1,000 Words

I read a quote yesterday that boggled my mind. According to the now defunct 1000memories website, every two minutes we take as many photos today as all of humanity took during the entire 19th century. 

Photography became popular and accessible to many during the Civil War. Letters to soldiers usually included a request for a portrait which the soldiers usually complied. These photos were treasures, the next best things to having the real person back at home with their loved ones.  

And those photos are even more precious today because they are hard to find. I have been blessed to have some photographs from the late 19th and early 20th century but I want more.  

Yes, I love a good story. I have been fascinated by the written word from the moment my father walked me, a precocious seven year old, to the local library branch to get my first library card. Yet, I must concur that a picture is worth a 1,000 words. Stories of long-gone ancestors are wonderful but a photo is glorious. Looking into the eyes of a past ancestors and relatives, marking their stance and demeanor, observing the details of fashions from another era, takes one's perception of those individuals to a level not obtained by mere vital statistics. For me, old photos are time machines that captures the past where words may fail. 

So I hunt for old photographs, beg relatives who profess to hoard them, take as many photos as I can for future generations. And I share. Because not only do we take more photos now than ever, we have the technology to scan and post our treasures for all to see.

Columbus and Narcissa Alexanders, my paternal great grandparents

Fred and Posie Warren, my maternal grandparents

Solomon Koonce, born 1826, and family. He is my 3 x great-grandfather on my mother's side

Narcissa Wallace Alexander, my paternal great grandmother

Narcissa's mother, Cinderella Wallace

My maternal great grandmother Lizzie Brassfield Koonce and her sister Cora Brassfield.

Kinfolk

I love genealogy. I love the mysteries and the sleuthing. I love the rush I get when I find even the tiniest of thread in the patchwork which is my family tree. To me, it is an example of critical thinking at its best.

So why don't more people love it? To be specific, why don't more of my relatives love it? The reason I am complaining is because it would make my research yield so much more if there were more of my kinfolk researching.

I use ancestry.com as a base for most of my online research. After you find a record of one of your ancestors, there is a link to all the other people researching that particular person. It is so frustrating for me that whenever I click on that link, it rarely leads to anyone. I have found one person--ONE person--that was also researching a shared ancestor. It felt like I had discovered a new planet. In the other cases where there was another person looking for the same ancestor, I either knew more than they did or their information was incorrect.

Sometimes I send out queries to people whom I have deduced may be related to me. They rarely respond. I think some may suspect my motives but mostly I believe they're indifferent.

Maybe that is why it so exciting to me to find out that I have at least one cousin--Barbara-- that shares my love and thirst for knowledge when it comes to genealogy.

I remember MLK 4/4--40 years ago

Even though my search is for long ago ancestors , I am cognizant that my own experiences are also important. They should also be recorded. This is not conceit. It is for future curious generations. If only my ancestors had been able to leave more bread crumbs, this research wouldn't be so difficult.

April 4, 1968. I remember exactly what I was doing on that day. That was the day that Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. It also was the day of my first ever date. It was a double date me, my first boy friend "Pluke," my aunt Adrene, Smitty and Mickey. I guess that is a double and a half date.

My church was holding a state convention in my city. Pluke and Mickey were from South Bend and was there to attend the convention. Smitty was an evangelist and he was holding a revival afterwards. We left church to get something to eat. I suggested Bianchi's, a restaurant that our family usually frequented. When we arrived, the whole restaurant was in a jovial mood. There were nothing but White customers and they were loudly celebrating the death of MLK like it was a new holiday. This freaked Adrene out. She demanded that we leave immediately. So we did.

The next day I read of the violence in other cities. Eventually some of it came to our city. Buildings were burned. Store owners marked their own businesses as "black owned" or the such. It was a very scary, very sad time.

I remember that many people did not like Martin Luther King, Jr. Blacks didn't like him because he wasn't militant enough. Whites didn't like him because he was against the Viet Nam War and wasn't patriotic enough.

Forty years later things have changed a great deal for the better. But this is the 21st century. We should have improved so very much more as human beings and citizens of the world.

I wonder what MLK would say about Obama's candidacy. I think I know what he would say about the Iraq war.