Fearless Females Day 3 - Names

March is National Women’s History Month and +Lisa Alzo at The Accidental Genealogist has presented the genealogical community with 31-derful writing prompts to encourage us to share our female ancestors.

(I’m being fearless myself for posting this – love you, mom!)

I was named after my mother, and it’s something I always hated – well, that and the fact that I actually go by my middle name. Those two things have always been an inconvenience. If they phone rang and it was for “Linda” I always had to ask “Which one?” I never felt like I was “me” – I even had her department store credit card show up on my credit report (a card she opened the year I was born). Then there was the picture she had taken of me as an infant with this cute little hat on to see how much I looked like her.

But years have passed and I am decidedly my own person now. And I don’t mind the name so much anymore – in fact I named my own daughter “Melinda” in honor of my mother (and kind of in a humorous way because she is “Me, Linda”). Melinda also shares my maternal grandmother’s first name (she went by her middle name also) – Anne (well, grandmama’s first name was Annie, but close enough!).

Fearless Females: Day 2–Photo of a female

 

March is National Women’s History Month and +Lisa Alzo at The Accidental Genealogist has presented the genealogical community with 31-derful writing prompts to encourage us to share our female ancestors.

 

I am blessed to have so many wonderful old photos that it was hard to choose just the right one. I finally decided on this one.

This is a picture of my great aunt Minnie Mae (right) and ER aunt (my great great aunt, left), Orpie. I picked this picture because I feel like it really reflects the dichotomy and dynamics of a large family. When you have ten plus children it’s not at all unlikely to have a child and a grandchild close in age.

Orpie was born in 1904; Minnie Mae in 1913. While they were nine years apart, they were still close enough in age to have been sisters as opposed to aunt and niece. This picture makes me wonder about their relationship. But here’s the even better part – I have a picture of them taken together over 50 years later:

There they are, decades later, sitting side by side, Orpie still serious and Minnie Mae looking mischievous.

I didn’t get to know these women – I don’t know if ever met my great great aunt Orpie even though she lived to be 96 years old; I only remember seeing great aunt Minnie Mae a couple of times.  For all I know theirs wasn’t a lifelong relationship – perhaps they, too, only met a couple of times. But I like to think that they were lifelong friends, and sometimes I wonder what their lives were like in rural Southeast North Carolina where they lived, and the good and bad times they likely shared.

In honor of:

Minnie Mae Russ Averitt – March 17, 1913 to June 28, 2001

and

Orpie Flowers Kinlaw Steele – October 6, 1904 to October 19, 2000