My Trails into the Past

This is my second year working on this year-long prompt, hosted by Amy Johnson Crow . I will write each week in one of my two blogs, either Mam-ma’s Southern Family or at My Trails Into the Past . I have enjoyed writing about my children’s ancestors in new and exciting ways. Our theme this week is “Independent.” I have many independent maiden aunts and great-aunts. I have previously written about my Gleeson aunts in “ I’d Like to Meet Elizabeth M. Gleeson ” and “ Maiden Aunts .” My idea of independent for this week’s theme will focus on another of my unmarried aunts, my grandfather’s sister, Carolyn “Carrie” Marguerite Hork. Carrie on the right with brother, Cyril, and mother, Julia Carrie was born 16 October 1881 in Aurora, Kane County, Illinois to Johan Anton Hork and Julia Ann Sievert, their fifth child of ten. [1] She worked most of her life as a clerk in retail stores and never married. I have no idea if she ever had beaus. She had three brothers, Albert, Frank, and...

I am working on this year-long prompt, hosted by Amy Johnson Crow . I will write each week in one of my two blogs, either Mam-ma’s Southern Family or at My Trails Into the Past . I’m looking forward to writing about my children’s ancestors in new and exciting ways. I have several independent, unmarried great-aunts, two of whom I’ve already written stories. My paternal aunt, Lorene E. Hork Waldron, was also a very independent woman who married late in life. She was our “fun” aunt. She had no children, but loved to pay attention to us. After World War II, she worked for one year in Tokyo, Japan, for the U.S. Army. We know about her activities in Japan through the letters written home to her mother, and to her two sisters, Virginia and June. She left in early March 1952. The first letter is dated 9 March 1952 and she wrote of the first few days at sea. She claimed she “hadn’t been sick yet but had her thunder mug available just in case.” There were 2500 people on board, ...