Days of Yore

I started to write a story about my parents and grandparents that I knew and remembered. I especially wanted to write about the changes in the way they lived and how so many things have changed even in my lifetime. I was born in 1931, in a different world than my grandchildren live in today. The changes and inventions that have occurred in the last 100 years and the ways they have changed the way we live are remarkable. The more research I did, the more involved and interested I became...
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I started to write a story about my parents and grandparents that I knew and remembered. I especially wanted to write about the changes in the way they lived and how so many things have changed even in my lifetime. I was born in 1931, in a different world than my grandchildren live in today. The changes and inventions that have occurred in the last 100 years and the ways they have changed the way we live are remarkable. The more research I did, the more involved and interested I became in history. No longer were the Puritans and Quakers just people that came to this country seeking religious freedom they were our grandparents. They helped to settle this great country of ours, endured all the hardships making it and us what we are today. I found many events that I had skipped over in history or had forgotten, but when you find your ancestors were there living those times they take on a different meaning. Fern Lancaster, my Uncle Jack''s wife, was a Mormon or Latter Days Saint member and they are very big into genealogy. She was working on the Lancaster ancestry and my sister Donna and I assisted her in helping our parents and grandparents to remember. She would give me copies of the records she had made and I would toss them into a desk drawer, thinking someday I would like to do a little more on them. A Bob Hamby came thru Paducah, Kentucky and called our brother Bill, aka Sonny, and asked what his grandfather''s name was? Bob explained he was a long distance truck driver and every time he went to a different city, he would look up the Hamby''s to see if they were related. He was from Florida. Bill told him he did not know his grandfather''s name as he had died about the time he was born, but his sister, Donna, could give him that information. They exchanged telephone numbers. Donna and Bob played phone tag for several months, one day they connect. She told him her grandfather was William Logan Hamby. Bob told her, he had his ancestry and would mail it to her. Donna received the information and since she now lived in Kentucky and most of the Hamby''s'' had moved to Kentucky years and years before and stayed there, she was in the right place for researching. Donna started checking with people especially Dee Kunnecke. Every time I made a trip to Kentucky we checked censuses, graveyards and libraries to see what more we could find. Unfortunately, most of it was tossed into that drawer with all the other papers to work on at another time. Fern and Donna passed away and I thought if this is going to get done, I had better get busy: as I am not getting any younger. About a year and a half ago, I got out the drawer with all the papers and started trying to assemble them. I heard about Ancestry.Com and started looking up family trees. Some had very good information, others not so good, but helpful to say the least. Pretty soon I was an Ancestry.com junkie! (Note; not all the info is correct, you have to pick and choose.)My children gave me an I Pad for my birthday and a new world opened up to me. I found Google! Between Ancestry.Com and Google I used reams of paper copying and comparing everything. I hope some of you will read my book and get as excited as I have been and continue to add to it for future generations. I have enjoyed writing this book, but what I have learned from the research about our families, ancestry and history of our country and how it was settled are too numerous to write. I feel that I have gotten to know these people and they are no longer just names. As I am computer illiterate, this book would never have gotten finished had it not been for the help that daughter Linda Nelson, granddaughter Candice Nelson-Hayes and grandson Jeff Workman gave me. They came running every time I yelled for help! Thank You! My daughter, Gail Kaiser, came to my aid with the pictures and captions, Thank you. Please do not grade me on my typing or grammar. Hopefully this book will give you a better under-standing of what our fore fathers endured and what has made us what and who we are today. Betty Jean Hamby Gripentog