An Unexpected Discovery In Her Mother's Memory Box

 As Grandma Lu was going through some boxes she found an old old photo album. It was nothing like her dozens of photo albums. It was only about ten inches long and six inches wide. It was black and soft!. When she opened it pictures, tiny pictures started to fall out. "Oh my goodness. These pictures are about hundred years old!" She did recognize some of them even though they were ever so old and faded. Here was her favorite Uncle Nate, the only fun one she could remember. The one that left her grandfather high and dry on the farm. The one that left an opening for a farm hand so that her father could finally be hired on and be with the love of his life. Oh he looked like such fun. As always God had a plan mysterious as it seemed.

 "I can remember Mom saying that on Easter Sunday her brothers would go up to the Machine Shed area out on the farm and fix dozens of eggs over a bonfire and not let her eat with them. Little stinkers. Teenagers for sure and a little pest of a sister to deal with.

As she was going through the pictures, looking for names, place years, any hints, she came across a picture of three women. One she recognized immediately. It was her grandmother, Lulu Hayes Banister, but the other two she didn't know. "Hmm, I will have to see if I can't find someone that knew those ladies, or maybe I can ask some folks that were cousins if they knew them." And she did. The lady in the middle was Catherine Ellis Hayes her great grandmother! The lady on the left was Catherine's daughter from her first marriage. "Grandma had a sister? I never heard her once say a word about having a half sister. Oh, I have a feeling there was some troubled waters there. I heard more than once that grandma was her grandma and grandpa's only child. Her father, Nathan H. Hayes, married a woman who had six sons, but never once had she heard about the daughter, Sarah. I wonder what life was like for a man to take on a widow with seven children. A man that had wanderlust in his veins, a gold prospector, miner, then a farmer and was a bachelor for thirty nine years. Oh I'm sure there was a story there."

Grandma Lu chuckled and thought, "Okay, Whitlee Jo. This is where I'll put you in a story someday. You said that you wanted to be in an old story. I think you can be my grandma and Marlee can be Sarah. They were twelve years apart in age. Sarah probably had to take care of this new baby. As a matter of fact, there was twelve years difference in age with my sister, Rosella and me. Interesting. 

There's only two years apart with you two, but it should be fun imagining how Sarah's world had suddenly turned upside down when her father died and soon would be off to a new homestead with a strange man as her step father. They traveled many many miles in covered wagon and oxen, sometimes only getting as far as two miles in a day. 

Marlee Ada Weaver 2021                                               Whitlee  Jo Weaver 2021                                                             

Just imagine these two as Lulu Hayes and Sarah Ellis in the 1870's in the upcoming stories.