TanyaL

You're welcome. It was great listening to her tell about growing up during Reconstruction in the South. Her father was a judge who traveled on a circuit and she was raised by a woman who had been a former slave, but stayed with the family when the slaves were freed. Her mother had died at childbirth I think. Her father married a woman her age when she was in her early 20's and the shame of that made her leave home to live with her brother.He was a doctor who had 12 children and don't you know a spinster sister was a welcome help in taking care of those kids. She married my grandfather, a widowed Baptist minister and carpenter, and had 2 daughters. He had 5 children, one fought in WW1. I still have a few of the quilts she made and 2 woven wool coverlets that she made totally starting with shearing the wool! She was a beautiful woman and never, ever said an unkind word about anyone. Sometime before WW1 she caught a stepdaughter coming out of the barn with hay stuck all over the back of her skirt, blouse and hair (LOL!). When grandma was in her last years she would sit and knit and talk to herself and this is when I learned about my aunt. Grandma was SO worried what would happen if her father caught her and her fiance in the barn. Ophelia had long black hair and big blue eyes and was 17. It sounds like a romance paperback novel, but they married and lived together until she died. Grandma and Grandpa had moved from Alabama to Oklahoma earlier and about 1915 they took a trip in a Model A or Model T Ford back to Alabama. There were no paved roads and during a rain storm in Mississippi the car got so stuck grandpa had to get a farmer to pull it with a team of mules. He was so mad he sold the car and bought train tickets! They had camped on their trip so can't you just see that preacher with his family of 7 and their bags and quilts getting on a train to finish the trip.Imagine what the car had looked like loaded with all that.

You all have a good day. Tanya