Windows on the Past

Unbelievable!

As a result of recently reconnecting with my mother's first cousin Varnell, we traveled back into the country today. Way back. In fact, before lunch, we'd stepped back a couple hundred years into a house built in 1812.

Just driving toward Luttrell made me cry, because I was flooded with the emotion of missing my mother and grandmother. Stopping at the cemetery where I'd taken my grandmother many years before to visit the unmarked graves of her little baby boys made me sob. However, seeing Varnell and Eileen's old log cabin retreat brought smiles, and exchanging photos and family history information was a joy.

The greatest treat, though, began with showing them the photo (circa 1917) of my grandparents (George and Margaret Hopson Kitts), his mother (Eliza Hopson Wolfenbarger), and the sisters' parents (William and Mary Rucker Hopson) at Charlie Fraley's home where they once lived and ran a dairy farm (See "A Place to Live") and telling him that my grandmother had pointed the house out to me just down the road decades ago. Varnell then told me it was still standing, and before the morning was over, I knocked on a stranger's door and we were getting zenia seeds from the present resident! The homeowner was as thrilled to get the old photo of her house (I had an extra copy) as we were to tour her home! Oh, to put my hand on the same stair railing where my grandparents and great grandparents had touched it on a daily basis!! What a blessing!!