the same mistakes, just in different ways.

Okay, off my history lesson. I'm not doing crafts today, but will try to put a few stitches in tonight. Keeping finger crossed for being Happy Stitching/Happy Quilting!!