Introduction

My mom and I were inspired to start this "family history" blog because of my dad's Aunt Carrie.

Carrie Fredrick Phillips ("Aunt Grandma"), early 1990's

  She wrote an autobiography of her life when she was 75, which we wish to document on this blog, along with family photos.  Aunt Carrie's father was an amateur photographer, so we have a lot more family photos than most people have from that era. Not many people have the kind of information on family history that we have for my dad's mother's side of the family...(at least without resorting to Ancestry.com!).  We plan to share them here periodically as well as chapters of her book.

Aunt Grandma reading "Go Dog Go" to me when I was little.

Aunt Carrie, who I affectionately named "Aunt Grandma" when I was a child, was a remarkable woman.  It's a strange combination of either words failing me, or having way too many words to describe how much she meant to me, even though I only knew her for 11 years of my life.  But I am fortunate enough to have her book that she wrote about her life.  Like I have said, she was a remarkable woman and she went through a lot in her life that I never knew about until I read that book as a teenager.  I feel that, as a child, I was not able to fully appreciate how amazing she was, and I wish she were still alive for me to go visit and have lunch or a cup of tea with, talk with, and glean wisdom from...like I am blessedly still able to with my grandma (my mother's mother).  Of course, she was born in 1910, so she would be 102 if she were alive today.  Even so, I have often saddened that she did not live long enough to watch me graduate from high school, or get married...or grow into the woman I am today...a woman I'm convinced that she helped to shape.  But on the other hand, I know she has watched me with heavenly eyes and is happier to be with the Lord than she would be here on a flawed earth in a frail body.

Anyway...here's to family, legacy, and memory.