Mother’s Tree – This one goes all the way back to 1783.
I never got to meet my maternal grandmother. She had an awesome name – Cora Leona – but all I really know about her is that she was a pretty, round-faced woman with dark eyes (like most of my family has – we get them from her side of the family). She played the piano for her church, and she died when my mother was four. My mother was then raised mostly by her grandmother, Jennie Louisa.
We have a set of very cool old photographs with four generations in each. The boys have my mom’s older brother (my Uncle Merle) as a baby, then the three generations of men. The women have my mom’s older sister Dorothy as a baby, and then the mothers. I never knew any of these women–even Aunt Dorothy died before I was born. From what I can tell from that picture, Great-Grandma Jennie looked like a stern, no-nonsense, tall, very sturdy sort of woman. My mother has stories of how much she loved to stay with her, and how Great-Grandma taught her to crochet on tiny little needles and make lace.
So that was all I ever really knew of her. However, my sister has recently started getting into genealogy–she’s especially interested in the women because she saw a “Mother’s Tree” done in cross-stitch. (My sisters and mom are very into cross-stitch. Picture my obsession with knitting. That’s them with cross-stitch.) She decided it looked very cool and thought her daughter might like to have one.
Only nobody knows about the women.
