(no subject)

[mamculuna]

 The memories and tales in my family go back to a woman. I'm not even sure of her name. She was my grandmother's mother, so what I know of her dates from probably the late nineteenth century. She married my great-grandfather who had a farm in the northwest part of SC up near the mountains, but settled by the French. She had two daughters and a son, and convinced my great-grandfather to move 25 miles to a tiny town that had a college. It was a men's college then, but my grandmother finished the girls' school and then was the first woman to graduate from the men's college in 1904. But the story I know of her mother, the great-grandmother, is that she'd ride back to the old farm by herself, her youngest daughter with her, and at the old homestead light all the lamps so a passerby would think the house full of people.She'd ride back with her youngest daughter a toddler sleeping in a wagonload of cotton. I remember her. 

Comments

[zoefruitcake]

Sounds like you come from a line of formidable women

[mamculuna]

They were something!

[cactuswatcher]

I've been lucky. Both sides of my family had an interest in writing things down. Having even a hint of those before us is a treasure, especially when they were farmers like my people and had little excitement in their lives they felt worth to write about and had failures they didn't wish to write about.

There was my great-great grandmother who didn't want to teach her girls how to spin flax by hand, because she didn't think it was right that they should have to work so hard when cloth was readily available in stores. There was another multiple great grandmother who wrote about moving to Illinois as a child, camping near the mouth of the Illinois River on the Mississippi and hearing a mountain lion cry in the night there. I've been to the spot. There's a park there now. My ancestor may or may not have known it, but it seems a couple guys named Lewis and Clark also camped there with their crew preparing for that journey up the Missouri River, the mouth of which is in sight just across the Mississippi from that place.

[mamculuna]

How great to have all that detail. And what interesting people. I think flax must be the hardest thing to spin--glad she didn't have to learn.

Oops

[cactuswatcher]

Correction: The camp site and historic park are at the mouth of the Wood River not the Illinois River.

Re: Oops

[mamculuna]

Great to know the real place!

Re: Oops

[cactuswatcher]

I knew the real place, but thinking Illinois, I wrote down the wrong river name. They are a few miles apart. I've been at the mouth of the Illinois River by boat, ferry and car, but only at the mouth of the little Wood River on foot from the parking lot. ;o)

[maju]

You have brave women in your family.

[mamculuna]

Braver than me!