I can’t imagine a day going by that some thread of the past doesn’t inform thoughts and actions whether consciously or not. We are all...

In Early April of 1907, Mattie and her newborn baby girl, already named Margaret Kirk after her great-grandmother, lay peacefully in the...

Gallatin, Missouri's main claim to fame was that Jesse James and gang, approximately 20 years earlier, had robbed the local bank. Ed...

Unless it’s a favorite cashmere sweater, I believe in pulling at threads to see where they take you. Threads in life especially interest...

My dear mother was an earnest soul who kept her promises and held to her convictions. She drove us nearly mad with her stubborn refusal...

I think of you lots nearly all the time and sometimes when I feel blue I think much of you and then I feel better. I want to see you awful b

Just two weeks from tomorrow. Do you realize how near the time is getting? It seems rather strange to me when I think about it. I can hardly

Nathaniel Shores Givens Pre Mustache Pre Marriage This begins my mother's fictional account of her grandparent's last days of courtship, ...

My mother's great grandparents on her mother's side were Martha Hollingsworth Givens and Nathaniel Givens. They had a long distance...

Nat and Mattie's relationship seems well established in this letter. I am going to look for earlier letters to transcribe and post, but...

My great-grandfather, William Givens, was mayor of the little town of Gallatin, MO and also its doctor. A local mason built the...

[My mother was passionate about her family's history and how she was the result of large families on both sides yet became one of the...

At the end of the great depression on November 6th, 1933, Margaret Kirk Bragg was born a Presbyterian in the university town of Columbia,...