Fearless Females: Heirlooms

March 6 — Describe an heirloom you may have inherited from a female ancestor (wedding ring or other jewelry, china, clothing, etc.) If you don’t have any, then write about a specific object you remember from your mother or grandmother, or aunt (a scarf, a hat, cooking utensil, furniture, etc.)

I took a few days off, and since I don’t have a recipe to share for March 7th, I decided to use the March 6th prompt. The heirloom that comes to my mind is one I’ve talked about before.

“The tree”. The one that started it all. This is what my Grandma brought with her on that fateful visit when I was in the eighth grade. The blue is the family tree and the other binder is the picture companion to the family tree.

The first page in the binder shows the numbers 3-2 written above the couple.

Then you line that up with the 3-2 in the family tree. Now there is a bit of confusion because the Webb and Taylor sections both have 3-2s. I don’t know how that happened but the Webb line fizzles out very quickly in the tree. It’s very obvious this tree was done from the Taylor perspective. I don’t know if it’s legible from the picture but Mollie Jane Webb married George Thomas Taylor. So that’s where the lines connect. Not much is known beyond Mollie’s generation on the Webb side. After consulting the tree, the couple in the first picture is Marshall Howard Taylor and his wife Lula Applegate. I faintly remember Grandma telling me that this picture might have been from their wedding day.

The picture book goes all the way through the descendants. My grandmother gathered pictures of as many Taylors as possible. Here’s the page dedicated to my Mom and her kids. That’s me in the red shirt there at the bottom. My family is used to me posting their pictures all over creation. For the sake of my other family members privacy, I won’t show you the others.

What’s also great is there are little mementos among the pages. There are articles of newspapers, obituaries, birth announcements.

I love both books. I’m so happy that they eventually found their way to me. I like to take them out and look through the pictures every once and awhile. It’s fun to match the names and faces.

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