MuddyPuddles

Those of you who have been reading my blog know that I have been digging back into the past to try to find out as much information as I can about my ancestors.  I’ve found most of my information by digging into old prison records and insane asylum records (just kidding).  (Roses are red, violets are blue, I’m a schizophrenic and so am I).  Anyway. . . as I look back into the past I try to imagine what it must have been like to live when my ancestors did.  And the more details I find about them, the easier it is for me to imagine what it must have been like.  One particular situation that has really come to light for me in the past day or two has to do with my grandfather “Papa” when he first got married and started a family.  I found out some information that I had never known before.  I want to share a little bit of it with you. 

Papa was a young man of 19 when he married “Sally” Hodges in her parents home in Prairie Dell, Texas on Christmas Eve of 1891.  Sally was only 17 years old.  A little over two years later their first child was born.  He was a baby boy who came in February of 1894, but died the same day.  That’s rough.  About two and a half years later they had a daughter, Katie Elizabeth, who was born in November of 1896.  Shortly after this Sally got pregnant again when tragedy struck.  At the age of three months and 20 days Katie Elizabeth passed away.  That was in March of 1897.  Can you imagine how difficult that must have been for them---to lose this sweet baby they had grown to love for almost four months?  Unfortunately their troubles were not over with that loss because when their third child came in October of ‘97, a son, he too either died at birth or was stillborn.  So here we have this young couple who in a span of six years buried all three of their children.  What must that have done to their spirits. 

Fortunately, the story improved for awhile.  The following August, Nannie Mae was born.  Over the next eleven years a total of six healthy children came into this world through this young couple---four girls and two boys.  Except for the first son who died at twenty three, they all lived into their nineties or thereabouts and I got to meet them and hug them every year at the family reunions and at other times.  I never met Sally, however, because she died a little over two months after her last son, “uncle Jay” was born.    

Two years after Sally died, Papa married the lady who would ultimately become my Grandmother.  She had lost her young husband a year and a half before so she was alone with her two year old daughter.  After they married, She and Papa had four more children, one of which was my awesome dad.  And the rest is history. 

I know that I sometimes take it for granted how good things are today.  We have such great medical care and so much more knowledge about health issues.  I think these must have been really tough people to live in those tough times.  It just seems like they had to deal with death so much and to just keep on going somehow.  Life had to be so hard in some ways.  And yet, through it all, they persevered and were loving and caring role models to me and my cousins and friends.  I thank God for blessing me with such a heritage.  I hope I can do the same for the generations to follow. 
To be continued. . .

God Bless.  Dennis