Female Generations

I thought it would be fun to show some pictures just of the women in my direct line.

I start with my great grandmother, Mary Malinda Duke Kaneaster. She was born in Mississippi in 1865, and she had 11 children. She and her husband moved from Georgia out West, and you can tell all the different places they lived by the birthplaces of their children.




Then comes my grandmother Hazel, who was Mary's youngest child. Hazel married a man several years older than her, and they ended up divorcing. She raised her two daughters on her own, opening a beauty parlor to support herself and the girls. Hazel married three more times and was widowed three times. Her last husband, Bill Galloupe, was the only one of her husbands that I remember, and he was by far my favorite grandfather. They homesteaded land in the Southern California desert, and it was Grampa Bill who gave me my first opportunity to drive a car--at the ripe old age of 8. Fortunately it was on a private dirt road.




The next generation is my mother's. Doris Lorraine was the youngest of Hazel's two daughters. She married my father, and they were very happy for the nearly twenty years they were married. Mom died of complications after surgery to remove a brain tumor. She was 41.




Then there's me. I have given birth to five children (and am stepmother to another). My first husband died in 1981, leaving me with two children under four. I married Ed, and we had three boys together. I remember feeling that I'd really accomplished something when I managed to live longer than my mother, who died when I was 14.

The following is a picture of me around Christmas of my senior year of high school. I graduated early, and this was taken at a party I hosted to say good bye to my friends from school, as I went to college the next month. The dress I'm wearing had belonged to my mother.




Then comes my daughter Erin. She married her high school sweetheart (right out of high school), and they've struggled to get him through school while trying to raise a family. They are really amazing. They moved to Hawaii last year, and I miss them terribly.




Erin has two daughters, Sienna and Madelyn. It's fun that I get to see and talk with them on Skype, but I can't hug and kiss them.





And I think it's fun to see how the various generations sometimes resemble each other quite a bit. The following picture is me as a baby. Can you see a resemblance to any of the above pictures (besides my own, obviously).



And what about this little lady?