The Ancestral Pen

I wrote this post back in 2009 on my other blog, "Untangled Family Roots." This is one of my favorite treasures from my genealogy research days. Some day I'll write a book about this experience and Grandma's life. However, it's one of those books that I keep starting and then putting down because it holds a special place in my heart, and I want it to be perfect.  ----------------------------------- 2009 As a result of more than two years of research, I was finally able to give my husband's grandmother the gift she had most wanted. When she was a child, her mother, Flora May   (Manning) Conner died after giving birth. Grandma didn't even know if the child was a girl or a boy, and all she ever wanted was to find where her mother was buried and return to visit her. After I found where she was buried at the Llano Cemetery Amarillo Potter County Texas, USA Plot: Section 74 Lot 46 Space 1, my sister and mother-in-law were able to take her on a trip to Texas and ...

Laura is the second from the Left.  This week's theme is "artistic," and I'll be honest—it made me laugh at first. Neither my family nor my husband's family tree is decorated with painters, musicians, or poets. We come from long lines of farmers and the occasional preacher, people who worked with their hands in fields rather than studios. But as I dug deeper into the story of my husband's 2x great-grandmother, Laura Alice Barnett Conner (1876-1968), I realized there's a different kind of artistry worth celebrating—the art of survival, resilience, and creating something beautiful from the rawest materials life can offer. A Canvas of Constant Movement Laura Alice was born on February 14, 1876, in Floyd County, Kentucky, to Samuel J. Barnett and Bethany Slusher. But like many women of her era, her life became a masterpiece painted across multiple states and decades of change. At just 14 years old, Laura married William Monroe Conner on August 30, 1890, i...