52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks – Week 42: Conflict

I am working on this year-long prompt, hosted by Amy Johnson Crow. I will write each week in one of my two blogs, either Mam-ma’s Southern Family or at My Trails Into the Past. I’m looking forward to writing about my children’s ancestors in new and exciting ways.

Our theme this week is "conflict" and I have had a hard time thinking up a story about conflict. It's hard to know if the move they made to another state was due to conflict with those left behind or just a chance to find a better life somewhere else. 

I do have a little snippet of a story told to me by my grandmother, Pansy Louise (Lancaster) Johnston.

When my mother, Lela Nell, was about two years old, my grandparents, Pansy Louise and Tom Johnston, separated for a short time. Pansy went to live with her aunt, Maggie Self. Maggie was her father, George Warren Lancaster’s sister, Margaret, who married Herbert Acklin Self around 1919. They lived in Fort Worth and never had children.

The story did not come with a reason for the separation. It didn’t last long because they were together the rest of my grandfather’s life, as far as I know.

My grandfather always seemed a little gruff to me. He barely tolerated us six kids. I could see how it might have been hard to live with him. It was about 1936, and perhaps the work and living situation was difficult during that time in the Depression.

I do have a photo of my mother, my grandmother, and Maggie Self. Lela looks about two years old, so this might have been taken during the short time they stayed with Maggie.
Pansy (Lancaster) Johnston, Maggie
(Lancaster) Self, and Lela Nell Johnston


Copyright © 2018 by Lisa Suzanne Gorrell, Mam-ma's Southern Family

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