When I first received my “Inherited Treasures” – boxes of photographs, letters, journals, and an assortment of family Bibles – I had no idea what I would find.
The family I’ve always known isn’t very large. I have only one brother and so does my mother. I have only a couple of cousins on my mother’s side of the family. My father’s side was a bit bigger, but we saw them mostly at Sunday dinners and on holidays.
I had grandparents and even great-grandparents, but somehow there wasn’t a clear line to connect how the great aunts and uncles fit in. That’s where some of the mysteries of the “Inherited Treasures” come from. There were whispered stories, but never answers to the questions I asked about who those people were, so I stopped asking. Unfortunately, the people who could answer the questions are now gone.
When I began looking through the photographs, letters, and journals, some of the pieces began falling into place. Then I started looking at the Bibles. People of earlier generations wrote all the important events of their lives in their Bibles, as well as faithfully reading them. I discovered our family had roots in Texas and in Michigan, and my many months of research began.
I suddenly knew why my great-grandmother was such an accomplished pianist, and where she met my great-grandfather. Because I didn’t want the stories to be lost, I decided to fill in the blanks as historical fiction, hoping to stay as close to the truth as possible.
I’ve shared two pages from one of Hazel’s Bibles here. You may notice on the Family Register page that Charlie’s family is not filled in. I’m not sure why. You’ll also notice that the birth year of Hazel’s father, James, isn’t listed. For the record, it’s 1861. There was a good deal of kidding about the fact that Charlie was the same age as James, but in fact, Charlie was about 13 years younger. He was still nearly 18 years older than Hazel.
