Piecing a
Partial Picture Patchwork Past
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DNA and ancestry search sites are
the latest greatest. I’m not sure I want unknown relatives crawling out of the
woodwork. The relatives I know are scary enough.
Of my background, I know I am predominately British American
(English, Welsh, Scotch, Irish) with added German from Dad’s side and French
(Brittany) and a secret on Mom’s side. That is to say, mongrel.
Cousin Nancie and I have spent the
last two weeks talking about our shared maternal family. Nancie and I did not meet until I showed up
unannounced at her mother’s funeral.
Strange family? Yes.
Our mothers were raised in Indiana,
sisters in a family of eight children. Anne, Nancie’s mother, was the only
child to finish high school and go on to what was called Normal School, where
she gained certification to teach.
Job in hand, Anne, along with older
sister Lucille, fled to Port Angeles, Washington, pioneers searching for a
better, different life. Looking on a map, Port Angeles is about as far from New
Middletown, Indiana as she could run and she never returned. Instead, Anne
reinvented herself.
Nancie’s best guess is that she was
ashamed of her family. My guess is that in school, she met children whose
families provided a huge contrast to ours. We all have such experience, don’t
we? But some take it to heart more than others.
I spent my first eleven years of
life in Indiana, near both maternal and paternal relatives. While my
perspective is flawed by youth, it is also balanced with adult visits to
Indiana plus Aunt Joanne’s answers to my questions.
Our moms’ family is straight-from-Li’l
Abner-type hillbilly people. Our great, great-grandparents migrated from England
to West Virginia, then crossed the mountains to Tennessee, share croppers with
small plots of their own corn and tobacco. Not satisfied, our grandparents
managed to buy a hard-scrabble farm west of Indianapolis.
Our folks were not dumb but they
were ignorant, poor, talked funny, not highly educated, kept old-country folk-ways
and mannerisms.
Uncle George, the family patriarch, eventually owned and farmed
the largest acreage in the county. He was a brilliant mechanic, could fix
anything, and if he needed a specialty tool, he invented it.
Uncle Henry was mild mannered, and shall we say, less
ambitious. In his later years he took his own life and nobody would talk about
why.
Twins, Roy and Ray, courted tragedy in a Model A Ford, Ray
behind the wheel, Roy balanced on the running board, hit a rut in the road and
landed in a tree. They were well lubricated but Roy never made it, and in his
own way, neither did Uncle Ray, my favorite, the sweetest, gentlest man I’ve
ever known.
I was four, 1949, when my mom, Jean, went to the State
Hospital in Madison, Indiana. I swear I remember an ambulance and men in white
coats but that is probably a false memory. Certainly my Dad drove her there in
our gray Pontiac.
Aunt Joanne said Jean was always strange. Years later, we
learned she was severely depressed and in modern times, treatment would have
been different.
I lived in terror that I would be
just like my mom. I dreaded Mother’s Day. I was the only person in class
without a mother and teachers always had us make gifts to take home.
Aunt Joanne got a job building
chairs in a furniture factory in Indianapolis when she was sixteen. She married
a man who owned an apartment building on Park Avenue, ended up with the
building. She took me under wing and taught me basic woman stuff and later,
became one of my best friends.
Oh, I nearly forgot. The secret. My
Aunt Jo sent me reproduction photos of my ancestors. A great, not sure how many
greats, grandmother shows undeniable American Indian features, right down to
the braids. I asked Jo; she immediately and defensively denied the possibility
and would say no more. Nancie said that’s no surprise. That fit what little
she’d heard of a family secret.
The men, including my male cousins,
all shared a wicked sense of humor, keen insight, and were never mean spirited.
Stories I’ve heard, they were all hell raisers in their youth.
The family women, I would describe
as slower to open up, but generous and warm hearted once they accept you.
My Dad’s family is a story for a
different time.
If you come visit me some day and
I’m sitting on the porch in patched bib overalls, clutching my corncob pipe,
feet propped on a cream can, ceramic jug marked with XXX within arm’s reach, I
guess you will know I’ve reverted to type.
Sondra
Ashton
HDN: Looking
out my back door
July 25,
2019
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