Week 1 - Beginnings - Grandma Cook

 

Responding to Amy Johnson Crow's challenge "52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks" at her website, AMYJOHNSONCROW.COM

Week 1: Beginnings - Grandma Cook

My maternal grandmother had a painting of "Uncle Alexander" over her fireplace. He always gave me the creeps. He was a handsome young man dressed in a very old fashioned, dark frock coat with a white shirt and a large, flowing black cravat. I also remember the portrait background was an eerie shade of black. His piercing blue eyes followed me wherever I went in the room. I asked my grandmother who he was. She said he was Uncle Alexander who had never married and died young (b.1822-d.1850). She said he was actually her dad's uncle. Her dad, my great grandfather (b.1845-d.1919), was named Edward Alexander in his honor. Seeing I was interested, she regaled me with dashing stories about her dad's experiences during the Civil War. She brought out his Civil War sword and told me he had enlisted in the 13th New York Cavalry when he was only 19. When she was a little girl (mid-1880s) she remembered him having his wartime friends over to sit on the front porch, smoke and tell old war stories. Her mother always prepared her and her siblings for an early bedtime when the men were coming so the children couldn't overhear their stories. 

I was so enthralled that I asked what else she knew about our relatives. She very carefully unfolded an old piece of typing vellum and showed me a rudimentary family tree for her side of our Layton family. There were names in little boxes linked together with thin pencil lines, but there were no dates or place names. I inherited that fragile piece of paper a few years later when she died in 1954. That was the beginning for me. I was hooked on family history and finally began researching my wife's and my family trees 44 years later using Ancestry.com in 1998. The things I've found have just blown me away,...but those are stories for future installments of 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks, 2021.

Grandma Cook and me, c. 1947