52 Stories #52Ancestors
Blending my own family story of moving to Guadalajara and my ancestor's stories helps me to be diligent in recording both personal history and ancestral history.
Week 10 Strong Woman
A Strong Woman: My grandmother, Anna Mae Gough, met many of life’s
challenges head on. After loosing a baby daughter, she had two sons, then her
husband, as he later confessed to my Dad, Joseph Marvin Eckles, was “foolin’
around with a teenage girl that lived round the corner and down the street,”
she found the strength to pack up and leave him. The record of those years until
she married Golder Winebrenner in California, Moniteau, Missouri in 1924 finally
yielded the story of what she had to do to survive.
I’d inherited her letters, and written notes. Gathering them
all in one place I began piecing them together with the transcripts that I had
had made of my interviews with my dad, his uncle Anson Gough, a young friend, Effie, of my
grandmother who lived in Shirley, Arkansas to compile her history. Yikes, I
simply couldn’t figure out why she lived in so many places scattered from Illinois,
Missouri, Nebraska, Iowa, Wyoming, Kansas, Oklahoma and Arkansas between the
years of 1905 and 1924. Eight states in 19 years equaled a move to another
state about every two years. About the time I figured out where exactly she
was, to find proof or sources, I would find something else to add.
A Timeline
So I began to establish a chronological timeline and printed
this form to help me.
Although I have not finished this project and this is only
an example, I’ve come to some conclusions.
Mae was described as a nervous woman, afraid of Arkansas’
terrible storms and tornados, by her young friend, Effie, who knew her; she had
the strength to pluck chickens after raising them; to work in a slaughter
house; run and clean rooming houses; live in a tent during winter in Wyoming,
and finally driving a covered wagon with horses, household goods, chickens and
two small boys diagonally from Northwest Kansas, through Oklahoma to Northeast Arkansas,
then to central Arkansas.
Her story doesn’t stop here, but it was her sisters and
brothers support that gave her the courage to move on. Researching their lives
gave me the sources and proofs that I needed to document this very strong woman
who was my grandmother.
 |
| Anna Mae Gough Eckel Akers Winebrenner 1889-1962 |
Now I find myself telling the story of how my family ended
up living in California, Tennessee, Arkansas, then to Kwajalein, Marshall
Islands and finally to Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico and ending up today in
Arizona. Guess I’m a strong woman like my grandmother, moving and living all
over the world.
Here is the photo of me with my mother, Ruthe, and my
husband Bob at our first dinner date at the American Legion in Guadalajara. The
Barbie doll on the table represents our daughter who is busy running all around
the place, playing.
#52Ancestors Week 11
Lucky Me
I’ve concluded that all of my Grandmother’s moving around
was embedded into my genetic cell memory.
After 73 years I have started to have shaking hands, a tremor… It is
something I began to experience when I was called to lead the music in
Sacrament meeting, so I bought a baton and that controlled my hand. I’ve never
called myself nervous, but I can see why a young girl would see this and think
of it as being nervous. That’s what Effie said about my grandmother when I
interviewed her in Shirley, Arkansas while I was living in Little Rock, AR. I’m
so glad I was Lucky enough to find her when I only thought I was looking for
the house my grandmother had lived in.
Homes in My Life
I love to travel and growing up in Southern California, I
drove all over in my car. Sometimes I’d just turn up the heater onto my feet,
roll down the windows and just go driving the freeways at night with the radio
turned to some music station.
I’ve even lived in 17 or more home over the years. I
documented all of the So Cal ones with photographs and later on Zoom Atlas I won a contest winning third place in the nation. Partially the
points that I racked up was that I had before and after photos of the houses
where we lived. I can’t remember how much the prize was, but I think it was
$2000. Pretty nifty.
All of those moves made it easy to make the one back to
Tennessee and Arkansas from my home in California, when I met my husband, Bob. He worried about my reaction
when he told me what the father of his second wife had said to her, “You could
end up anywhere in the world with him, you know.” Indeed he had lived a year in
Paris, France on a Fulbright Scholarship; spent a couple years in the Army in
Germany; Lived in England while working for Proctor and Gamble; finally, while
working for Holiday Inns, International Division spent more time in Europe than
in the US.
So what was my reaction to his father-in-law’s worrying
statement? I replied, “I’m more worried about staying in one place too long and
getting bored.” So, aren’t I Lucky to find a man that provided me with the
opportunity to live in Tennessee, Arkansas, Kwajalein in the Marshall Islands, living in Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico and finally returning to the US and
Arizona.
Travel via Cyberspace
Indeed now that I’m forced to stay in one place because of
my disabilities, I’ve found ways to travel in cyberspace so it’s less boring. Aren’t I Lucky that I can do my family history research online rather than
actually having to go to courthouses, and stomp through cemeteries?
I have lived a wonderful exciting life built around family
history and moving around a lot; not so very different from my grandmother. She
and I not only shared the “moving around” gene, but we looked like we could
have been sisters when we were teenagers. Sadly the photos of her at that age
have been lost, although I did get to see them during a visit to my step
mother’s house long ago.
My life is far richer than hers ever was because I have the
gospel and an eternal companion. This was like discovering a four leaf clover
starting about age 21. Very March appropriate. I AM THE LUCKY ONE.
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