52 Week Challenge    Ancestor 4 is my grandmother (my dads mother) Hettie Mae Ralls Dixon

 Topic is Witness to History 

Grandma was born in May 1904 in Horatio AR.  Her mother died when she was about 10 years old. Her father took her to live with her mothers sister Josie Story Ward.  Grandma said uncle Johnny Ward is the one who taught her to read.  She lived with them until she met grandpa.  They met when she attended church and him and his brothers played music and were kind of rambunctious.  I only saw my grandma on vacations every summer. She lived 19 years after his husband died, living with her daughters Marie and Odessa first in Blytheville and then in Dangerfield TX where she  passed away in a nursing home at age 92.  She gave me her first wedding band that had orange blossoms on it that had mostly faded away when I was 10 years old.  I put it in a Kleenex to keep it safe and my mother threw it away by accident.  I can remember helping her shell peas on her front porch while we were visiting on vacation.

Grandma was born in a very small community called Frog level.  They had no running water or electricity.  She never learned to drive a car and never worked as far as I know.  The family as a whole picked cotton as they were growing up, in fact the whole family picked cotton so they could buy a house on Rose St in Blytheville in the mid 40s.  She always had a garden.  She saw many changes growing up, cars instead of horses, electricity and running water instead of an outhouse.  I wish I had asked her about voting and how she felt about it.

  

 52 Week Challenge - Favorite Photo  - My ancestor 3 is John Freeman Dixon (my dads father).

My grandfather is John Freeman Dickson (Dixon) who was born on Oct 11, 1902 in Delight AR.  I only visited him on summer vacations every year as they lived in Wichita KS, Idabel OK or Luxor/Blytheville AR most of the time I was growing up.  I remember us kids helping him dig potatoes in Idabel and remember him and his brothers Oscar and Otis telling stories from "the old days" when they lived in AR.  Us kids were mesmerized by these stories of a different life that we ever knew.  This is where we first heard the work "Hant" which means ghost.  Grandpa was a carpet layer in Wichita, but was retired in Idabel and Blytheville.  The wore very thick glasses as he had cataract surgery before they implanted a lens in your eye.  He died in 1977 in Osceola AR when I was 26 years old.  I took a bus with Ricky to attend his funeral.  We rode back with mom and dad.

This is a picture of him and my grandmother taken in 1956 when he was 54 years old.

 

 52 Ancestors 

My Ancestor 2 is my mother Ruth Delores "Dee" Christian

Theme - Orgins

My mother was born in Fulton MS.  Her family has been in this area since the 1830s  They were from North Carolina and then spent some time in Kentucky before continuing to MS. Many of the original group were planning on continuing to Texas but they couldn't cross the Mississippi River so they turned around to head back and stopped in the Fulton area for the winter. They planted crops and decided to stay. Many of this family lived in western  Alabama as well as MS as Fulton is on the line.  Most of the family was really poor during her time of growing up there.  The previous generations in the mid 1800s of her father's side had large farms and slaves during that time period. The families gradually lost their money and land during the depression. All families had many children back then. Her parents left the area when she was a teen and moved to the Blytheville Ar looking for work.  Her father passed away when she was 19, right after she was married.

 52 Weeks

Week 1

Ancestor - my Dad, Ertice Dixon.  Dad was born in Delight AR.

Theme is Family Lore

My father told me several stories that I questioned.  The first was about a Great Uncle named Benjamin  Franklin Wingfield who was married to his fathers sister Mary Ellen "Molly" Dickson.  She was a widow as her husband was killed in the civil war.  When I researched him, he was born in 1854, so couldn't have served in the Civil War - he was actually in WW1 and died in 1913.  The family was disappointed.

The second was that his grandpa had given him his shot gun when he was in his early teens (around 1938).  He traded it for an old Model A Ford that he found rusting in a field.  He worked on the car until he got it running.  It was his first car.  He was a mechanic all his life.  He later regretted trading his grandpas gun for a car.  This story seems to be true and his brothers and sisters remembered it also.

Saying goodbye to 2023! 

Well so much for posting once a month :)  2024 will be better.  I have signed up with Amy Johnson Crow to write something about my ancestors every week for 52 weeks.  I printed out my ancestry chart and have numbered 49 ancestors and have the next generation (7th) to chose the last three to write about.  I am looking forward to this.

 My goal for 2022 is to post at least twice a month.  Winter is here which means less yard work and more time for research.  😀

Genealogy Highlights for 2021:

• I finally submitted and was approved for membership into DAR with my Garrett family.   
• I was elected as President of the Illinois State Genealogical Society.

 Welcome to my first blog post.  I have been researching my family for a little over 20 years.  I have taken a few research trips digging up my southern roots in Mississippi, Alabama and Arkansas.  

My family search names are:  In Mississippi and Alabama are Christian, Moore, Stovall, Plunkett, Cantrell, and Lewis.  In Arkansas Dickson(Dixon), White, Ralls, Ligon and Story.  All of these migrated from the Carolina's, Virginia, Tennessee and Kentucky.

I am a member of National, State (serve on the board) and local (President) societies.  I live in Illinois but am a member of many out of state societies.  

I am working on a couple of applications to become a member of our local DAR society and have various patriots that I am working on.  Seriously thought I had one this week and find that my hold up is my grandfather who lied about his age to get married.  I have put in a lot of research time in the last few weeks trying to get one of these patriots approved.  

I sure wish things would open up again so I get get out to some of these research facilities in person.