Aunt Nona
It’s been a mad rush to bring as much content as possible as quickly as possible to the site. That will slow, now. For one thing, the transcripts of the majority, but not all, of the letters are already posted. For another, time grows short for this work for the foreseeable future.
Today’s addition included the second part of Uncle William and Uncle George’s letter to Ike and Mollie. They tell her they’re not coming back to Pettis County to live, and they don’t know when they’ll come to visit. Uncle William never made the trip, but Uncle George did. At the end of their years, he came back to the place of his birth, bringing some of his family with him. It’s hard to imagine what it must have been like to have seen one another after a period of about 60 years.
By that time, Ike was dead, as were several of George and Mollie’s children. They had gone from the pre-Civil War era to the Depression.
The second addition is a scan of Aunt Nona’s (Augusta Wynona Elliott) family notes. Family was important to Aunt Nona. Since she did not have children but was deeply interested in her family, its history and its preservation, she spent a great deal of time writing to relatives about their family lineage and history, and she wrote a number of pieces on the family, the church, the school, and the neighborhood.
Little of what she wrote is new. Most of it has been incorporated into family trees, local histories, stories that have been repeated over and over through the years. Still, it reaffirms and validates what we believe we know now, and it is interesting to see her version of the family history in her own hand.
News from Pettiscountypioneers.com
Thursday, September 6, 2007
