Roots of Identity

 Newspapers can make all the difference. You can find information that you never knew existed, or find parts of a life story that helps to paint a picture of a family member. Back row, left to right: Glenn, Daisy, Roy, Michael Ora. Second row: Freeda (leaning against her mother's leg), Addie (mother), Samuel (father), Dorothy, Archie. Seated in front of Samuel: Howard. Not pictured: Harriet, as she had recently passed away. My wife's grandmother was  Freeda McCarthy . Above is a photo of the McCarthy family, in Hand County, South Dakota.  Hand County, South Dakota It's a photo taken of a printout of a scanned photo. We would like to get an actual digital copy of the photo, if we can find out who has the original. We knew that Freeda was the girl leaning against her mother's leg. Her parents were  Samuel "Sam" McCarthy  and  Adaline "Addie" (Carl) McCarthy . We also knew that this was taken sometime after Freeda's older sister,  Harriet , had pass...

It starts with a death. Cirrhosis of the liver. So he was an alcoholic. I suppose that's not unusual in 1913, the year of his death, in Kentucky, home of moonshine and copper stills hidden away in the woods. I'm already unhappy for being related to this guy because he was clearly an alcoholic. He had a wife and a large family of 9 children. One of those children was my great-grandfather, who was responsible for me growing up not in Kentucky, but in Oklahoma. I'm not completely sure that that was an improvement. Surely any alcoholic was abusive. They usually are, right? His wife, Sarah, was probably relieved at his passing. Yet, here's a photo of Sarah, her hand on her husband's gravestone. There is a photo of him embedded at the top of the column. She's looking away, clearly distraught. Her sorrow is palpable through the grainy photograph. It was clear she missed him. It was clear that she loved him dearly, despite his faults. After all, she married him, stuck w...