Friday Family Photo

My parents wedding photo.



This is when the Scots-Irish side and the German-Swiss-English side of my family got together after about eight or nine generations of pretty much sticking with their own kind. For many years I had thought myself an 8th generation American, but when more information on genealogy became so accessible via the internet, and I joined the Church of the Brethren listserv finding distant relatives, I added a few more generations. Many of them started out in Pennsylvania--I suppose if the roads had been better or if they had spoken the same languages, they might have bumped into each other. However, in the early 1700s, these ethnic groups had little or no social interaction and rarely married outside their own fellowships or neighborhoods. Moving west and south in the 1800s changed that somewhat, and by the 20th century many couldn't have even told you who their grandparents were.

My parents met on a "blind date" the summer before they started college in 1930 because a guy my dad knew was dating a girl in Franklin Grove (a girl friend of my mother) and didn't have a car. So dad drove, and both young men found a wife.