Breaking a brick wall.

Have you ever hit that big brick wall.  I have hit it several times.  How do you get past it?  

I hit that wall with my paternal grandmother, Ada Parish Scripture Knight.  I had pictures of her that my daddy's aunt saved for him.  But that was all I had.  

When Daddy died in 1997, I got my first computer and began to put together my family tree.  I knew my immediate family and I knew many of my mother's relatives, but once I put my father in, and I knew his father and his paternal side, I was totally stumped as far as his mother's side.  And I knew her name.  I can only imagine if I hadn't known her name.  

I blogged about this on another page, but...I hope this will encourage other genealogy researchers.  I searched almost nightly for seven years for my grandmother.  I know.  People say I'm like a bulldog.  Once I get hold of something I just don't let go and I don't give up.  It must work for me, I found her.

I had looked everywhere.  Just couldn't come up with anything on Ada.  So I started doing something different.  I know you will all go away from here and say, "What a nutjob!" but it worked.  I would go to bed each night and mentally have a conversation with my grandmother, whom I had never met.  I knew a little bit about her.  She was three feet tall and a hunchback.  Yeah, that's right.  So I would have these conversations with her and ask her to help me to find her.  No harm in asking, right?  

I had always read and heard that positive imagery works so I thought I would try it out.  Again, it must have worked because I finally found her shortly after I started my conversations with her in the night.  I'm really not crazy, Ya'll!  

So one night I was searching all sorts of pages and putting her name in every search engine I came across, when all of a sudden I found myself on the Minnesota Historical Society's page.  

There in print was the name Ada Parish.  

In this Historical Society's page, and possibly in Minnesota, they list death records by their mother's name.  I sent for Ada's death certificate the next day.  I was totally beside myself.  I knew that she had died of cancer.  But to have her death certificate felt, to me, like having a little bit of her in my possession.  The wait was terrible.  Several days went by and then it came.  It listed Ada, her parents, and one of her relatives who had given the information for her death certificate.  Carlton Parish.  That was a name I wasn't familiar with.  

Another thing her death certificate told me was which funeral home buried her and which cemetery.  I called the funeral home the next day.  I asked them if they might just know where I could find her obituary.  I waited while they checked.  The man returned to the phone and said, "I happen to have her obituary right here!"  You could have knocked me over with a feather.  He was kind enough to agree to fax it to me at my fax machine at work.  And just like that, I had many of my answers.  But there was more.  

I decided that I would contact Carlton Parish because there was a phone number listed in White Pages online.  I nervously dialed the number and waited as it rang several times.  Finally a man answered and I barely knew what to say.  Hi I think you know my grandmother didn't sound right.  What if he thought I was a phone scammer.  I took just a moment to think about it and finally said, "I'm working on my genealogy and I need to ask you if you might know some names I'm working on.  He said ok.  And so I started out reading off Ada Parish, Emma Parish, Carl Parish, and the list went on for just a minute.  He was very quiet and finally said, "Hold on, let me turn the TV down."  

He came back to the phone and we talked for about an hour.  Turned out that he was the son of my great uncle Carlton Parish Senior.  He said that when I started reading out the names he knew I was talking about his family.  I asked him if there were any others still alive.  He said yes and gave me three or four names.  

That was no easy feat, I want you to know.  I still feel that Ada led me to the right web site.  To this day, I don't know how I got to that Minnesota Historical Society web page.  

As stated above.  She was three feet tall and a hunchback.  Look at the pockets on her dress.  And Look at Daddy.  He was born May 10, 1917.  This was obviously the fall of the year if you take your hints from the rest of the picture.  So It looks like by the way they were dressed, it was the late fall in Minnesota.  He must have been 6 to 7 months old.  Not much more than that I would guess.

The funniest thing about this picture is that it has been in our possession since Daddy was a child.  We all knew this picture was there.  Apparently no one looked too closely at it.

One day, I wanted to take a good look at her face so I blew the picture up big.  When I looked closely I nearly fainted.  There was a younger version of ME looking back at me.  All my life everyone said I didn't look like anyone in my family.  Phyllis looked like Momma and Gay looked like Daddy but who did Peggy look like.  Momma finally started telling folks that I looked like the milk man.  For some strange reason, I didn't really find much humor in that.

I finally had my answer as to who I look like.  I look like Ada!