SUNDAY STORY DAY

Once upon a time.................

Isn't that how one begins a "story"???

Our lives are stories.  Each day we write another story in our lives.  Today my story is on something that happened to me this week.

I have done genealogy for decades...since I was 19 years old.  It has been my main passion in life besides my family.  On one of the family names I thought I pretty well had it done.  Imagine my surprise when I was looking at the Missouri marriage records and found that my great grandfather had taken out a marriage license but the license was returned unused.

Then I thought...hmmm, if he was there in Missouri (from Illinois) could his elusive son have been there too.  His son was Cecil (my grandmother's brother).  Sure enough Cecil was there in the marriage records.  Got the name of his wife and then from there came an explosion of knowledge.  I found out that Cecil had a son from this marriage.  Who knew!!!!  The son was also named Cecil.  I "followed" him and found that he was a navy man during World War II, that he died in Colorado at old age.  I have yet to find his wife..if any. 

I could go on and on about the original Cecil (my grandmother's brother) ...like I found him a few years ago living in Seattle with a wife and two daughters and those daughters are still living.  I found one and called her in Houston Texas.  She told me about her father Cecil who left the family when the children when young.  He was an artist and also some not so nice things about him. While speaking with the daughter for just a very few minutes, she suddenly said, "oh someone is at the gate..I have to go."  I made arrangements to call her the next day...no answer.  No answer ever again.  She received my mailings and packets of pictures but never a response.  That was the end of having any contact with the first cousins of my mother. 

Not a good ending to a story....but a story that is opening up again with the finding of Cecil's son Cecil and now perhaps I will find living descendants of him.  The End?  No, the beginning!