Woo-hoo!!! I'd be shouting from the roof tops. I'd take space in the local paper!!! That is so cool.

Nancy.

What an interesting family, including you, Annie!

The rattlesnake story gave me chills.

Nell

Thats so neat Annie! Its not the wrong forum to post this in, were all very interested!
CMK

I couldn't find the link to your family history Web site, Annie. How cool that you are carrying on family tradition, and that the grape is named for your gg grandfather!

Lorna

Here is the link to the page about the grape. Click on "girdiana". That will take you to the site that tells about my GG-Grampa Gird. The link to my website is at the bottom of the article where it says "here".
Hope that helps.

Annie

Here is a link that might be useful: Page about the grape

annie, what an interesting family and how wonderful that these stories were passed down and that you have them "published" on the internet. That will be so helpful to other researchers.

What makes genealogy come alive is the personal stories. I wasn't able to find very many in my research. I didn't get interested until so many of the relatives were already gone.

I really enjoyed yours.

What a fantastic piece of family history, to have a plant that will always "belong" to your family. That is a very cool story. And I'm sure you have rooted cuttings for your children as well. What does it taste like - a concord grape? They are here in NY and I love them.

Thanks, Annie. You've done a huge amount of work in chronicling family history, well done. I love old photos, how wonderful that you were able to include several.

My mother is going to be 80 this year. She has been working on an autobiography for the past year. Part of the reason she is doing it is because we have scant information about our forebearers. I'll have to talk to her about including photos.
Lorna

Recently one of my cousins took his daughter's family and various nieces and nephews on a tour of the cemeteries where his parents, grandparents and even some great-grandparents are buried. One of 7 children, he is the remaining sibling and felt the need to show them the family plots while he can remember.

We'd recorded all the names and dates and shared before. Having information on a piece of paper is not the same as visiting graves and courthouses and archives and learning for yourself some of the history.

My personal preference is for all the little anecdotes about family that someone has handed down; a glimpse of what they were like and how they lived, like my elderly friend Rudolph telling about the Church Homecomings where the young people always 'walked down to the well.' At 97, she still giggled when she told it.

Nell

Annie, I thoroughly enjoyed reading your family's history, I think it's so important for those that know family history, to write it down for future generations. I know so little about mine other then my parents immigrated from England as children with my grandparents in the early 1900's. I have an old photo of my great grandmother and grand aunt but know nothing of the history of either side of the family.
I guess I should start a journal with my memories to pass on down to my children, it would be a start.

Annette

You did a wonderful job researching your family history! I'm always so impressed with people who venture into the unknown in search of a better life.

Thank you for sharing your family history with us.

Marilyn

Annie, that is so cool. You've got in in your genes to garden and you know where you got it from. I'm so glad you shared this with us and I like the idea of the arbor shade from the vine on a arbor. I have a very tough southern exposure and I can picture the arbor, with your family grapes hanging down, and maybe a hammock too. How beautiful is that????

Congratulations! What wonderful family history. I'm glad you posted it as well. I love to hear these great stories.

Cameron

That really great, Annie.

Someone on my father's side of the family has legitimately, in their own time and expense, found records dating back to 15th century England. I also know a lot of history on my mother's side as well. No plants named after them as far as I know.

Libby

Thanks everyone.

I hope you will feel free to go to the rest of the website and check it out, and even sign my guestbook. It sends a positive message to my sponsors (RootsWeb and Ancestry.Com)
Who knows...we could be related!

http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~hindorff/

Libby, isn't it interesting to have records that go back so far? I do not have all my information posted on my website. Too much information! I am so behind in updating it right now that I am plum ashamed of the state it is in right now. Waiting on a certain person who lives in this house to fix my computer like was promised three years ago. (Am I patient or what?)
It is running now, but I don't have all the tools I need to upload my files and web pages, or edit photos and other images, so here I sit, using his 'puter until MDHM (My Dear House Mate) gets 'round to completely restoring mine.

Gird Grape I grew from cutting - pretty blooms in Spring are a promise for grapes in the Fall:
{{gwi:753371}}

GG -The grapes taste like a grape, of course, but different from any other wild grape I've tasted thus far. They are only native to Southern California, although they have been cultivated elsewhere. Grannie made jelly and jam out of them back in the day, but I've always liked them best right off the vines. Tiny, sweet bead-like jewels. They have that wild twang to them. The jam comes out kind of brownish-purple. Not pretty like Welch's, but it tastes really good. Grannie's grapes have always tasted better to me tho', especially when I was a little girl. :)

Another view of my Gird Grape:
{{gwi:753372}}

Interesting side story about Grannie's Gird grape vine. Immediately after Grannie died at the age of 102 yrs old in 1998, her grapevine began to wither and die. The last I saw of it, it was not much more than a stump.
It used to cover a whole huge arbor that Grampa built as a shade over her washing tubs (and later wringer washing machine), the rinse tubs and her long wooden table he built for her where she folded her line-dried clothes and linens.
Southern California is very arid, so the washing/rinsing water was never wasted, but used to irrigate the Gird grape and the citrus orchard, figs, & other trees and Grannie's big veggie garden plot. It was all planted in terraces on the slope of the hill below the house and the wash arbor.
The wind blew up the hill and through the arbor and it was cool and pleasant under there. She spent many hours sitting out there in the shade on hot summer days. She often wrote her letters out there. She wrote to dozens of people on a weekly or monthly basis.
You risked your life if she caught you picking her grapes without permission, tho', let me tell you! I saw how she got onto my cousins once. I never wanted to provoke the wrath of Grannie, so I always asked...but she didn't always say yes.
"Darned kids, anyhow. Always comin' up here wantin' everything we have! You'd eat me and Grampa out of house and home if we'd let ya!"
She actually loved that we came up there to see her and Grampa. That was just her way.

Annie