Wow, What A Surprise!

I was surprised and thrilled to find out this morning that Gini at http://ginisology.blogspot.com/ had awarded me the Kreative Blogger Award. I have to admit that I was also shocked, since I only just started this blog in January. Thank you, Gini! I would also like to congratulate Gini on being a 9 year cancer survivor.


I would also like to thank my cousin, Becky (http://beckysgraceandglory.blogspot.com/), for encouraging me to start a blog. Without her support I probably would have never done it.

I am still learning about this blogging thing and hope someday to make my site look alot fancier than it does now. I guess I need a Blogging 101 course....

Gini, you made my day and again thank you very much.

We Are The Chosen

I recently had a fellow genealogist and family member share this with me and thought I'd share it with all of you.

We Are The Chosen

In each family there is one who seems called to find the ancestors. To put flesh on their bones and make them live again, to tell the family story and to feel that somehow they know and approve.

Doing genealogy is not a cold gathering of facts but, instead, breathing life into all who have gone before. We are the storytellers of the tribe. All tribes have one. We have been called, as it were, by our genes. Those who have gone before cry out to us, "Tell our story!" So, we do.

In finding them, we somehow find ourselves. How many graves have I stood before now and cried? I have lost count. How many times have I told the ancestors, "You have a wonderful family; you would be proud of us." How many times have I walked up to a grave and felt somehow there was love there for me? I cannot say.

It goes beyond just documenting facts. It goes to who am I and why I do the things I do. It goes to seeing a cemetery about to be lost forever to weeds and indifference and saying, "I can't let this happen." The bones here are bones of my bone and flesh of my flesh. It goes to doing something about it. It goes to pride in what our ancestors were able to accomplish, how they contributed to what we are today. It goes to respecting their hardships and losses, their never giving in or giving up, their resoluteness to go on and build a life for their family.

It goes to deep pride that the fathers fought and some died to make and keep us a Nation. It goes to a deep and immense understanding that they were doing it for us. It is of equal pride and love that our mothers struggled to give us birth. Without them we could not exist, and so we love each one, as far back as we can reach. That we might be born who we are. That we might remember them. So we do.

With love and caring and scribing each fact of their existence, because we are they and they are the sum of who we are. So, as a scribe called, I tell the story of my family. It is up to that one called in the next generation to answer the call and take my place in the long line of family storytellers.

That is why I do my family genealogy, and that is what calls those young and old to step up and restore the memory or greet those whom we had never known before.

2003 posting by: Lloyd Ray Timmons, Sr.

...and if sometimes we are lucky, we will be the one at the Christmas dinner who is asked questions and who can tell the stories and identify the pictures. And if we are really lucky - we can find another younger soul in the family to take up the cause.

Any Society that would give up liberty for a little security, will deserve neither and lose both.

Benjamin Franklin 1759

Grandpa Roberts' Shoe Shop

A Cool Discovery

Every Tuesday, my husband and I head to the Cancer Care Center so that he can get his chemotreatment. We can be there anywhere from three to seven hours, depending on which Tuesday it is and what all treatments he may end up needing to get. He is currently receiving Erbitux every Tuesday and then every third Tuesday he also gets Carboplatin. Both Erbitux and Carboplatin deplete the levels of magnesium in the body so sometimes he needs to have a magnesium bolus.

So, every Tuesday I pack up my laptop computer and grab some genealogy stuff to work on while we are at the Cancer Care Center. It helps me pass the time.

This last Tuesday, one of the items I took with me was a follow-up e-mail I had received from a gentleman who had contacted me through Ancestry's Connection Service about a relative of mine, Grace Evelyn Fox. He is working on his son-in-law's genealogy and had sent me a pedigree chart which started with his son-in-law's mother, Nancy Carol Fair. I started inputting what information he had on the pedgree chart into my Roberts-Allen Family website so that I could determine what information I had that I could share with him and what information he had that I didn't.

As I worked my way back through the generations on his pedigree chart I made a really cool discovery. I got to the names Beverly C. Rattliff and Mahala J. Mitchell and I went "hmm, those names sure look familiar." So I went into my Bradley-Moore Family website and sure enough, there was Beverly C. Rattliff and Mahala J. Mitchell. So it turns out that this gentleman's son-in-law is not only related to me on my Roberts-Allen side of the family, but he's also related to me on my Bradley-Moore side of the family. I hadn't realized the connection until I got his pedigree chart. How cool is that?

Harness Maker

In my Grandpa Roberts' early years, he was a harness maker and had his own harness shop. This is a picture of him in his shop.