Tag: Sp2015

My Grandmother In most families, people grow up in a warm, engaging, environment. For my grandmother, that was not the case. My grandmother, Edna Archer, grew up in Galveston, TX, with a mother, father, and brother. Her great grandfather was a well-known entrepreneur, William Lewis Moody, famous throughout Galveston and the southern part of Texas. …

As an orthodox Christian, it came as a bit of shock to me that practically my entire father’s ancestry line was Mormon. This religious dynasty extended to even the founding of what I had previously considered a cult. While it might not seem that I would be thrilled to write about this discovery, after some …

My mother’s side of the family has had several soldiers fight in many different wars over the past 150 years, and their service is something of which I am very proud. Military servicemen have always been regarded as the most courageous and altruistic people in America. Soldiers give up years of their lives to serve …

Nestled at the base of the Appalachian Mountains sits a tiny liberal arts school, Union College. Up until a few weeks ago I had barely even heard of this college, let alone paid any attention to it or imagined its relevance to me. This apathetic feeling quickly subsided when my grandmother told me that we …

  I have always been curious about my ancestry before this project, but I had never looked into it all that deeply. I was excited to maybe find that I was related to someone famous or had accomplished something great. But there was very little I could find on both sides of my family. There …

Our class was told we would be writing a genealogy paper, and I thought “great, time to show off how awesome my ancestry is!” My class downloaded ancestry.com to aid us in forming our family trees, and after a call with my mother, I was able to witness the magic of the website. Census reports …

As I read the clipping from an Akron, Colorado newspaper, I pictured the life of some “Paul Bunyan-esque” American hero or character in an old western: full of danger and adventure. The article followed the adventures of a man who was seemingly pursued by danger as he traveled across the country, and yet he was always one …

The U.S. Civil War is known as the single deadliest war in American history. More American soldiers died in this war than in all of the country’s previous conflicts combined, most likely because the soldiers on both sides were, in fact, American. The war pit state against state, town against town, neighbor against neighbor. For …

It is common for a person’s last name to confuse others when it comes to pronunciation and spelling, as last names often illustrate a family’s original culture. I learned early on from my parents that my last name, Boucher is French. However, I did not learn until I was around twelve that my father had …

“Remember that your soldier still loves you,” wrote Ann Hollis’ husband from a training camp in North Carolina as he was preparing to travel overseas during World War II (the picture shown above is one of many letters written to his wife found in the W.S. Hoole Collection). Much like this solider who found himself …