a genealogist's roots . . .

in Kimberly's own words . . .

My personal brick wall began with a paper towel – one of the brown industrial types often found in public restrooms. It was 1969, the year I was born, and my mother and great-grandmother were sitting by my grandfather’s bedside in a hospital room, when my mother felt the need to ask about her family roots. In my mother’s own words, “All that had never seemed quite so important before on Daddy’s side since, after all, his people were all on this side of the Atlantic.” But with her father lying in a hospital bed losing his desperate battle with cancer, the need suddenly became very real. My great-grandmother, Pattie Crisp Owens, known to her grandchildren as Mammy Pattie, shared with my mother the precious little she knew about her family that day.
With nothing handy to write on, my mother recorded the names given to her by Mammy Pattie on that brown paper towel – a towel that again made an appearance 11 years later when I came home and announced I had a family tree project to do for school. The search for Henrietta MARIN began that day . . .