The Matriarchs

Tomorrow is Mother's Day.  The Day of the Family Matriarchs.  All of mine are gone, but because of my work in the family genealogy, I likely know much more about my great grand mothers than I did growing up.  And both my grandmothers are more familiar to me now since only one lived nearby while I was a child.

The women in our family were strong willed women, had great common sense, could manage money to the penny, knew cooking, crafts and how to get as much out of a set of clothes or the raw materials for a meal as was at all possible--they had to.  Amelia Kunze Calvert and her daughter Dora Grace Calvert Hurd traveled the Oregon Trail from Missouri to the Northwest about 1903.  Leannah Manis Herd was born in Rogersville, Tennessee in 1860 and was still living there when she died in 1900 having given birth to eight children, four girls and four boys including my maternal grandfather.

Caroline Amanda Bush Krieger was born in Ohio and married an immigrant in 1879.  The following year she gave birth to a son in the early spring.  A month later she buried her first child after he died from the whooping cough.  This was so typical, and was indicative of the times and the conditions in which the families lived.  She delivered eight more children, four girls and four more boys, two of them dying before they were three years old.  Her daughter Myrtle Gertrude Krieger Moore Shaw (my paternal grandmother) raised four girls and eight boys plus one of her daughter's sons for a nice round thirteen.  After my dad was kicked in the forehead by their milk cow, Gramma Shaw picked the dirt and debris out of the wound, and nursed him back to health.  There were no doctors within forty miles, and even had there been they didn't have the money to pay one.  She kept it clean and taped it as best she could.  He ended up with a big smiling scar on his forehead, but he survived.

Isabella B. Livingston Moore married at the age of eighteen.  In ten years she had two daughters and four sons losing her husband when the youngest was not yet delivered.  She took the two youngest boys to her Aunt who was married to a minister named Shaw.  We don't know if there was ever a formal adoption, but the boys took the last name and hence why I'm a Shaw.  The other kids were old enough that she was able to raise them.  She outlived two more husbands dying in 1946 when I was four years old.  The resolve of those hardy women is why families survived in spite of the numerous challenges and tragedies they faced.

And today I go forward, carrying a little part of each of you beautiful women within me.  I hope those traits I inherited are what have made me a better person in life, a kinder gentler soul, but one who can buck up when the going gets tough and be a survivor.  I am who I am because of you.  Thank you very much. Love you all.