After feeling like the living dead with a bad chest cold for several days and getting nothing accomplished, I received in the mail (yes, the mail) a thick packet hand-addressed to me from my cousin, Betty Shorner.
She’d read about my DNA results showing my 11% of Western Europe and though I should know the details of my German ancestry. It was 19 pages of pure fascination with information I’d not knows previously.
I had spent a lot of time with my great grandmother before she died. I have her German Bible which I treasure dearly.
The fascinating thing about these 19 pages are that, besides detailed dates and names and places, there were stories about people…those who’d died in childbirth, had their homes destroyed by fires…ancestors in the Civil War who were killed in battle or died as prisoners.
One of the names I want to research more is: Elviretta Lucretia Churchill. Sounds Italian, huh? And since I am 60% pure British (which is why I seem to be addicted to information about the Royal Family), the name Churchill goes back generations. My grandmother always told me he was my cousin 7 to 10 times removed.
Thank you, Betty, for bringing such joy to me this week. Can’t wait to add it all to my official family tree. And now I know my German ascestors were from Lower Krombach, Germany, in the vicinity of Frankfurt! Guten Tag!
The typing was done for my cousin, Holly by my grandmother Hatfield. My grandmother was the apple of my eye. I knew my great grandma well.