Keeping on the great grandmother portraits here is my father’s paternal grandmother Mary “Molly” Rebecca McCravey Bright. The unique thing I think is her father was a Confederate veteran. She married Thomas Bright in 1895 (about the time of this picture) whose father was a Union veteran. She lost her husband in a horrid farming accident when my grandfather was a young boy.
This is another of my great-grandmothers. We each have four, two from our mother and two from our father. This is my mother’s paternal grandmother or as we liked to call her Granny Rolen. No she’s not unhappy it’s just what we called for years the Rolen mouth, turns down in a frown when resting but after some genealogy research found out it’s the MacMahan mouth. Ollie was a strong woman. She took care of her husband for years after a stroke left him an invalid. She raised her children alone getting temporary residence to send them to better schools. She lost a child to untreated asthma, doing all they could for the girl. She was living when I was young and I remember her well. She was a fun woman that loved to garden and show children how things worked. Of course when I knew her she was an old lady not the young bride she is here. This was her wedding day. For years I’d see just this photo but finally we turned up the other half with her husband Milas Lavator Rolen. Here it is uncropped and not cleaned up: (more…)
Mary Louise Eklund 