Finding new family information in an unexpected place
Some of this section will contradict an earlier statement I posted, but I think finding information that is new to me is part of the excitement to be found in cleaning out old belongings. In this case, the personal items were owned by my aunts, Alice and Betty, and were stored in a pair of large jewelry boxes. I do not honestly know which box belonged to which aunt, as both boxes ended up in one place, but the contents were similar—some fairly pretty, although inexpensive, costume jewelry. I also found two other items of interest—a Birth Certificate and Certificate of Baptism for Betty. I clearly remember my mother telling me many years ago that my grandmother, Lottie Emma, had believed since childhood that her name was Charlotte Elizabeth. Because I knew that, in my father's family, this was not an uncommon event—kids were frequently named one thing, yet called something else—it did not seem odd. With the foregoing knowledge in mind, I formed the idea that my gr...