A Message From Aunt Sally
Hi All,
I want to share what I wrote to another, who has helped in these family searches. It sums up some of why we are all so curious about our ancestors. DO pass on your stories to your children. Don’t skip over the funny ones; they make it all so important THEY LAUGHED TOGETHER. You can imagine the hardships, sacrifices, and tragedies BUT some of us alive still can remember them LAUGHING, too.
Love
Mom/Sally
I am mentally satisfied that a trail is left for the young generation. That is about as far as I wanted to go = make them aware and remember. I think family study is inspiring. To me, it makes all the hardship, laughter, and sticking to God all the way through it all; it makes life take on much more than this most materialistic world just a passing freak result of “ego” with machinery. I LOVE a good story. Family is full of them and some of survival with a lot less than we have, inspiring.
This James Shaw, with the scanner, comes out of the branch from Mary McMahon Connor, born at sea. When I was a tiny girl my Mom told me her mother, Sarah McMahon Gray, lost her Mom when she was a baby. This led to her older sisters, particularly the oldest one, Mary, to raise her. So besides sister, Mary was like a Mom to my Grandmother. My Mom’s name, Mary, as the first choice for Grandma with her oldest girl, shows how much love Sarah had for this sister. It also shows why her children, all the Connors, were so very close to the Gray sisters – even to the family following into walking distance from each other. Katherine, Catherine must also have been the other primary teacher of my Grandma – names do tell stories, even generations later.