Start

That’s the first week’s prompt in this genealogy challenge from Amy Johnson Crow. Getting started with anything new is always difficult for me. Do you start at the very beginning? (The Sound of Music says so.) Or maybe somewhere in the middle, possibly a great grandparent. Or at the end of the line, which, genealogically speaking, would be me.

Inertia gets me every time. I started this blog over two years ago and did nothing with it other than add the picture of the kudzu. I had lots of ideas, but each time I started writing things just fizzled. I think these weekly prompts might just do the trick. I’ve got lots of family photos (close to 4,000) to inspire story-telling, and lots of relations that need their story told.

Let’s get started with a couple of multi-generational photos. Ladies first!

Pictured are my mother Betty McKenzie Rohleder (1927-2015), my grandmother Annie Reynolds McKenzie (1902-1987) holding me, and my great grandmother Mary Phifer Reynolds (1880-1955), seated. This picture was taken at my grandmother’s house in Rockingham, NC, in August 1953.

The gentlemen are three generations of Andrew Hamilton Rohleder: Senior (1870-1950), Junior (1900-1974) and Third (1920-1944). This picture was taken in Charlotte, NC, in July 1943, probably at my aunt’s house.