Holidays: Time to build yourself a History
With Christmas time upon us, I'd like to urge all Williams-Rivers Family members to take a few minutes and talk to your parents and grandparents... our family elders. You never know what you might discover.
A good chunk of the information in this website was sourced through conversations with family members at birthday celebrations, Mothers Day, Fathers Day, as well as Christmas and Thanksgiving Dinners. For me, one of the most valuable sources of information was my grandmother Elnora Evans. She was born Elnora Fouse in Haywood County near Brownsville Tennessee in 1914 and she married into the Williams-Rivers Family in 1935 when she married my grandfather Lemuel Williams. Although their marriage only lasted a few years, she remained close with the family and kept up with births, deaths, marriages and relocations of many family members. Although the family reunion booklets provided the structure that this website's family tree was built on, it was my grandmother Elnora's stories and recollections that gave much of it life for me.
She provided me with explanations for many of the links in the family where her family (the Fouse-Lee Family of Haywood County / Borownsville) had married into the Williams-Rivers Family producing "double cousins" who we see at reunions on both sides of the family. Her insights were invaluable to me as I began to piece things together and to fully understand the magnificent richness and heritage that we all share.
I thank God now for the many hours that we spent talking in 2005 and 2006...and I am sad that I did not have the presence of mind to engage a tape or digital recorder during our conversations. Her insights, wisdom and knowledge are silent now--we lost her earlier this year after a brief illness, at 92 years old.
Strangely enough, though, I feel her presence in the pages of this website, in some of my notes and recollections about family members. It was always her hope that I would one day make a website for the Fouse-Lee Family as well. I still hope to do so one day...and when I do, her stories, recollections and humor will all be waiting, stored in these gedcom files...waiting for one of her great neices or nephews or perhaps one of her great-granddaughters to stumble across it and want to know more about the woman whose memory was so sharp, well into her nineties that she could, with her words bring her two sisters, who died as children, back to life, so that we would all remember them, and know that they had once walked and played upon this earth.
Talk to your elders this holiday season, ask them to tell you about a family member who you never met. Don't forget to write it down...or better yet grab a tape recorder.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.
A good chunk of the information in this website was sourced through conversations with family members at birthday celebrations, Mothers Day, Fathers Day, as well as Christmas and Thanksgiving Dinners. For me, one of the most valuable sources of information was my grandmother Elnora Evans. She was born Elnora Fouse in Haywood County near Brownsville Tennessee in 1914 and she married into the Williams-Rivers Family in 1935 when she married my grandfather Lemuel Williams. Although their marriage only lasted a few years, she remained close with the family and kept up with births, deaths, marriages and relocations of many family members. Although the family reunion booklets provided the structure that this website's family tree was built on, it was my grandmother Elnora's stories and recollections that gave much of it life for me.
She provided me with explanations for many of the links in the family where her family (the Fouse-Lee Family of Haywood County / Borownsville) had married into the Williams-Rivers Family producing "double cousins" who we see at reunions on both sides of the family. Her insights were invaluable to me as I began to piece things together and to fully understand the magnificent richness and heritage that we all share.
I thank God now for the many hours that we spent talking in 2005 and 2006...and I am sad that I did not have the presence of mind to engage a tape or digital recorder during our conversations. Her insights, wisdom and knowledge are silent now--we lost her earlier this year after a brief illness, at 92 years old.
Strangely enough, though, I feel her presence in the pages of this website, in some of my notes and recollections about family members. It was always her hope that I would one day make a website for the Fouse-Lee Family as well. I still hope to do so one day...and when I do, her stories, recollections and humor will all be waiting, stored in these gedcom files...waiting for one of her great neices or nephews or perhaps one of her great-granddaughters to stumble across it and want to know more about the woman whose memory was so sharp, well into her nineties that she could, with her words bring her two sisters, who died as children, back to life, so that we would all remember them, and know that they had once walked and played upon this earth.
Talk to your elders this holiday season, ask them to tell you about a family member who you never met. Don't forget to write it down...or better yet grab a tape recorder.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.
Labels: brownsville tennessee, descendants of mandi, elnora evans, elnora fouse, family history, family loss, fouse, fouse-lee family, haywood county tennessee, williams-rivers family tree
posted by Eric J Williams at 1:00 AM
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