|
Getting Started
WHERE AND HOW MY FAMILY HISTORY INFORMATION WAS COLLECTED AND
WHAT IT CONTAINS
My interest in family history began to take
shape in my teen years. During
my earlier years there were references from time to time about
ancestors like “The Gray Ghost.” I
had a
great–Aunt Margie (Margaret Shepard Mosby 1866-1951) who was
unmarried, a teacher and knew a lot of about our ancestors.
She wrote my mother, Natalie Carter Broach Davis
(1903-1970) several times urging her to join the Daughters of
the American Revolution (DAR) and even prepared the application
for my mother, who never chose to send it in, for reasons I
never knew. It was
easy to sidestep such issues because my mother’s family lived
in
Oklahoma
and we lived in
Scarsdale
, N.Y My
interest in family history was focused when I graduated from
high school and Aunt Margie sent me a copy of a small painting
of an ancestor,
Mary
Brooke
Baylor
Temple
(1748-1820), from an original miniature done about 1784.
Aunt Margie included a brief family tree with the
painting that traced me back to Mrs. Temple.
That was exciting.
My interest in genealogy has been constant,
but with peaks and valleys during the decades since high school.
Over the years I have collected nine feet of three-ring
binders and books, plus two lateral file drawers of filled with
family history information. In
time for a Broach family reunion in
Tulsa
,
OK
in August 2002, my cousin the late Mary Elizabeth Wetzel Peddie
(1921-2002) and I collaborated on a biography of our great-great
grandmother, Frances (Fanny) Abigail James Mosby (1845-1917)
which we duplicated and made available anyone on CD.
My son, Michael, asked me to explain what I
did to accumulate so much genealogical information on our
family. I will
relate the journey in this website and hope that it will be of
interest, at least to our family.
A copy of the CD and the book are in the libraries of the
Lauderdale County (MS) Archives and Historical Society in
Meridian
,
MS
and at the
Mississippi
University
for Women (MUW). Fanny
James Mosby taught history in the early years of MUW.
|
