Ancestors

This week marked the 178th anniversary of the fall of the Alamo in Texas. All Texas school children learn about Texas' fight for independence from Mexico in 1836 and "Remember the Alamo" is something almost everyone has heard. My dad was a great genealogist and left me all of his files-boxes and boxes of them because almost all of his research was done pre-internet. It represents years and years of hard work, but he loved it. I can't imagine doing it without the internet and Ancestry.com. What took him months and years can sometimes be done now in a matter of days or weeks.

Anyway, this week got me going back and doing some research on my 4th-great grandmother who was an Alamo widow. I am descended through her first husband Isaac House on my mother's side of the family. This is Esther Berry House Floyd Clark. I don't know the date of this photograph, but I'm guessing sometime between 1860 and 1870.

On the Texas A & M University website is a history of her life, which is too lengthy to reproduce on this blog but this is a link:  http://www.tamu.edu/faculty/ccbn/dewitt/1828census.htm#berrybio

In short, she made the journey in a wagon from Missouri to Texas as a young wife and mother, was widowed twice, survived an indian attack, fled before the advance of the Mexican Army with her young children and newborn baby and was later left to raise her own 12 children and her step-children when her third husband left for the California gold rush and was never heard from again. The story closes with these words:  "She was brave, patriotic and hospitable and deserves to be recorded among the honored women of her time."

I hate to think what she would say if she could see her 4th great-granddaughter today-she would probably think I was very soft and spoiled, I'm sure. This pioneer woman was amazing and made of much sterner stuff than me!