Back in the days when genealogy was done by snail mail letters written to people in states far away and a person had to travel to areas to spend time in courthouses and cemeteries, my mother had the genealogy bug. I can remember being drug through many a cemetery as a child and I did not like it. My mother died in 1990 and about ten years later I became interested in my cultural heritage. I was especially interested in my great grandmother. She died in childbirth with my grandfather and she was illegitimate so she was a question in our back ground. One of the stories about her was that as a new bride she showed up at my grandfather's home with nothing but a bag of clothes and a guitar slung over her back. I asked where my mother's research was and my sister had a large cardboard box stored of mom's genealogy work and my sister was glad to hand it over. As I sat down and dug into the contents of the box I was taken back in time to when my mother was writing the hand written charts and notes I was reading. I read letters that she had received from other researchers and copies of bible pages that she had copied from bibles other family members had in their possession. Holding the papers and reading mom's handwriting made me feel close to her. I still feel close to my mother when I spend time researching my family history. So that is my "what got me started" story. Click HERE to go to the original challenge page and find the links to the other entires in this weeks challenge. By the way, the beautiful woman in the picture at the top of the page is my great grandmother. She married Oscar Rohrer and she is one of the women I featured during March of this year when I wrote the "Women From My Family History" series. The blog I wrote for Leona can be found HERE. And below is a picture of my pretty momma. The blog I wrote in March that featured my mother can be found HERE.
Charlotte Ann Rairigh
1930-1990
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