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Archiver > Melungeon > 2001-01 > 0979106710


From: friend9 <>
Subject: Re: [Melungeon] Re: To tell or not?
Date: Tue, 09 Jan 2001 22:05:10 -0800


That's such a sad story . . . but imagine the heartache and pain behind a
dying woman's resolve to obliterate the trail back.

Human agencies would only fail to unravel the mystery.

Looks like a case for Montel or Sally Jessie or Oprah's. Seriously.

Curtis

-----Original Message-----
From: Jean E Vaughan <>
To: <>
Date: Tuesday, January 09, 2001 9:38 AM
Subject: Re: [Melungeon] Re: To tell or not?


>
>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
>
>
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