Consumed by a Story

Dear Friends,
I've spent the winter consumed by one story, one unwritten saga of a family who left Ireland and Scotland in the early 1800's and traveled to the U.S.A. to raise their family.  Sadly, the record of their lives is found in cemetery after cemetery from County Donagal, Ireland to Pennsylvania, to Indiana, and on to  the plains of Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas, and through the battles of the Civil War, the Spanish American War, and World War II.  In between many many babies were born, but death was always standing nearby collecting mothers, babies, and soldiers.

Mae Clendening Kneer

Of those strong stalwart people who were able to put off death long enough to raise families the pictures show the joy in their lives when time was spent with family and friends.  Pictures also show somber dark eyes starring into a camera searching my soul one hundred years later, wondering who will know them when they are gone.

Pearl Clendening Weaver and my mother Helen.

Postcards tell the journey of this family from Indianapolis to Lansing, Michigan and on to homes and oil fields in Ardmore, Oklahoma and Wichita, Kansas.  Postcards remind them of the family they left behind and of celebrations of Easter, Thanksgiving and Christmas.  Letters and postcards tell of adventures and travels by train and by car.  They tell how one woman traveled from Ardmore, Ok to Indianapolis, Ind with an 8month old son and 5 year old daughter and the help of a Nanny.  Letters tell the longer story of the human heart, its sacrifices and it's passion to continue beating through celebrations and heartache.

1912 A Happy Easter to You.

My grandmother, who's mother died when she was only 3 or 4 lived 75 years, but I was only 12 when she died in 1960.  Her story, and that of her sister, Mae, who died in 1915 at age 34 leaving behind 3 young children, remained tucked away in a box until 1960.  Then from 1960--89 the story lay hidden in a pair of hose in my mother's underwear drawer.  After my mother died the story came to me, and once again lay buried in a plastic tub in my basement.


One day last fall while writing a different family story I received a phone call that my nearest cousin by birth, Thomas, was in the hospital with a possible heart attack.  We had already buried our youngest cousin, Gary, and all of our parents.  My heart raced, and I knew I had to tell my family's story, our story, their story. Follow along in the months to come as I share "Bits and Pieces" of our journey. 


Sincerely,
Letty (Clendening) Stapp Watt