So, if you know me, you know I am a total history nerd. This has bled into an interest in family history. (I found myself asking where were my ancestors when all these interesting events were taking place?) So, in honor of Women’s History Month, and because I have been a blogging slacker lately, with too many morose and disturbing things going on in my mind to possibly pour out on the internet, (I know, right? Who thought i would ever say there are things that I won’t put on the internet?) I saw this:
Fearless Females: 31 Blogging Prompts to Celebrate Women’s History Month
Usually, i think blogging prompts are kind of lame. If you need to be prompted to write, maybe you don’t have anything interesting to say in the first place. But for me, in my current space and time, this is perfect, and extremely interesting to me.
Doubt I’ll be able to do all 31 days, but I am interested to see what it prompts me to write about my female ancestors, what insight it will give me about the females in my family today, and what it might tell me about myself. Were the women in my family fearless? How do i compare?
March 1 — Do you have a favorite female ancestor? One you are drawn to or want to learn more about? Write down some key facts you have already learned or what you would… like to learn and outline your goals and potential sources you plan to check.
This one is not so easy. . . I am torn between two. On the one hand, i am very interested in knowing what life was like for Medora Louis Hall Dunstan. Her middle name itself is a mystery – I have seen a few different versions of it: Louis, Lewis, or Louise? I want to know why she was adopted by what I think were her grandparents. I want to know what life was like in Fredericksburg, Va, where she lived as a girl during the Civil War. Was she there during the battle? Did she really see a dead soldier and steal his handkerchief? How did she meet her husband? Was her husband a Yankee soldier, or just a Canadian who came down after Reconstruction. What was with her husband the mining engineer traveling all over the world?
But it is the second woman that really keeps me up at night, knowing there must be a clue about her out there somewhere, and that every day that passes, there is more of a chance of her story slipping away from me.
She was my great grandfather Charles Clifford Smith Sr.’s mother. Her maiden name was Mary Catherine Shannon.
For a long time, I didn’t even know her name. Finally, a cousin remembered some fuzzy details about her: Her name was very traditional Irish Catholic-sounding. She may have had my great grandfather out of wedlock. Ooh, a scandal! I love those.