Beginning the Trail

I’ve decided to start an ancestry blog. I want to share researching, history, our families place in the world but mostly I need to share this so by the time my kid’s eyes stop glazing over every time I talk about our ancestry, there will be a place where they can learn about it.

I attended an Ancestry.com conference over the weekend. Over 1,100 people (okay, I don’t want to say it was a geriatric crowd but I might have witnessed two people whose walkers had been stuck together while pushing each other out of the way to meet an expert) all searching for a piece of themselves, searching for a truth.

Looking at the crowd, I realized our younger generation better get themselves together before they lose all of these stories.

So, that is my blog. There will be wars (Civil, Creek, Spanish-American, WWII- The Big One), Turn of the Century (a few), weddings, divorces, children born out of wedlock, children raised by others, orphaned by death, orphaned by life, love matches, some marriages made in hell and one or two bad guys and a Second Chief of an Indian tribe.

What this won’t be is a name and date kind of blog. Like all of my writing and researching, the story is my lifeblood.

When my children (fine, a long line before them) were little, my favorite time was reading a story aloud. I would use funny faces, loud booming voices and make reading fun because I wanted to make sure those children understood what a fortunate thing it is to be able to read and to share a story.

Flora May Burgess Hardin True was born on March 27, 1902 in the Indian Territory. There, just to get that out of the way, is where I will start. But, in order to understand where she was when she came into the world on a stormy Thursday morning, in the presence of her Grandfather Richard Adkins, Richard Adkin’s sister in law, Hannah Ashworth and her own dear father, Henry Carter Burgess.

Flora said, “My father had been ill and thought a warmer climate might be better for him so with the aid of a covered wagon, they moved from Joplin to the Indian Territory. His health improved and he became interested in an Indian Maiden.”

It was more than a year before Henry got up the courage to ask for her hand in marriage.

According to Flora, “My father worshiped every bone in my body and the ground I walked on.”

Flora was loved. She was a child of love and she was loved. She poured that love onto my mother and taught my mother to be the best mother in the world. That started with Cart’s love of an Indian Maiden and flows from me onto my children, teaching them to love is the greatest gift bestowed by our Ancestor Angels.

Cart, Flora, Willa