Another Monday

These Mondays just keep on rolling around! I love the weekend but they seem to pass by too fast. Last week I decided to start researching my family tree more. I don't know if I mentioned that a lady and her husband, who are from Michigan, were way down here in South Alabama doing research on his family. The family name they were researching happens to be my family name and when they stopped in at the museum in Grove Hill the lady ran into this lady at the library of the same last name! She called up my cousin, well actually my 3rd cousin, Minnie Mae and the lady talked to Minnie Mae about our family. I've mentioned Minnie Mae to you before. Actually Minnie Mae and my grandfather were first cousins. Minnie Mae called me and told me about the lady and we got to discussing out family tree again and it just made me more fired up then ever to trace out line back. Minnie Mae and I have been doing research on this for a few years now and have run into a brick wall it would seem. We can't seem to get past my great great great great grandfather! Now that is a lot of greats isn't it?! We just can not find out much about him.

I went up to Minnie Mae's house this past Saturday and it was a blast visiting with her. She is 86 years old and sharp as a tack! That woman forgets nothing! And she remembers names and people and their children a whole lot better then me! We were discussing these ancestors in this book I have that Minnie Mae has borrowed twice and read and made notes out of and I have the book with me all the time and yet she was naming off these people and their kids and siblings and I was having to look in the book to find them cause I couldn't remember what child belonged to who, but she sure did! I just sat there with my mouth hung open! I am gonna be taking a couple days off work here in the next couple weeks and Minnie Mae and me are gonna go to the court house in Wilcox County, Alabama and look up information on our ancestors. I am sure glad she is going with me. She will be able to remember a lot of stuff! Me, I will have to be sure and take my pen and paper and my camera to take pictures of stuff! Otherwise, I will forget everything! It is really exciting doing research and it is amazing how just finding one little tiny bit of information will make you so excited!

I went on line to the North Carolina Department of Archives and History to try and find some information on my ancestors. Well, they want you to fill out a form and send it in along with $20.00 per name, per category (birth, death, marriage, etc.) searched! So if they don't find out any information you are just out the $20.00! There were like 15 categories on this one form. That would be like $300.00 just to have one name searched in all those categories! I just couldn't do that. If I lived in North Carolina it wouldn't cost me, except for maybe copying fees. I can understand that it takes someone time to do a search and I would be willing to pay some but what they want is a little much. Here in Alabama I went on line to our Dept. of Archives and History and they, too, had a form. I printed it out, sent them $15.00 and they searched all their departments for any information on my great great great grandfather and sent me several pages of photocopied items they found. Now that was a much better deal! I even got information I didn't even ask for. You see I had been trying and trying to find out when my grandparents got married and was not having any luck. So when Alabama sent me this information on my great great great grandfather they sent along a list of early Alabama marriages and there was my grandparents marriage on the list! How lucky was that?!

Well, I am sure all this research stuff is boring so I'll stop. I did start an embroidery project this weekend. I just did not think to take a picture to post. Will do that later. In looking through my notebook that I keep all my family research information in I came across some papers that I had copied of some things that my brother, Keith had drawn in his notebooks when he was in high school. I gave the original notebooks to my niece (Keith's daughter). But I had made copies of some of the things I liked. There was this one page that he had just sat and doodled. It was mostly circles and he had colored in some parts. It is hard to describe. I will just have to post a picture of it. I am sure he probably sat and did this in class when he should have been paying attention to the teacher! Keith had a hard time in high school after our brother George died. He and George were just two years apart in age and very close. Anyway, I thought this doodle would make a neat looking embroidery so I traced it onto white fabric and started embroidering.

Not all of us were busy doing things this past week! As you can see from the photo below some of us spent lots of time sleeping. This is our cat, Molly. She loves to get on top of my pillows and sleep.

Here she is on top of the stack of pillows. This is 5 pillows! Yes, I said 5! No, I don't sleep on that many, but I do sleep on 3. Notice the embroidery on the top one. My mama did that. Before she died she was really into embroidering pillowcases. She gave them to everyone for gifts!
Sometimes I think it might be nice to be a cat and sleep all day!