Thursday, February 25, 2010

Sharing a birthday - February 25

Today is thoughts of Roots and Branches both. My grandmother and my granddaughter share a birthday.

Lily Jeanette Richardson is eight years old today and getting baptised this weekend. Here are a couple of photos when she was a newborn.



Grammie went to visit her when she got home from the hospital.


Her cousins Dani and Rachel

Now about my grandmother, Anna Cox...
In 1879, in a tiny community in south central Nebraska called Oak, my grandmother Anna Allen (later married Sam Cox) was born. I seem to remember that one of her siblings, Minnie I think, was the third white child born in that county - I'll have to look that up. Her father Job Allen fougnt in the Civil War for the North, being from Illinois, and for a time was a prisoner of war at Andersonville, a hell-hole prison. After he got home from the war, Job Allen married Mary Kenney Chenoweth about 1868. They traveled from Illinois to Nebraska in March of 1871 by covered wagon. It was like a "little house on the prairie" time in their lives. Their first 3 of 9 children were born in Illinois, the rest in Nebraska.




When Anna was 22 years old she married a neighbor man Sam Cox. To get married in 1901, they traveled for a day long journey by team and wagon to Lincoln, Nebraska, the state capitol. Their first baby, Thelma, died of pneumonia when she was less that two years old. No antibiotics in those days.


When they moved to Sheridan, Wyoming, they went by what was then called an immigrant train - household goods and livestock in separate cars, and then the family up front.


(I'll add more of ther history later but want to get these pictures up for Lily)



This picture was taken at a Cox Christmas party. Lois Ann was about five years old and Jane, the frowny one, was about three years old.



Her family called her "Granno" and she lived to be 88 years old. This is a photo of her at her 80th birthday party with her 3 children - Don, Helen, and Cliff. I think I baked her cake.

1 comment:

Becky in Wyo said...

I'd forgotten about Sam Cox. Good to know I'm using a family name after all!