Monday Memories--from Nigeria and Iowa

This holiday week-end four of my third cousins are gathering to honor their parents 90th and 91st birthdays. I sent a note of congratulations and remembrance, because for a number of years I have been corresponding with their mother, Marianne, who assembled a huge family genealogy and had it published in 1998. I've never met her, but her grandmother (Mary Ann George b. 1843) and my mother's grandfather (David George b. 1828) were brother and sister born in Adams County, PA, both moving to the midwest as adults [this made Mom and Marianne second cousins because they shared the same great-grandparents]. My mother had visited Marianne's family in Iowa with her family when Mom was a little girl, but I think it was the 1970s before the families reconnected, and Mom began to assemble family information with my help for the pending genealogy (which didn't appear for another 20 years).

Marianne and her husband were missionaries for the Church of the Brethren in Nigeria for 13 years, and upon returning to Iowa, she got a Master's in Social Work and had a second career in hospital social work and was an adjunct faculty member at the University of Iowa in Iowa City. Her complete biography, list of publications, and details of her work in Nigeria and Iowa can be found in the university archives. She wrote articles for the Gospel Messenger when she was in Africa. Although we received that magazine in our home, I doubt that my mother recognized her married name, or knew that this was the cousin she had visited as a little girl.

Shortly before she moved to a retirement home a few years ago (in 2003 I think), Marianne sent me some family antiques, all hand crafted. The pottery pieces were made in Maryland; the flax blanket was woven in Pennsylvania by an itinerant weaver, but spun by the girls in the family. The pastry wheel probably belonged to my great-great-great grandmother if I read the information correctly (possibly Rachel Danner, but that looks a bit murky), and is beautifully crafted. Would probably still work. The pottery and blanket belonged to yet another brother (of David and Mary Ann) Cornelius George b. 1827 and his wife Caroline Evans, who are buried in Ashton, IL.