My Trails into the Past

This is my third 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. This week’s theme is strong women. What makes a woman strong? Does having more than ten children? How about losing a child or two to disease or accident? Or perhaps raising a family without a husband? How about traveling from place to place and making a new home at each? Mary Nicholas Davey had fifteen children during her lifetime, with only seven living to adulthood. I image that would make a person strong. How does one carry on after losing so many children to early childhood diseases. She and her husband Thomas had three sons they named Edward, probably after her father, who all succumbed to some unknown ailment. After that, they did not try to name another child Edward, though they lost the next three b...