Stories. We've all got one or many and we are all apart of one...or many. Our stories link us to others and tell us who we are as an individual, a family and even an ancestry.
I grew up in a family of storytellers. Hard to believe I know. From my earliest moments I remember my mother regaling me with tales of her youth, growing up as the eleventh child and also youngest child of farmers in the red dirt of Oklahoma. As a kid, I would rather listen to my mom tell stories than watch TV and ever so often I could corner her of an evening and prod her for hours about her childhood, her life and all that she was willing to divulge in story form.
My mom had a decided advantage over her other brothers and sisters growing up and that advantage was that she was the youngest. The baby. With there being a 20 year gap between her and her oldest sister and a three year gap between her and her brother who was the next above her in age, Mom pretty much had my grandmothers undivided attention whenever she wanted it and like me, she would corner her mother and prod her for hours to tell stories of her childhood, her life and all the stories she knew about the family.
From my mother and my grandmother by extension, I learned about my maternal great grandfather Henry Bennett Etier, who was a French Canadian and a roamer. He seldom settled for long, traveling all over from Louisiana to Oklahoma and areas in between. Even though settling in one place for more than a short while was not to be his life, he managed to marry three times, outliving all of his wives and through these wives he ended up with 14 children. All of his boys were named after presidents or famous men and all of his girls were named after flowers and states. My grandmothers name was Grace Missouri. She later change it though to Grace Mary after joining the Catholic church. My grandmother was also Henry's youngest child and she was the seventh daughter. My mother was also a seventh daughter which my grandmother always said that the seventh daughter of the seventh daughter was special and that my mom would have an understanding and knowledge of things that others do not. She was right. My mother did.
There were stories of how Grace married into the large and boisterous Dougherty clan and she would tell of my my grandfathers father and how he had died in a tragic horse and buggy accident leaving my great grandmother a widow. There were stories of how the Dougherty's came to the United States from Ireland and how once arriving here were looked on as "dirty Mick immigrants" and were seen as only good for hard labor such as working on the Erie Canal or working as chamber maids for the more affluent English immigrants.
There were stories of how the Dougherty's left the New York area and traveled by covered wagon hoping to find a better life and land of their own. They were part of a wagon train heading west towards the promise of freedom and their own part of this vast and quickly developing new country. They settled in Iowa and stayed there until the Oklahoma Land Rush and the promise of an even better future beckoned them....and then it was Oklahoma with it's red dirt and land a plenty where they settled.
All of these stories handed down and told in great detail always filled me with pride and a sense of who I was and were I came from. I soaked every ounce of information in like the geeky little sponge I was and even at a very young age, long before the internet and Ancestry.com I was researching even more of my family. Through this fascination and determination I broke out of my shell and began to bug other family members about their memories and even began long pen-pal relationships with distant relatives that I never met face to face but knew intimately because of the life stories they shared with me. It was a great hobby to have and I learned so much.
Now don't think that my mother was the only one that I would corner for these family history lessons. My grandfather Robert Castle Jacques on my dads side was still living when I was a young child. He had had an exciting life (at least by this small town girls standards), and he loved to spend hours talking about his life and the people he had met in his life almost as much as I loved listening to him. He was part of large family growing up in a tiny town in Kansas. When he was seven years old, his family could no longer afford to provide for him as times were tough, so he took out on his own. Over his life time he worked as a ranch hand at the famous 101 Ranch in Ponca City, OK which was owned and run by Buffalo Bill Cody. He of course met the man himself, not to mention Annie Okley and the famous Sitting Bull. He also worked on the railroad and in the oil fields for many years and met the likes of Howard Hughes Sr and his infamous son Howard Hughes, Lyndon B. Johnson before he ever even thought of the White House and various other famous and not so famous and yet extremely colorful people. I would sit for hours mesmerized by his life and the humility in which he told his stories. I don't think he had a clue how fascinating he truly was.
After my grandfather passed away, I would then harangue my own dad to continue the legacy started by his dad and to fill in the questions that one has after someone dies and you think "I should have asked that." My dad given the right opportunity and the right state of mind could tell a pretty good story himself and I would learn what it was like for him as a small town Kansas kid during the depression. He would tell of times when his family was well off enough to have housekeeper and then when the depression was full on, how they barely had enough to eat. There were stories of my dad as a young man with a dream to own his own farm and how he worked night and day to keep that farm up and running. When farming was no longer a viable way for him to make a living, he came to Wichita and went to work where he stayed until he retired.
I guess you could say I am a story junkie. I love my families stories and I love to hear the stories of other families too. We each are so much more than the world knows and we all have a family legacy of sinners and saints, tough times and glory days. They make us who we are and give us something to pass on to future generations. Sadly, with the world as it is today, my kids aren't the story lovers that I was. They don't have the time and maybe the interest to sit down without TV, phone or electronic gadgets and just learn about who they are and about the people who came before them. Perhaps this is why I blog. Perhaps someday, long after I am gone, my kids and grand kids will be able to look back on my body of written work and learn a little about me, my parents, grand parents and about how their family came to be. My hope is that it gives them roots and a sense of the history that makes them who they are as both individuals and family. If that happens, then perhaps, my purpose here on this earth will have surely been fulfilled.
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