My Ancestors

For about four years now I've had an increasing interest in family history- mostly my own family, but I love the puzzling aspect of everybody's backstory.  If you haven't done it, you should check out ancestry.com.  There's so much information on this website & it's intuitively easy to use.  I could, & often do,  spend hours there doing research, looking at documents & just enjoying, what for me has been, the ever deepening mystery of my ancestors.  

Oh how I wish this bug had bitten when my Grandparents were living.  As I recall, though, they never liked to speak too much about their past - apparently some secrets, dirt, skeletons, & not always happy memories existed for them.  And in "those days" we didn't discuss that kind of thing.  I would have been strung up for my open mouth & it's loose lippy ways.  I was born in the right decade to preserve my own life.  

In addition to using the ancestry website to feed my puzzling passion (tracing your roots really is like working a puzzle) & experiencing the pure joy of putting together my family's sketchy history, I have been lucky enough to have been bequeathed boxes, bags-full, & albums of family photos from all sides.

Here's how the majority of these old family photos came to me:  "Dawn, do you want any of these old photos?  If you don't take them home, I'm throwing them away."

I love to use my OCD skills to pour over these yellowed black, sepia, & white, shedding old brown-orange crusty-taped, musty-smelling photos, trying to cipher the word or two someone might have bothered to jot on the back.  

I scan each one, label it digitally if I know who, what, when, or on the rare occasion WHERE, & then further categorize them by family, my preferences, & species (you know - "animals," "the farm," "buildings," "unknown." Don't judge  - we all have our own definition of species!)  I crop, enhance, rotate,  & create my own historical pictorial.  

My biggest joy-bomb, by far, in these photos has been in the discovery that there are so many incredible dogs in my family's history.  

I HAD NO IDEA!!!

No one EVER talked to me about dogs.  My parents never had dogs when I was growing up.  NO ONE, even in my extended family, lived with dogs.  

Well, guess what...I've found at least 15 different dogs in photos of my ancestors.  WTH???  Someone dropped the dog ball during my life time.

To see this gorgeous farm dog of my mom's mother's mother's father elevated to the two-barrel status makes me so happy!!

Meet SANDY.
In a time when you know money was
scarce, I am so proud of my family
for having a portrait made of their
tuxedo dog!!  (circa 1920)

I am still, even in this very moment, amazed that, Dogs, like horses, have always been in my family "blood."  I had to mature to the ripe old age of 41 before my (as it is obvious to me only now) inherited love & frankly out of control PASSION for dogs kicked in.  

 Warning:  Cliché ahead....

Dogs, like cotton, have become the texture of the fabric that is me.   

I KNEW it!!  White bully dogs are in my genes.  That explains
why I am obsessed with these beauties.  I came by it honestly!! (through my crazy family!!)

I have had this picture since I was probably 14 years old.  

(Long before I had a conscious passion for canines.)

I was always fascinated by the steps to no where.  

I don't remember who was going to throw this one away. 

 I probably dug it out of a burn barrel.  

The back of the photo tells us everything we need to know.

(see below)

Woof, Rover, Woof.