01 Saturday Nov 2025
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From one of my mother’s boxes emerged this salt shaker and pepper mill. They were wrapped in a January 1976 newspaper. And they were full of salt and pepper. I just dumped 50 year old peppercorns. Seriously. (And we chuckled as we cleared out her condiments with expiration dates 12 years past!)
22 Wednesday Oct 2025
Posted in Family history
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We’re moving! After almost 38 years in one house, we will be moving to a smaller home in a few months. Oh, my. We have an attic and basement full of the accumulation that comes with raising a family and losing grandparents and parents over decades. I’m trying to balance the desire to hold on to family memories and my readiness to be less tied to generations of material things. It’s more than a little overwhelming.
Tucked into all this, there are boxes of surprises. Things my mother packed in the Hartford Courant’s January 5, 1976 edition before a move. Two moves later she put boxes in our attic in 1995, saying “These don’t belong to you,” and she never touched them again. I’ve started unwrapping them and I’m finding finds.
Mind you, the goal here is to pare down, deaccession, simplify. But So. Much. Stuff.
If you’re reading this you already know that I’m enthralled by family stories and the things that remind us of those stories. But the sheer volume has to go. So, as I go through this tender process, I’m going to share an object and its story now and then.
The tea cart pictured above was bought by my grandmother about 1945. My mother’s family had lived in Beirut, Lebanon, and moved to the United States when World War II ended. I remember the cart in their little house in the woods in Dover, Massachusetts throughout my childhood. A silver tea service that had belonged to Granny’s mother, Mary (Hill) Mills, sat on it.
My grandfather gave my grandmother a budget for the new household they were setting up in New Hampshire. The figure he told her was their modest total household budget for the year, but apparently Granny misunderstood. She bought a houseful of furniture, spending every bit of their year’s funds. I have no idea how they sorted that out, but the furniture stayed.
After moving with my mum several times, the sweet tea cart has been collecting dust in my basement for several years. I’m thrilled with how it glows now, but I don’t have a spot for it when we move. It’s headed to Circus Lane, a friend’s antiques and vintage shop in search of a new home.
I’d never noticed the little drawer. I hope its new owner does, because I’m going to leave them a note with its story.
22 Saturday Mar 2025
Posted in Family history, Genealogy
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Atlantic City honeymoon, Baltimore, Beirut, Brearley School, Church of St. Ignatius Loyola, Derby, George Bellows, Haverford College, Hill, Johns Hopkins University Medical School, Leon Kroll, Maryland Institute, Mills, Milnes, New York City, Oliver, Succession, wedding, Wedding anniversary, Woodstock Art Colony
Kenneth Oliver (1898-1975) and Elsie Mills (1899-1993), my grandparents, were married 100 years ago on February 18, 1925 at the Church of St. Ignatius Loyala in Manhattan. Like so many good love stories, theirs had its twists and turns, including the classic “boy-meets-girl;-boy-loses-girl;-boy-gets-girl” plot line. It also had parental obstacles, a rival, and international adventure.
Elsie was the eldest of four children of James Mills, a physician and faculty member at Johns Hopkins University Medical School and his wife Mary (Hill). She studied art at the Maryland Institute in Baltimore, graduating in 1921 as winner of the fine art prize.
Ken graduated from Haverford College in 1920 and arrived in Baltimore later that year to study medicine at Hopkins. He must have studied with his future father-in-law that first year, because the Baltimore Sun reported on July 13, 1921 that James Mills and Kenneth Oliver were sailing to Beirut on July 20th. They visited Ken’s parents at their orphanage near Beirut, returning to Baltimore in October.
I don’t know any details of the start or early stages of my grandparents’ romance. Elsie continued her art studies and painting and Ken focused his medical studies, specializing in eye, ear, nose, and throat, his future father-in-law’s specialty. They were probably engaged sometime before the summer of 1921, but James Mills would not allow his daughter to marry Ken until he finished his residency, which was several years off. I imagine they were disappointed, but even my headstrong, free-spirited grandmother would not have disobeyed her father.
Sometime after their engagement, Ken believed he had tuberculosis. TB was highly contagious and still usually fatal, so he broke off his engagement to Elsie. She spent the summer of 1921 studying art in Woodstock, New York with Leon Kroll, George Bellows, and other major artists.
Kroll (1884-1974), who had also taught Elsie at the Maryland Institute, seems to have taken a particular interest in her. He worked side by side with her, each completing a portrait of his Haitian maid that summer, and he used Elsie as a model for several of his paintings.
According to my grandmother, Kroll also asked her to marry him that summer after her engagement had been broken off. Fortunately for my grandfather and their descendants, she turned him down in order to stay true to Ken. And in classic romantic movie style, Ken turned out not to have TB, so they reconciled.
During the next several years, Ken continued his medical training and Elsie continued to study, exhibit, and teach art. Elsie’s father, James, died unexpectedly at age 61 on January 2, 1925, and the young couple seems to have wasted no time, marrying just six weeks later.
At the time of their marriage, Elsie was living in New York at 116 East 63rd Street. She was continuing her art studies and teaching art at the Brearley School, a prestigious private school for girls, located two blocks south at 60 East 61st Street in a building designed by McKim, Mead & White.
I wish it had ever occurred to me to ask my grandparents about their wedding, but it didn’t. The marriage certificate fills in a few details. Given how soon after James Mills’s death they were married, I imagine that it was a very small ceremony. The marriage certificate lists the witnesses as Daniel and A. Douglas Oliver, Ken’s father and elder brother. Daniel Oliver lived in Lebanon, but traveled occasionally to the United States for his work. It is possible that the wedding was the first time Daniel met his new daughter-in-law.
Ken and Elsie were married at the Church of Saint Ignatius Loyola at 980 Park Avenue in Manhattan. An imposing edifice built from 1895-1900, it was the scene of many high profile occasions such as the funerals of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Lena Horne, Oscar de la Renta, and Mario Cuomo. It was also the filming location for the funeral of Logan Roy, central character in the recent streaming series, Succession.
Following their marriage and a honeymoon in Atlantic City, New Jersey, Ken and Elsie settled back in Baltimore in an apartment on Eutaw Place. Elsie’s newly widowed mother sold the family’s house and moved with her twenty year old son, Jimmy, to an apartment across the street from Ken and Elsie. Ken continued his medical training at Hopkins and Elsie continued to paint. In January 1926 she had a one-woman painting exhibition at the Maryland Institute.
Coincidentally, Elsie and Ken shared their anniversary with Elsie’s paternal grandparents. James Mills (1824-1904) married Maria Milnes (1825-1892) 180 years ago on February 18, 1845 at St. Werburgh’s Church in Derby, England. And the 200th anniversary of Maria’s birth in Gloucester, England just passed on March 19th. So many milestones!
James and Maria (Milnes) Mills, 2nd great grandparents
James and Mary (Hill) Mills, great grandparents
Kenneth and Elsie (Mills) Oliver, grandparents
Celia Oliver, mother
Me
17 Friday Jan 2025
Posted in Family history, Genealogy, Slavery, Women's History
Tags
ancestry, Bodenhamer, Coffeyville, family, Family history, Genealogy, Goldsberry, Goss, Greene County, history, Kansas, Marshfield, Missouri, North Carolina, Owen, Rowan County, Slavery, Webster County
I was about 15 when I began piecing together my family history and gathering names of my ancestors. I learned that I had a great great grandmother named Clementine Bodenhamer and I was smitten. Who could resist such a fine name?
Clementine “Clemmie” Esther Bodenhamer was born in Marshfield, Webster County, Missouri on January 30, 1854 and probably died in Coffeyville, Kansas on January 13, 1925, 100 years ago this week. She was the only child of Elizabeth Jane Goldsberry (1833-1888) and (probably) John Bodenhamer (1836-1862).
In 1860 Clementine (6) and Elizabeth Bodenhamer (26) were living in Greene County on the 1,000 acre farm of John’s newly deceased father, Jacob (1790-1860) with his widowed mother, Fernita “Neaty” (Goss) Bodenhamer (1795-1863) and three of his brothers. I have not found a record of Elizabeth’s marriage, but John is the most likely Bodenhamer son to have been Clemmie’s father. He is said to have fought in the Civil War for the Confederacy and died in 1862, although I am not aware of a record of his service or death (yes, there’s lots of conjecture and research to be done!)
Jacob Bodenhamer’s death was followed by Neaty’s in 1863. Clemmie’s childhood circumstances on the large Bodenhamer farm must have changed significantly during those years. Jacob and Neaty had somewhere between 17 and 20 children. They were slaveholders, with eight individuals enslaved by Jacob at the time of his death. (More on this in a post yet to come). Seven of their sons served during the Civil War—five for the Union and two for the Confederacy.
As the farm property was broken up and John died or disappeared, it is unclear where Clemmie and Elizabeth went until about 1868 when Elizabeth married Joshua Hamilton (1810-1889), a farmer 23 years her senior from Marshfield, Missouri. Joshua was twice widowed with ten children.
On Christmas Eve, 1871, Clemmie (17) and James Washington Owen (23) were married in Marshfield. Like many of Clemmie’s relatives, James was born in Rowan County, North Carolina, and moved west to Greene County, Missouri with his family as a child. At the time of their marriage James and five younger siblings were living on the family farm, where he was a farm hand.
Between the 1873 and 1875 births of their first two children, Clemmie and James moved from Greene County to Webster County. The 1880 Census lists James as “keeping a wagon yard.” By the time Clemmie was 32 in 1886 she had given birth to four sons and three daughters. Clyde, Daisy, John, Maud, and Stella (my great grandmother), all lived to adulthood, but Clemmie and James lost their last two sons very young.
The late 1880s must have been particularly difficult for the Owen family. Babies Oscar and Bertie died in 1885 and 1887; Clemmie’s mother, Elizabeth, died in 1888; and then James died in 1889 at age 41. James’ death seems to have been expected. His will, written three months before his death, states that he is “weak in body but strong and vigorous in mind.” He authorizes Clemmie to dispose of personal property and real estate in order to reinvest the proceeds for the care of herself and the children. He stipulates that their 320 acre farm on Derrick Prairie be retained until their youngest child comes of age “so that my family can be sure of a house…or can get the proceeds of the rents.” James also asks that Clemmie sell his interest in a lumber company.
Clemmie remained on the farm until at least 1900, when the census lists her as a farmer, sons Clyde (27) and John (23) as farm laborers, and daughter Maud (20) also in residence. Daughters Daisy and Stella had married and moved away. In 1901 Maud married Alvin Jackson, an order clerk at a wholesale house. Clemmie was living with them and their two young sons in Springfield, Missouri in 1910.
Sadly, by 1920 Maud was a patient at Missouri State Hospital No. 3, a psychiatric hospital in Nevada, Missouri, where she remained for many years. Perhaps for this reason, Clemmie moved by 1920 to the Coffeyville, Kansas home of her daughter, Stella (Owen) Miller and her husband Frank. Three granddaughters, Marjorie, Thelma, and Esther Jane (my grandmother), must have made a lively household. I don’t know the details of Clemmie’s last years, whether she stayed in Coffeyville until her death in January 1925 at age 70. She is buried in Marshfield, Missouri with her husband and two of their children.
In The Marshfield Mail on February 9, 1933, a chatty society columnist wrote nearly ten years after Clemmie’s death, “At her death she left a fine memorial behind. That of a kind, good mother and a loyal Christian woman. Today we heard a friend of hers remark, ‘I believe Clemmie Owen was one among the best women I ever knew.’” She is remembered.
Jacob and Fernita “Neaty” (Goss) Bodenhamer, 4th great grandparents
John (probably) and Elizabeth (Goldsberry) Bodenhamer, 3rd great grandparents
James Washington and Clementine Esther (Bodenhamer) Owen, 2nd great grandparents
Stella (Owen) Miller, great grandmother
William Edward Stephenson, Jr., father
Me
19 Tuesday Sep 2023
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A note to any genealogy purists who may be reading: Bear with me please. This was really fun!
When we adopted Ellie in March 2021, we brought home our first small dog, our first adult dog and our first mixed breed dog. She was a joy from day one. My dear friend’s dear son was working for the Boston Animal Care and Control Shelter, knew we were in need of a dog, and knew our general parameters (not too big/not too small, not aggressive, and cat tolerant). When the call came, we were ready, and it was love at first sight.
Ellie was 22 pounds of love, described as a Border Terrier mix around two to three years old. She was rescued from the street, and when we met her a couple of weeks later she was healthy, not fearful, and eager to snuggle. We still wonder how she ended up on the street–she showed no sign of neglect or abuse, seemed accustomed to being loved, and was (and still is!) a sweet, happy dog.
Recently, dear friend (see above) sent me home with a doggy DNA test kit (Embark), knowing that a) we’re curious about Ellie’s story, and b) I’m totally obsessed with the information and connections I’ve found through my own DNA testing. I asked an assortment of family and friends to guess what the results of Ellie’s test might be, and got a wide range of replies, mostly silly:
Then the results came. She’s what?? The DNA test results couldn’t have startled us more! Where did our Border Terrier go? And what is this Coonhound? Boxer? ROTTWEILER??
Embark, the testing company, also provides a list of other dogs with shared DNA, just like the human DNA testing sites. No, I’m not planning to build a family tree for Ellie, but I love the idea that our little foundling might have relatives. When I looked at the list, her number one match was…drumroll, please…a 51% match named Pupcorn, who lives very close to where we adopted Ellie! Meaning that on day one we’d found either her mother or a full sister. So. Much. Excitement!
Emails and pictures were exchanged with Pupcorn’s person. We’re pretty sure they must be littermates, as they’re about the same age. A playdate is in the works. Size and body shape? Check. Ears? Check. Eyes? Check. Coat? Nope. Goofy underbite? Nope.
So for all the folks out there grumbling about Ancestry’s new pet dna test, give me a little bit of a break. I’m getting a great kick out of learning about Ellie’s unexpected ethnicity. And I never imagined we’d find such close family right from the start. Have fun, all!
03 Saturday Jun 2023
Posted in Family history, Genealogy, People, Places, Uncategorized
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Brummana, Caithness, Family dogs, Family history, Genealogy, Harrington, Lebanon, Michigan, Oliver, Ras el Met'n, Scotland, Stephenson, Yorkshire
I recently had the delightful opportunity to spend an hour chatting with Andrew Martin, host of The Family Histories Podcast. We spoke about one of my very favorite family subjects–my great grandparents, Daniel and Emily (Wright) Oliver. Daniel and Emily came from Caithness, Scotland and Yorkshire, England respectively. They met in their 20s in Brumanna, Syria (now Lebanon) where they were teachers at a Quaker boarding school, and later settled for many decades in the mountain village of Ras el Met’n, where they established an orphanage and school. Tune in to hear the rest of their story, along with the story of my “brick wall” ancestor, Juliaetta (Harrington/Herrington) Stephenson from Michigan, whose parentage remains a frustrating mystery to me.
You can listen to my episode here. Be sure to check out other episodes too. Andrew’s podcast is now in its fifth series and there are lots of interesting stories from all over the world.
A couple of illustrations to go with the podcast:
And a postscript: A few days before this episode was released I had a lovely visit with my mum’s cousin, a granddaughter of Daniel and Emily. She shared a family album with images I’d never seen, including these gems. (Thank you, Susan!)
If not for the Beirut photo studio I would have guessed that the first photograph was a wedding picture. It’s labeled 1895, the year Daniel and Emily were married at ages 25 and 29, but they were married at the Stoke Newington Friends Meetinghouse in London, not in Beirut. Emily appears to be wearing a wedding ring, but Daniel is not. (And I know he wore one. It’s on my husband’s finger now.) This is the earliest image I’ve seen of Daniel.
And the second photograph may be my new all-time favorite. First, he’s in Ras el Met’n wearing his “Highland suit”, purchased in 1938 to his great delight. Also, Olivers are dog lovers from way back, and there are many pictures of Daniel with an assortment of dogs. This, probably taken about 1938, is the best.
01 Wednesday Mar 2023
Posted in Family history, Genealogy, Uncategorized
Another Women’s History Month has arrived and I can’t resist starting with this joyful photo of my Granny, Elsie (Mills) Oliver (1899-1993) with her nephew, Robert “Bobby” Hugh Oliver, Jr. (1930-1976). I can hear her laughing. This is an expression I remember well. And of course she’s holding Bobby’s dog, Snooky. Of course she is.
This is one of several photographs taken during the summer of 1936, presumably at the Lansdowne, Pennsylvania home of my grandfather’s brother and sister-in-law, Hugh and Claire (Loughney) Oliver. My grandparents, mother and her siblings were living in Beirut, Lebanon at the time, with three children between the ages of four and ten, so it was surprising to find my grandmother there without the rest of the family. But there she is with her mother, Mary (Hill) Mills. Elsie must have come from Beirut to visit her mother.
Mary Mills (known to her family as “Dear”) was 60 when this photograph was taken. She had been widowed a little more than ten years. After a lifetime in Baltimore, Dear was living in an apartment in Queens, New York not far from her son Jimmy Mills. This visit from Elsie was to be their last. Mary Mills died in Queens just a year later.
The third image is of the three sisters-in-law, presumably gathered for the visit from Elsie and Mary: Dorothy (Kay) Oliver, who was married to A. Douglas Oliver; Elsie, married to my grandfather, Kenneth Oliver; and Claire, married to Robert Hugh Oliver.
I had a delightful lunch last week with Mary Lee, who inherited this album that had belonged to her great aunt, Claire (Loughney) Oliver, wife of my great uncle, Hugh Oliver. I wrote here about Mary Lee’s and my first encounter over family photos, and am beyond thrilled that we got to meet (so much fun!) and look at photos together. More to come from this album, but today is for remembering Granny’s peals of laughter, her mother Dear, and “the Oliver Girls” in honor of Women’s History Month.
Thank you again to Mary Lee Witaconis for sharing these glimpses of the extended Oliver family.
04 Saturday Feb 2023
Posted in Uncategorized
New information means more names to remember of those who were enslaved by Frederick and Sarah (Elston) Goss. A Black History Month remembrance.
I’ve just found the will of my 5th great grandfather, Frederick Goss (1766-1833) and the estate inventory of his widow, Sarah (Elston) Goss (1772-1837) in Davidson County, North Carolina. Frederick’s 1833 will includes the following:
“I give & bequeath unto my beloved wife Sarah my negro slaves namely James Catharine & Lett, to her use and benefit during her life time & then the said James & Catherine [no mention of Lett] to be sold by my executors and their proceeds to be divided among my lawful heirs.”
The inventory of Sarah’s estate includes “A list of the sale of the property of Sarah Goss deceased sold the 9th day of June 1837.”
Interspersed between the sale prices of such items as “one stone jug 30 cents,” “candlemold and scissors 5 cents,” and “1 side saddle 9 dollars and 50 cents,” the list also includes:
James a negro boy purchased…
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16 Friday Dec 2022
Posted in Family history, Genealogy, People
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NOTE: I made these remarks at the Celebration of Life for my mother, Celia Oliver, on December 5, 2022. We miss her.
I’ve collected an assortment of descriptions of Mum this week—mine and from others—and it’s been interesting to hear how we saw her: loving, funny, resilient, irreverent, distractable, silly, opinionated, complicated, joyful, effortlessly cool, interested, elegant.
Mum was most definitely all of those things, but the qualities that feel most central to me are the joy she took in things large and small around her; her ability to find the funny and silly moments; her resilience through life’s challenges; and above all else, her fierce love for her family.
Mum knew how to find joy and how to create it. She found it in tiny jam jars, cheerful colors, cozy sweaters, and apricot scones. She found it in gardening and in a long succession of dogs and cats too numerous to count. She found it every time she looked out a window, walked down a street or rode in a car. “Look at that…[fill in the blank]!! It’s so cute!”
A recent friend of Mum’s at the Bertram House captured it perfectly, calling it her “childlike sense of wonder.” She was amused and amazed by the large and the small details of her world. “Cute” was her adjective of choice, and it was used kind of randomly to admire everything from the passing 18-wheeler with a yellow stripe, to a ladybug, and once to our great confusion, to the coal barge in Salem Harbor.
A sense of adventure was part of this. After spending her childhood in Lebanon, Jerusalem, Cairo, and her early married years in Alaska and Germany, Mum had a love of travel. When I was 6, Mum (a single mother, widowed 2 years earlier) announced that we were going to go to Paris the following summer. We would sail over on the S.S. France and rent a flat for the summer…if I learned French. I remember the language instruction records vividly, but don’t remember becoming fluent and somehow we never went… It was decades before I realized the pleasure she got in the planning, even when the adventure itself didn’t materialize. This was true of her plan to move to New Zealand for a year, (our mail carrier was quite confused by the daily delivery of the New Zealand Herald one year); the plan to join the Peace Corps when I left for college, and the houseboat on the inland waterway (never mind that she and Walt knew nothing whatsoever about boats).
I learned early from Mum that laughter was a gift that could make anything better. As a pre-teen I spent a lot of time in and out of hospital for back surgery and scoliosis treatment. I wore bulky body casts or a back brace during that especially self-conscious age of 11 to 14. One of Mum’s greatest gifts to me during that time was to make a game of staring back at the kids who stared at me in my unwieldy armor. And laughing at ourselves. During those years I remember her offering constant good cheer and loving support in a way that left no room to feel sorry for myself.
As Mum’s memory declined during the past few years, she continued to be able to laugh at the absurdity of the world and at her own decline. We laughed a lot during these past few months and that was a balm to both of us.
And then there was her resilience. Mum’s complicated life included many upheavals and losses that shaped her. Boarding school starting at age 8, wartime, emigrating to the U.S. and leaving beloved grandparents behind in Lebanon, more boarding school. She was widowed before she was 30. There were more moves, remarriage, a divorce. Life brings us all challenges. She struggled. I know she did. And yet, she created a life where she found joy and humor and a good portion of contentment.
When the time came to move from the little condo she loved on Kosciusko Street to the Bertram House, that resilience came through loud and clear. Mum, who loved her “quiet little life” and valued her privacy, made the adjustment to assisted living with enthusiasm (mostly). She opened herself to new people and created a little community of dear friends among the loving staff there. She embraced them and they returned her enthusiasm in the best possible ways. We’re so grateful for the time she had there and the love she shared during recent difficult months.
When I asked Will and Abby what the first words were that came to mind to describe Grandma, they both said loving first of all. So did I. Mum’s love was fierce. It was absolute. It was sometimes exhausting. It was joyful and funny and resilient. And it runs through all of us. She adored her family, each of us in our own way. She loved babies and dogs (not necessarily always in that order) and loved nothing more than being a grandmother and great grandmother.
That circle of life business worked its magic in our family this year. Lily’s birth in April brought incredible happiness to all of us. Mum’s delight in her, right up until the last days of her life, was a joy to behold.
Mum, we miss you already, but I’m hoping you’re settled on that cloud you always told me about, dangling your toes with Daddy, Damdaddy and Granny, Peter, and all the other special people. We love you.
14 Sunday Aug 2022
Posted in Family history, Genealogy, People
In family history research, and in life in general, I’ve always believed in the magic of serendipity aided by a good helping of paying attention. And always gratitude.
When Ancestry started waving its little green hint leaves at me about my mother’s first cousin, Bobby Oliver, I took a peek at a recommended tree and smiled to find a few photos of him. I remembered meeting Bobby once at my grandparents’ when I was a child. He was about my mother’s age and died in his forties.
As I explored the tree, I realized that it belonged to a relative of Bobby’s mother, a connection by marriage, and not a direct relative of mine. And yet…my attention was caught by the photo of a lady in round spectacles and a white-haired wig attached to the tree. It was my great grandmother, Emily (Wright) Oliver, but it was listed as someone else! Someone I wasn’t related to! I know this particular photo well. I have a copy of it. And the very Victorian brooch she’s wearing is in my jewelry box. It was definitely Emily and most definitely not this Anna person.
Misattributed portraits come up often on Ancestry trees. Oh, look! Ancestry waved it’s little hint leaf at me! Somebody posted a photo of great, great aunt Mary Sue! I’ll add it to my tree! And once a mistake is made, it can spread like wildfire. If dozens of other people have that photo in their family tree and they all say it’s Mary Sue, then it must be true. Ack!
But before harumphing too much about Emily being mislabeled as Anna, I wrote the person in whose tree I’d found it. To thank her for the wonderful pictures of Bobby. What a pleasure to find them! And, by the way, about that photo you’ve labeled as Anna…
As usual, courtesy (and persistence) is the best approach. It took two messages (not everyone checks Ancestry as obsessively often as I do), but when I heard back from Mary happy things followed. She corrected the misidentification. We shared family info relating to Bobby, who was also her mother’s first cousin. And, best of all, she had a family album with more pictures of my side of the family. Wonderful pictures of my grandfather and his brothers as children, of my great grandparents. I’m thrilled and grateful. And it turns out that Mary’s son lives in the same Pennsylvania town my daughter and her family just moved to. We’re going to meet up sometime and look at pictures together. Hooray!
So when the serendipity gods drop something into your lap, be sure you’re paying attention, and don’t forget to say a heartfelt thank you.
Daniel (1870-1952) and Emily (Wright) Oliver (1865-1954), my great grandparents
Kenneth Stuart Oliver (1898-1975) my grandfather
Alan Douglas (Doug) Oliver (1896-1983) Daniel and Emily’s son, my great uncle
Robert Hugh Henderson (Hugh) Oliver (1903-1979) Daniel and Emily’s son, Bobby’s father, my great uncle
Robert Hugh (Bobby) Oliver, Jr. (1930-1976) Hugh’s son, my first cousin once removed
Special thanks to Mary Witaconis for the use of these photographs. They make me happy.
A participant in the 7th Annual Genealogy Blog Party Potluck Picnic.
Generations of Nomads 