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I had an interesting exchange of emails with a woman who works for the town museum in the place where my mother grew up. I presume she got my email address from my niece who has put up considerable family history at the Mormon, Family Search site.
The lady asked me if I had pictures of my great-great-grand father and mother who were early settlers. I did, and she thanked me when I quickly sent them. In turn she sent me pictures of a quilt, a recent prized acquisition of the museum, which had the stitched-in signatures of many of the townsfolk of a hundred years ago including some of my direct ancestors. I thanked her especially because my mother had know about about that quilt and had mentioned it once in awhile when the subject of family history came up. Despite clearly being a community project the quilt disappeared for many many years. My mother was mistaken about what information was on the quilt. But there was no mistake this was the quilt she had spoken about. The museum lady was flabbergasted, because apparently they'd exhausted their resources and other than the actual names on the quilt no one in town now had heard of it let alone had been able to tell them anything about it. The museum got it after a women found the quilt at a Goodwill (a charitable second-hand store that gets its stock through local donations) halfway across the country. She saw the town name on the quilt and generously decided it ought to go back where it was made.
We exchanged drabs of other information. I wanted to keep a little mystery about exactly who I was and why I knew things about their town history long after my great-great-grandfather's day. It got to the point where I thought it would be safe to tell the lady who my mother's father was and that he lived in a particular nearby town after leaving their community. Later that evening, she wrote back excitedly including an attachment, saying I'd be interested in seeing this page from that second community's centennial-celebration commemorative book. I burst out laughing, and quickly replied to her that I owned a copy of that book, and that the page she sent indeed had a picture not only of my grandfather, but a picture of my mother and her siblings in their fifties! The text even spelled out where I grew up! So much for staying semi-anonymous.
The lady asked me if I had pictures of my great-great-grand father and mother who were early settlers. I did, and she thanked me when I quickly sent them. In turn she sent me pictures of a quilt, a recent prized acquisition of the museum, which had the stitched-in signatures of many of the townsfolk of a hundred years ago including some of my direct ancestors. I thanked her especially because my mother had know about about that quilt and had mentioned it once in awhile when the subject of family history came up. Despite clearly being a community project the quilt disappeared for many many years. My mother was mistaken about what information was on the quilt. But there was no mistake this was the quilt she had spoken about. The museum lady was flabbergasted, because apparently they'd exhausted their resources and other than the actual names on the quilt no one in town now had heard of it let alone had been able to tell them anything about it. The museum got it after a women found the quilt at a Goodwill (a charitable second-hand store that gets its stock through local donations) halfway across the country. She saw the town name on the quilt and generously decided it ought to go back where it was made.
We exchanged drabs of other information. I wanted to keep a little mystery about exactly who I was and why I knew things about their town history long after my great-great-grandfather's day. It got to the point where I thought it would be safe to tell the lady who my mother's father was and that he lived in a particular nearby town after leaving their community. Later that evening, she wrote back excitedly including an attachment, saying I'd be interested in seeing this page from that second community's centennial-celebration commemorative book. I burst out laughing, and quickly replied to her that I owned a copy of that book, and that the page she sent indeed had a picture not only of my grandfather, but a picture of my mother and her siblings in their fifties! The text even spelled out where I grew up! So much for staying semi-anonymous.
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What's that phrase, "Six degress of separation"?
Wow. Amazing.
From:
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