My Mitochondrial Mothers

They say time heals all wounds. How much time does it take so the tears no longer come easily?¹

This week is the twenty-first anniversary of my mother's death, Mama. This summer we passed the twenty-first anniversary of her mother's death, Big Mama.² These are the closest of my mitochondrial DNA ancestors and they made me the person I am today. They died four months apart. I still miss them terribly and feel compelled to write about them today. Big Mama's mother, called Granny, died when I was about ten and hers is the first funeral I remember attending. Granny's mother, called Ma Johnson, died before I was born. These four women are pictured below.

Four Generations of Mitochondrial Ancestors of Debbie Parker Wayne,
circa 1940, from the collection of the author, used with permission.

It was a difficult year, 1992. While the country was electing a new president I was helping write wills and obituaries then going through the remains of two lives determining what to save. While everyone around us was getting ready for Trick-or-Treat we were holding the third family funeral within four months (one of Big Mama's brothers died six days before my Mom). A Halloween flower arrangement was picked out by my sister who is mentally about age six due to epileptic seizures she had as a baby. Even though some family members thought it was tacky, Mama would have laughed about the orange and black flowers at her funeral service. She had a wicked sense of humor and was anything but conventional. Big Mama was more conventional except when the safety and happiness of family members were hurt by those conventions. She surprised me more than once when she suggested possible responses to big events in our lives.

What would they have been like if they had not had to work so hard to provide for their families with no help from the fathers of their children? Both of these strong women raised their children alone in a time before the government tracked down deadbeat fathers. Both worked long hours at jobs that required weekend and night work. One a waitress and later a private duty nurse. One a carhop and later managing what we called a hamburger stand. This was when they were still family-run small businesses and not huge corporations with a place on every corner. Twelve hour a day jobs, often seven days a week. Not much leisure time for either, but Mama and Big Mama made time for the important things in life. Santa Claus visited our house in the afternoon before the late work shift started so Mama and Big Mama could see our faces light up.

Both seemed to always love their first husbands even after what must have been heart-breaking divorces. During the 1960s to 1980s my mother saw my father whenever he came back to town, sometimes many years after his last visit. For some reason he gave up a job as an airplane mechanic and became a truck driver, traveling all over the continental U.S. My Mom often joked he probably had a woman in every city. When Mama died my father bought the cemetery plot next to her. Even though they couldn't live happily forever after in life, they seemed to care for each other and he wanted to be near her in death.

My grandmother married my grandfather in 1934 and again in 1958. He was not around for twelve years and I don't remember ever meeting him when I was a child. They spent the rest of their lives together after 1970 in an obviously affectionate relationship. I saw this when I lived with them for a few months after my divorce. After my grandmother's death her sister said, "She had a hard life." The sister was referring to the things Big Mama put up with in those early years with my grandfather which I won't describe here.

So today I give tribute to my maternal line: Mama, Big Mama, the Johnson, Ryan, Otis, Vick, and other women who gave me my mitochondrial DNA, all the way back to the U5b ancestor who was roaming Europe perhaps 4,000 years ago, and the ancestors before her that were in western Asia after moving "Out of Africa."³

Thank you to all of my mitochondrial mothers for making me who I am. I can't identify all of these women yet, but I have a feeling that more of them were strong women who worked hard to hold their families together. I hope to identify more of these mitochondrial ancestors soon. I feel our female ancestors deserve just as much of our research efforts as the men even if it usually takes more effort to learn more about the women in the past.

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1. Google Books (http://books.google.com : accessed 21 October 2013), search for "time heals all" and "how much time." These two phrases together seem so familiar that I searched Google Books to see if I was repeating something I've read elsewhere so I could cite it. Similar phrases pop up in about 100 books, but none of them are books I have read. Maybe this is a universal human sentiment when we feel grief that lasts a long time.
2. No citations are provided to their death certificates or other records due to the wishes of living family members. These documents and references are in my personal files. Other remembrances in this essay are from my own memories.
3. "Introduction to Your Story," MTDNA section, Geno 2.0 Project, National Geographic (https://genographic.nationalgeographic.com/results/welcome : accessed 4 May 2013); name and kit number withheld for privacy reasons.

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To cite this blog post:
Debbie Parker Wayne, "My Mitochondrial Mothers," Deb's Delvings Blog, posted 21 October 2013 (http://debsdelvings.blogspot.com/ : accessed [date]).

© 2013, Debbie Parker Wayne, CG, CGL, All Rights Reserved

Henry Everett Johnson (1871-1923) - East Texas Road Builder?

Yesterday I wrote about the online exhibit on the construction of Texas highways at Texas State Library and Archives Commission. I mentioned my great-great-grandfather who built roads according to family stories my grandmother told me in the early 1990s.

... my grandmother told me her grandfather built roads in East Texas, Arkansas, and Louisiana, and that he died while working on a road in Arkansas when a snake spooked his horse. Grandpa fell and was killed, perhaps from a broken neck, when the horse reared in panic. My grandmother was only seven when this happened so I am not sure how much she remembered or how often her memory may have been refreshed by discussions at family gatherings after she grew up. Her memories of getting soaked while traveling from Dallas to Smackover, Arkansas, in an open-top vehicle in a rain storm in August 1923 seemed pretty vivid.

I have an old 1910–1923 photograph of this great-great-grandfather with family and crew members standing in a wet, muddy, grassless area surrounded by trees. This looks like it could be a road building crew of the time or maybe they are just pulling felled trees to the railroad line for transport. It's hard to tell from the image.

The crewmen are each holding a team with yokes around their necks and ropes and chains leading to the ground where there are large squared-off timbers—maybe to grade a dirt road. I'd love to hear from anyone who knows the history of road building or logging who can identify what these rigs may have been used for. The squared off timber argues they are not pulling felled trees for transport.

Here's a closeup of great-great-grandpa Henry Everett Johnson (1871–1923) and his wife Emma Eugenia Ryan Johnson (1868–1950) cropped from the image above. It is so strange to see I am several years older than the 52 years of age Henry was when he died. We tend to think of our ancestors as being older than us and often forget they were once children themselves.

Henry's life span dates are documented on his tall Woodsmen of the World headstone at Ryan Chapel near Diboll, Angelina County, Texas. Emma's are documented on her Texas death certificate, number 6051 (1950), available from the Texas Department of Health, Bureau of Vital Statistics, Austin, and now in several places online. Emma is buried next to Henry, but the only marker on her grave is a small, flat stone barely big enough for the initials "E. J." inscribed on it. If you visit the cemetery when the grass is high or when there is snow you'll miss her stone.

Emma is not named in the compiled list of persons buried in the cemetery; the list only includes those with names on stones. Maybe her tiny stone with initials was missed when the cemetery was surveyed or the compilers didn't list stones with initials only. Somehow cemetery records were lost or not carefully kept and when the cemetery association was formed in the 1960s apparently no one knew she was buried there. One of my remote cousins was active in the cemetery association for many years and she did not know where Emma was buried in the cemetery the cousin spent much of her life preserving.

The photograph of what I think is the road crew is in my possession since I saved it from the trash bin. After my grandmother's death my Mom and her sisters started to throw away about 200 of my grandmother's photos they couldn't identify.


Lessons learned:

1. Talk more about the family history to your relatives while they are still here on this earth. Once they are gone you can't get answer to your questions.
2. Tell everyone to ALWAYS give you any photos instead of throwing them out without you seeing them. In addition to the road crew photo I rescued, I have identified over half of the people in the other 200 photos my Mom and aunts were going to trash. Several were images of my great-grandmother as a child and other treasures.
3. Pay attention to every small detail in those old photos. They tell you things.
4. Just because someone isn't listed in the cemetery book or you can't find a headstone doesn't mean they aren't buried there. Look in all seasons and right after the cemetery has been mowed. Who knew "reasonably exhaustive" research might mean visiting the cemetery in winter when the grass is dead and there's no snow on the ground?
5. Consider the entire life of your ancestor—the childhood, the teenage years, young adulthood, and the middle and later years. Grandma and Grandpa weren't always the white-haired elders we most remember. What was their life like when they were young?
   

© 2011, Debbie Parker Wayne, All Rights Reserved