that ratty old quilt pt 2

But how to describe the tradition of sleeping four or five to a bed to a grandchild who grew up with not only her own private bed but also her own private bed room? She didn’t wait for my answer, however, instead saying, as soon as she saw me, “Why have you never told me about these guys?“ Granddaughter had grown up hearing all about my Dad’s family and their immigration from England to Colonial Isle of Wight, Virginia. Pitts, Slaughter, Hembree, Chastain, Cordell, Johnston, and Thornburg were names she well knew. Names painstakingly recorded in Dad’s Bible allowed us to track each generation as they moved from Virginia to South Carolina, Georgia and Tennessee, Alabama and Texas. The oral tradition that Grandpa Lloyd found Texas too hot for his liking and went back to North Georgia for a wife was something we had always laughed about, in complete and rueful understanding, during our own sweltering summers here in Dallas/Fort Worth. But now, with this tattered old quilt, our attention turned to the nebulous realm of the Osburn side. No traditional family Bible remained from Mom to give us even a hint of who these people were. I sat down next to Hayes on the floor, and fingered the fading threads. “You know my Mother was an orphan, right?” She nodded and I continued, “Mom didn’t know much about her family. Of course she knew her sister, Iris, and her Papa Sam, but her Mother Pearl was a mystery. Pearl died when Mom was barely two years old. And nobody ever talked about how or why Pearl died. Mom didn’t even know her own Mother’s middle name, much less where she came from, or anything about her family. The names on this quilt are her stepmother Stella Nelson Osburn’s family,” I concluded. “Well, I’m just really surprised you haven’t done anything to remedy that situation. You’re the genealogist.” And with that gentle smiling reproof, Hayes got up from the floor and went back to searching the bookcase. An hour later, with a flurry of hugs and kisses, the box of food under her arm and a hundred dollar bill secretly tucked into the back pocket of her jeans, she hopped in her SUV and was on her way back to Houston and the Cougars. But for the rest of that day her words echoed in my head. Why hadn’t I done anything about it? I am the product of more than a single ancestral line. These folks, too, are, after all, my family, my blood, kith and kin. And so began the odyssey. Internet websites are my least favorite form of research. Too often the information is not only misleading but just plain wrong. It is, however, a good place to start. I searched the social security death index, and found the basic facts. But I wanted more. A search of archived newspaper obituaries for the relevant date returned not only the information about Bettie’s death but also listed surviving kin. And then it was off to the races with emails to cousins throughout the South.