Continuation

meeting new distant relatives has sparked a search mode in me I guess, and I have taken the online family tree from a little over 100 people to nearly 600 now. I decided to go forward and add in my sibs spouses and kids and the next gen after that. I have added on my sister-in-law's side an immense amount and I know there is further to go. That whole line has done a great job of upkeep and research. Of course it helps when your family pretty much stayed put in the same area of the country for many generations. Several of my sides seem to have mor than a little wanderlust. I guess it is genetic.

Today I came across another whole huge batch of photos to scan into the computer. I am happy to say that siblings are now inheriting the scanned stuff, getting still more things out of my hands, so one bad accident wouldn't destroy it all. I am also pulling pictures out of frames, and albums, the paper of which is all acidic and not good for the also acidic papered photos. Once I have all the frames tossed out (no recycleable sadly) my library will be a lot less cluttered!

I do have one small problem facing me, and I am torn. I have a lot of letters that mom kept over the years, and I don't know whether to scan them in, and captur some of her personality, or to destroy them, as she had once said she herself would do.
I did think of one thing: these are not letters she wrote, but received (with a few exceptions) and they are not her voice but smeone else. In the case of my grands, I can see keeping them. I don't think I can justify keeping those written by people I didn't know, or barely knew. I would just like to somehow capture the personality of Jeanne M Dupre Douglas, so it doesn't just become facts and figures, like too many of my family. That's one of the reasons I admire Cndy's line: they have stories about people long dead. They haven't forgotten the idea of roots. IT being that I have never felt like I had any real roots anywhere, I am bit envious.

Ah well. Other chores call. I will scan and contemplate another day.

Adventures in Family Research

Been too long since I stopped to contemplate the family research biz. And trust me- it could be a business easily. Many folks would willing pay someone else to do the research I have been doing out of personal curiousity.

Don't ask we why I am obsessed with knowing where I came from back in the 1800s, 1700s.....These people were long gone before I was even a consideration in the world, much less a reality. I have a feeling that knowing where I come from might tell me where I am going. It is probably not true, but hey....

There is a story I feel the need to relate though. My grandmother had written down a story that she told me was relayed to her by her biological father, Herbert Hopkins. Someone in the family apparently felt the need to escape France in the Revolution days. A pregnant female was supposedly smuggled out of France to Cuba in an empty wine cask. Claim was that she was of minour royal blood, and that her husband was not so lucky. He ended up beheaded. Either this woman's child or her grandchild possibly was injured in a horse riding accident in Cuba which required a trip to the US for attention. That child/grandchild stayed in the US, marrying into a well-established French line here, and made a whole mess o' kids. The Guion line has been an obsession for years, partly so I could figure out the story. My uncle Marcy vehemently refutes the whole story as unprovable- family here say. If he had his way we would all end up nothing but names and lists of dates attached to those names. I hate that- absolutely hate it!
Ok we aren't all Cleopatra in a past life, but the idea that there might be even a smidgen of romance to the family story is not a sin. And now, uncle Marcy, I may have found the person who moved here and married into the extensive and well-researched Guion line. Her name was Clara, and she was mother to Josephine Beck Guion, who mothered Herbert. I know the Guion line is well documented because I have now run into several living Guions. They figured heavily in the shipping industry of this country, and the family is huge. They have a book that traces the family back further than we know the Dupre line, and the Guions too were Huguenots.

So...Josephine, and Herbert, forgotten as you may have seemed to your child/grand child Marie, and worse- her progeny- your story is slowly coming to light. Maybe someday I will be able to travel out to California and find a place to leave you some flowers.