Armenda Jane Thornhill: Love for a Branch of My Tree.

Armenda Jane Thornhill was my maternal grandmother's grandmother.
She was born in Mar 1856 in Mississippi. She was the third child born to Solomon Thornhill and Edith Odom Thornhill. Her mother and father died when she was four years old of what was labeled, "Throat Disease " on the death certificate.
I learned what I know about my "Grandma Armenda" from my grandmother. But, I didn't know very much about her life before she married my Grandpa Wyatt. I had named my oldest daughter, Armenda, for her 37 years ago and wish I had asked many more questions than I did.
In doing the research I have for my family tree, I discovered that her mother had died when she was a small child and I spent many nights combing through the censuses searching for her. I could find her brothers with an uncle on her father's side of the family. But, I couldn't find her. Where could she be?  Who had taken care of her? Was she in a loving environment?
My Grandmother had passed away before I started my great family search, and so, I asked the last of the family members that are still alive what they knew about her. They remembered her from when they were children, but knew nothing of her younger life.
Through my research, I found her.  She was in the care of one of her mother's sisters that had lost her husband (who was a brother to Grandma Armenda's father) at the same time of the same epidemic as Grandma Armenda's parents.
After discovering she was with her aunt, I felt at peace for a while.  I found her on the 1880 census married to my Grandpa Wyatt with the first two of her children in the household. Next census in 1900, 20 years later, the first two children are married and out of the household, but she has five younger children still at home with her and Grandpa Wyatt.
After 1900, the trail goes cold. Misspellings in names and changes in the locations of county lines have had me searching forever for her and Grandpa Wyatt. I know she was still alive until after the 1930 census, I just haven't been able to find her.
Then, my search began on finding her and Grandpa Wyatt's final resting place. Where were they buried? An aunt told me where to find them in an old part of the cemetery.  They had no headstones for years when an uncle had poured a covering of cement on their graves and wrote in the wet cement. I visited their final resting place in the Enon Cemetery in Walthall County, Mississippi on one of my trips home. I sat beside her grave and traced my fingers in the writing my uncle had wrote years before.
She was my Grandmother's Grandmother to me, years before, but she has become a part of my heart, a part of my love for family.  I think I have passed on that love of family that came before us to my children, keeping their memory alive from the stories that we know about them. Last month my third daughter gave birth to my 11th grandchild...his name is Wyatt, for my Grandmother's grandfather...Grandma Armenda's husband.

Francisco Antonio Franco: My Missing Limb.

Francisco Antonio Franco: My Missing Limb.

My father is my missing limb.  It is like going through life with a missing body part.  Only it is a part of your body that you never had. But, when you see other person's with this part, you wonder what it would be like to have that part.
Francisco Antonio Franco was born to Narcisco Franco and Amania Jimenez Franco on 3 Dec 1929  in Caracas, Venezuela, SA. He was welcomed by a sister named Juanita. His father owned a brick factory in Caracas at that time and he was able, financially, to send his son to college in the USA when he was old enough to attend.
In the early 1950s, Francisco was sent to the USA to attend college at Perkinston College and then Pearl River College in Poplarville, Mississippi. It was while he was at Pearl River College that he met my mother and shortly after married her on 22 Nov 1954. I was born exactly nine months later.
Before my birth, my father went home to Venezuela for Christmas holidays and then returned to my mother and to college. He received a telegram from his family, a short time later, that his father had a heart attack.  He went back home and never returned to my mother. He did attend college at University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg.  I have found newspaper articles that show he was there from the early 1950s to 1971.
This is all the facts I know about my father and his family. On my mother's side of the family, my family tree is full and blooming over. On my father's side, it is like a limb of the tree has been chopped off and has no ability to bloom and grow...my missing limb.