Quote from: LoriDee on May 01, 2024, 04:38:10 PMMy ex-wife's father told me a story.
His grandfather was a farmer in Illinois. Behind his farm was a battlefield during the Civil War. After the battle, the local farmers designated an area to be used as a temporary cemetery to bury the dead. The farmers all pitched in carrying bodies to the area and the local Illinois Militia arrived to help out. One of the militiamen was Abraham Lincoln when he was a young man. I have been to that cemetery. There is a monument there and only six or eight graves remaining. I had taken a picture of it which is how it came about that he shared the story about his grandfather.
Those kinds of stories, passed down through generations of a family, are wonderful.
What's actually a bit ironic about the whole Abraham Lincoln thing is, it's on my mom's side, through her maternal grandmother whose great grandmother was Abe's mother's (Nancy Hanks) sister. I believe.
The reason I say this is all ironic? Is that this wasn't a story passed down lovingly through the family... well, at least not for the first 40 years of my mom's life. She was an orphan. Her parents both lived... but her father left during the depression and her mom decided that having two kids was too much for her, so she just sent my mom and uncle to an orphanage.
I mean, could you even imagine. Her mom came back into her life intermittently ... and her dad re-emerged when I was like 16... he actually showed up for a visit after all that time. We only saw him once or twice before he died.
But over the years my mother slowly cobbled together family history, which is why the things she learned were so precious. Even last weekend, for example, one of my sisters gave me a photo of my mom as a child that I had never seen. There are, as you would imagine, VERY few of those. This one is her, with a cowboy hat, riding a pony.
We are trying to image the world where orphans got ponies... but we think it's because her mother did have money, she was just a POS person and didn't want responsibility.
Anyway, not sure why I'm sharing that, other than the fact that its a Dickens tale come to life. But it had a lovely, happy ending. My mom ended with the big family she always wanted, and she and my dad were one of the all-time great couples.
Love,
Allie