Birthday Gift

Photo: Eddie and Luguine Nash

I received a very unexpected and delightful surprise on my birthday, but it appears that the timing was just a coincidence. In 1999 I posted a couple of inquiries on a genealogy board seeking information on some of my ancestors. I knew some things about them, but, for too many reasons to try to enumerate, there was much, much more that I didn't. One of those inquiries dealt with my great grandparents, Eddie and Luguine Nash, and questions about their parents and, well, their parents parents and so on. Dead air was all I got.

Then, about 2:00 AM this morning I was on line and I heard a little bleep notifying me an Email was coming through. I casually looked at it and it informed me that there was a response to my inquiry regarding my great grandparents. I had no idea what they were talking about because it had been so long since I started the search I had completely forgotten I was searching. That's when I pulled up the response and saw it was to a question posed nearly eight years before and it was an absolute goldmine of information! All day long I have been communicating with the respondent and it seems like I can now trace my roots almost all the way back to King Tut (well, perhaps I embellish a little).

But now I know that somewhere along the line I'm a VanLandingham, a Fox, a Doolin, a Jamison, a Kern, a Meredith, an Ashford and the list goes on and on. I have names and dates that coincide with oral histories and family tales and they dovetail almost perfectly. How liberating to know for sure from whence I come and to whom I belong! What a way to start the new year, both the new calendar year and this new personal year of living. What a gift!