MRI and Family History

~

Brr... high of only 44° today. That's cold for SW Georgia!

MRI --

I made it through the MRI ! It wasn't easy. My heart pounded the whole time. My nose was inches for the machine.. so really not much space. I could only see to my left a little. When the tech said this is the last set... I was so glad to hear that. Then she said she had to redo a bit. She said the reason being there was movement. There was no way I could move. My neck was cradled in a brace and she stuck something between it and my ears. She said the movement was probably caused by heavy breathing... and I was doing a lot of that! The noise of the machine was awful even with ear plugs. It seemed the louder the noise the heavier my breathing. I won't know anything until sometime next week.


Family History --

One of my hobbies is genealogy. I love going to courthouses and looking through records. It doesn't matter if the family is mine or not. I have to have Frank with me on such endeavors. The record books are big and heavy. It has been a while since we've been to a courthouse for research. Maybe a task for later this year. A lot of our vacations have been genealogy related... that is being hooked :-)

Jefferson Davis Memorial Historic Site in Irwinville Georgia houses some items of my family. The items are from my 2nd great grandmother, Penelope Ann Prudence Porter. She is the grandmother of my grandmother (my Grandma Swain who was pictured in my last post). My g-g-grandmother was born 22 June 1841 and died 16 July 1895. I don't have a cause of death for her. She was the mother of eight children with my g-g- grandfather, Julius Erasmus Porter; four girls and four boys. I know very little about her. Her marriage to my g-g-grandfather was her second marriage. She had one child from her first marriage who died in childhood. Her first husband died during The War Between The States. I don't have a record of her marriage to Julius... and I've looked everywhere that I can think of for it. They may have just jumped the broomstick.

Clicking on the pictures below should enlarge them.

The first picture is of blouses that Prudence wore... three names and in most records she is Prudence Ann. Prudence Ann owned land, so she was a woman of wealth.


Mildred over at Nalley Valley talked of mourning jewelry made from hair. My g-g-grandmother had mourning beads. They aren't made of hair. She probably did have some jewelry made from hair because of its popularity back then. I'm thinking she probably wore these when her first child died and when her first husband died.



This is one of her shawls. To me the fringe looks to be made from horse hair (with my family it could be mule hair). I couldn't find anything out about horse hair being used in shawls. I suppose the fringe could be from another type of animal hair.


I wish I had a picture of Prudence. A cousin sent me a scan of an old pamphlet with her picture, but all that shows in the scan is dots and no features can be made out.

There is suppose to be a picture of Julius E. Porter at the museum. It has been under restoration though and I have not seen it. I do have a picture of him and his second wife, Mary Ann. I'm just going to link to that picture . The spinning wheel is awesome!

Most of my family were poor sharecroppers. A few though owned a bit of land as my Porter ancestors. They still worked hard for their crops to have food on the table.

⌂ ⌂ ⌂ ⌂ ⌂ ⌂ ⌂ ⌂ ⌂ ⌂

I've had one of those days that it takes forever to type. So many typos... I transposed letters that are three leterts apart :-)

⌂ ⌂ ⌂ ⌂ ⌂ ⌂ ⌂ ⌂ ⌂ ⌂

This packrat has learned that what the next generation will value most is not what we owned, but the evidence of who we were and the tales of how we loved. In the end, it's the family stories that are worth the storage. --Ellen Goodman