The past comes alive
After 64 years, I finally got to see a picture of my grandmother, Molly Griffith. My mother left her hometown of Richlands, Virginia when she was 16 or so. She married her first husband, Charles Stilwell, who was 20 years her senior. Charles had two previous wives and four children. They moved to Winchester, Ohio where my two oldest sisters were born. Georgia Ellen, who was named after Charles’ mother and Sharlottie Lou, nicknamed Lukie. She would later change her name to Charlotte – and who can blame her….Sharlottie is a bit of a mouthful.
Later the family would relocate to Seymour, Indiana where brother, Ronald Gene and sister, Louise Beverly would be born. Charles would find work in the “spoke” factory, later to be called Seymour Manufacturing. He worked there until his death in 1946.
My mother would go on to marry my father, Robert Lee, in 1950 and they would have me in 1957.
So, you ask, why would my mother not have any pictures of her mother? I would never find out the true story until I was sixty-three years old. Thanks to Ancestry.com and Newspapers.com and hours of research, I would piece some of my family history together. All of which, was not at all what I was told as a child.
Thankfully, Facebook had some ‘pages’ I followed and boards that I posted to finding a whole new set of cousins I have never heard of or met.
In our conversations through Facebook, I learned a little more and my new cousins shared pictures that they had kept of our grandmother – Molly Griffith.
