Monday, December 20, 2004

A nice Christmas surprise

I have relatives out in Oregon whom I've never met from my father's side (he is out there someplace too, but he doesn't bother with anyone). My mom and I have both corresponded with my great aunt Dessa (now deceased) and her daughter Ann. Ann's sister Shirley and her husband Dwayne visited us when we were little kids. Ann sent me a Christmas card and said she would be sending me a special family photo book as a gift. I had no idea what it would look like. Well, didn't Ann send my mom a book too! It's huge! It's a three ring binder with about 2-3" of photocopied photos in plastic sleeves of my Oregon family dating back to the late 1880s. There is also a genealogy booklet compiled back in 1978 that shows my Knowles family roots back to the 1660s! Seems my forefather (going back 11 generations) was John Knowles from New Hampshire. This is funny to me as I never knew I had east coast connections from both sides of my family.
Ann put in about 6 photo pages of my immediate family with pictures from my mom's wedding including one of mom and my mom-mom and grandfather Alan Stroud. Ann has them listed as Straud. Whoops. There is a huge graduation photo of my father Carl from 1949 and Sean looks like him! The only thing is there are no photos of my brother Ken. I'll have to color copy some and send them to Ann. Of course this touched me to the core (tears) as there we were part of this huge family book of people who we really didn't know. I'll have to scan a few of the photos. I can see why we haven't heard from Ann in a year, she was really busy!

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