Beginnings

I took on a task I didn't understand the depth of when I was still too young to feel daunted. I became something of a family historian. I was given astounding amounts of pictures from both sets of grands, sadly after the had passed, so I couldn't ask questions about the photos. I have managed to do much research on my own and with the aid of some relatives, and feel I know the last 2-4 generations of both sides of the family fairly well. There are gaps, but they are growing smaller.

In the last week, I invested a lot of money in a photo scanner, and have already uploaded many many pictures that were starting to fade to unusable. I am so giddy about this, it is silly, but now generations down the line might get to see where they came from with a little greater ease.

I am going to put pictures up a few at a time, writing something about the pictures if I can. I hope to hear from family members about what they might know that they can add to the storyline. After all a family is more than one person, and going far enough back, it becomes thosands, then tens of thousands.

This fellow is one of the main reasons I became so determined to find this stuff out.



His name is Herbert Guion Hopkins, and he is my maternal great grandfather. He is father to my grandmother Marie Josephine Hopkins Dupre, and, for some reason, for me, a kindred spirit. He left the family when my grandmother was about 10, something I don't think she ever really forgave him for, and what I know of him, I have had to learn thru a little of his own writing, hearsay, and diligent research. I found his whole family actually. A computer program I bought gave me an entire arm of the family quite suddenly. Then, after finding out names and dates, I had quite a shock one evening: a painting on Antiques Roadshow, done by Herbert's grandfather of his family. I will find the link and put it here sometime.

I would end this opener with proof that blood is thicker than water, sometimes. Herbert was born in 1871. He had a near duplicate of himself born in 1979.
My nephew Aaron is the spitting image of his own great-great-grandfather.