Surrounded by history

As I was talking with my friend yesterday, we realized that most of the people we went to elementary school with lived in families who had lived in Arizona for a while. Many people had grandparents who also lived in the area. The Phoenix area was not the city of transplants that it is now. As my mother and I have visited various friends today, I realize that they, too, are all long time residents. My friend, who still lives in the valley, says it is very rare that she comes across people who didn't personally move here. I'm not even sure where I'm going with this except to note the phenomenon. 

I've also been helping my mom go through some boxes that have been stored since my grandmother passed away twenty-five years ago. A couple of them included some family history which has been interesting to look at. One picture shows my great-grandmother and my grandmother (on my mother's side) when my grandmother was eight, standing on a train platform about to leave Chicago for Arizona due to my great-grandfather's health. This history I have known for a long time, but I never put together the fact that they relocated to Arizona just three years after Arizona gained statehood. For some reason this blows my mind a little bit. My great-grandfather (on my father's side) owned a cattle ranch in northern Arizona having also relocated from Illinois. I'm not sure what year that happened but I'm very curious if it was before statehood. 

Finally, to finished this rambling and fairly pointless post, take a look at the newspaper clipping with the wedding announcement of mother's parents. 



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Making bias tape... otherwise known as the Sew, Mama, Sew! Giveaway

Image
( Sorry, the contest is now closed .... though you're welcome to leave a comment if you like.) [This picture has absolutely nothing to do with this post, but is here solely to give Blogger a different photo to post in the thumbnail.] It's Sew, Mama, Sew Giveaway time again.  I love bias tape.  It is so useful and so easy to use... finishing edges ... finishing seams ...  And while the pre-packaged stuff has it's place and I use it often, I really like to have patterned bias tape as well.  Enter one of my favorite little tools: the bias tape maker.  This one make 3/4 inch bias tape and I will be giving one away at the end of this post.  But first, I thought some of you might like to see what it does if you've never used one before. I don't have a rotary cutter, nice cutting mats, or even a proper cutting table (I cut-out things on my floor), so if I can do this, so can you.  Here is my admittedly quirky method. Step 1:  Lay out the fabric an...
Read more

Sew, Mama, Sew! Giveaway

Image
Sew, Mama, Sew! is hosting another giveaway day , the day where many bloggers giveaway things they have made or supplies to make things or both.  It is great fun to visit a lot of blogs and try to win cool stuff.  So fun that I thought I would participate this year. I had great hopes of making a set of coordinating mother/daughter aprons.  But reality reared its ugly head and I came to terms with the fact that my time is not limitless.Instead of aprons,  I must continue to spend quality time with yards and yards of red plaid flannel.  What am I making?  Well, as I tell my children, it is the season not to ask questions... I will be able to let you know sometime after the 25th. Instead of making something, I went to my favorite thrift store and found some supplies in the form of sheets and pillowcases (some of my favorite raw material).  I'm giving away three pillowcases and one twin flat sheet. I decided to go with bright, springy colors...
Read more

The mystery of the missing soap

You all know that I am an avid reader of mysteries, but sometimes we have our own real life mysteries here as well. Take the case of the missing soap. One of our bathrooms upstairs is the children's bathrooms, whose sink is lower than other sinks upstairs. Now, since it is the children's bathroom, it is not always pristine and things cannot always be found when they are needed. Are we the only house where things just randomly vanish, never to be seen again? This happens fairly frequently. Often the items are too big to have been taken by Borrowers , but every human in the house disavows any knowledge of the missing item. As far as they are concerned, they never even knew said item existed, so how could they have taken it? Often Mr. Nobody gets the blame and we move one, the item sometimes resurfacing at a later date and sometimes not. Early last week, when the little girls went upstairs to get ready for bed and found an entire bar of soap missing, it was classed as one of ...
Read more