Melungeon-L Archives

Archiver > Melungeon > 2001-01 > 0978974809


From: Jean E Vaughan <>
Subject: Re: [Melungeon] Re: To tell or not?
Date: Mon, 8 Jan 2001 09:26:49 -0800



On Sun, 7 Jan 2001 15:50:13 -0500 "Roger" <>
writes:
When I said: "Do you mean the pictures that Freda said I
> could look at?" And she got real quiet. She said that she was told
that
> those pictures got burnt up in the fire>
> Roger

So true, so true! My family search began years back, when my mother
asked me if I could possibly learn the truth about what really happened
to her father ... and I finally did and it was pretty tragic. But, what
we didn't know for several years was that Mother knew she was dying, and
seemed to feel an urgent need to understand her family history and find
her lost family, so when she asked so sincerely, we persisted in digging,
not realizing that apparently to her, this was some sort of bizarre
contest ... to see if we'd be able to solve those mysteries in time Like
your relatives, supposedly all our mother's photos and family papers had
been destroyed by fire long before she was even married ... but
mysteriously, a trunk full re-appeared, just a few years ago .....and we
realized she was slowly allowing some of these clues to surface, as we
searched.

It's a little macabre to say now, but Mother chose to spend her last days
at home in her own bed, and my sister and I were often trying to figure
out how on earth to get into her bedroom sight unseen, and explore her
little boudoir desk, the last possible place where she might keep her
personal papers .. we'd finally realized that she had been carrying on
secret communications with some of these supposedly lifelong missing
family members for decades .. and we didn't know any other way we'd ever
learn who or where some of these people might have been - she was
keeping them hidden even though as far as we knew, she was the last
surviving member of her generation. But, apparently Mother realized that
upon her death, we'd have access to those letters and photographs, and
somehow, as deathly ill as she was, and with round-the-clock home health
care nurses, she managed to get up out of her bed in the middle of the
night, and destroy what remaining letters, photographs and documents she
had, because sometime in the last week or so of her life, they totally
disappeared... even some of the photos off the walls. Not only what must
have been in her desk, but a trunk full of photos and other papers, she'd
previously allowed us to examine, but not take.

What a tragedy though ... now our own children will never have the
possibility of seeing and learning more about their ancestors. Yes,
there were some deep dark family secrets, but looking at them from the
distance of so many years, they weren't THAT bad ... but now those
letters and photographs are gone forever.

Jeannie

This thread: