Mam-ma's Southern Family

I thought this week I would show photos of my grandparents celebrating Christmas. This might have been set up as a Christmas card but I'm not sure. Mam-ma is on the left and Tom-Tom on the right, with Thunder in the center. They had a very small tree. And look at that crazy pattern on their drapes. Clearly this is the 50s. My grandparents always came to our house for Christmas and Thanksgiving because it was easier since we had the large family of six kids. My mother did most of the cooking but Mam-ma brought some dishes to share. Tom-Tom's sister, Beryl, always brought pies: pumpkin, pecan, and mincemeat. My dad and I loved the mincemeat. Here is one from 1975 with my whole family and Tom's sister, Beryl is seated on the left. We had lost Tom-Tom two years previously. Merry Christmas! Copyright © 2021 by Lisa S. Gorrell, Mam-ma's Southern Family, All rights reserved.

My grandmother, Pansy Louise Lancaster Johnston, the one we all called Mam-ma, was very crafty. She was a very talented seamstress and made many of her own clothes. She even worked for clothing stores taking in alterations. Here is an example of a dress she made. Here is another, showing my mother, Lela and her with matching dresses. Later in life, when she stopped sewing, she would crochet and made many blankets. You can see an example on the chair to the right of Mam-ma. When she moved to the assisted living place, she liked to sit and embroider. She bought T-shirts and embroidered flowers, crosses, and other symbols on them in a decorative way. It sure kept her busy and she enjoyed giving the shirts to people she cared about. Here is an example of one she made for herself. I think as she got older and it was easier wearing sweat clothes, she wanted to decorate them up. This is my fourth year working on this year-long prompt, hosted by Amy Johnson Crow. I will write each week...

My grandmother, Pansy Louise Lancaster, whom we called Mam-ma, lived to about two months shy of her one hundredth birthday. We had great plans to celebrate that milestone, but her health began to fail and she passed away on 8 October 2013. However, we did have a nice 99th birthday celebration at her assisted living home, Courtyards at Pine Creek in Concord, California the day before her actual birthday. All of the family came to celebrate. She was so happy to have all of her six grandchildren, three of her great-grandchildren, and all of the three great-great-grandchildren present for the party. Even her nephew came to help with the celebration. The cake was beautifully decorated with candles but I don’t remember if she was able to blow them out on her own. My sister, Sabrina, took great care with the arrangements and we all had a great time visiting with our grandmother and each other. We got to see Zoe and Noah, the two youngest for the first time. Today, November 19 is her birth...

In the nearly one hundred years that my grandmother, Pansy Louise (Lancaster) Johnston, lived, she experienced great technological change. Born in 1913 and died just two months short of her hundredth birthday in 2013, many technical advances happened in her lifetime. Growing up on a farm in Erath County, Texas, transportation was likely horse and wagon into town, and walking on her own two feet to school. Later, they lived in the town of Stephenville and her father was a self-taught auto mechanic. In her lifetime, planes progressed to jets, and her brother, R.D., was an Air Force pilot in World War II and Korea. Her husband, Tom, and her younger brother, Wayne, served in the Navy. Pansy was independent and drove a car up until the last decade of her life, when a minor heart attack put a stop to her driving. Their family did not have a radio in 1930, but it was likely they soon had one. Once television was widely available, the Johnston family had one, as I have heard stories ...

Sometimes I take these themes literally. I searched in RootsMagic genealogy database for the word “steps” and found this article about my first cousin, twice removed, Lovetta Loveless. Her father, Zachariah Loveless was a son of my maternal great-great-grandfather, Ebenezer Loveless. Lovetta (1929-2011), never married. She lived in Little Rock, Arkansas and worked as a legal secretary. A January 6, 1977 newspaper article from the Arkansas Democrat gave an account of her trip to a Club Med location in Playa Blanca, Mexico.       “It was a fabulous vacation for Lovetta Loveless when she spent a December week at Club Mediterranie at Playa Blanca, Mexico. The village is situated on a hillside on the Pacific Coast between Puerto Vallarta and Manzanilla. ‘My bungalow was next to the top--86 steps from the main area. Even though I tried to eliminate trips up and down, it was almost necessary to make four or five trips a day,’ she said.      ...

My mother lived with her parents in the 1940s and 1950s in Walnut Creek, California until she was a junior in high school, and then they moved to a house they purchased in Pleasant Hill. Both communities were rural or small-town in nature. There were local shops to purchase goods but no large department stores. Perhaps Sears or JC Penney had catalog stores where one could order something.  So if you wanted to do shopping in larger department stores, you had to drive or ride the bus into Oakland or San Francisco. Oakland had an H.C. Capwell and a Sears Roebuck store, plus many other fine shops along Broadway and Telegraph. It is likely that my mother and her mother traveled into Oakland on the Greyhound bus and shopped in the stores. It would have been a big deal, one where you put on your best clothes because you were going into the city. How do I know this? We have in our collection a photograph of my mother and grandmother walking down Broadway near the Paramount Theater. From th...

I currently have four people in my genealogy database named Hazel Loveless. Three are men, all born before 1820, and one is a woman, born in 1914. I wonder about the popularity of the name in the 1700s. I decided to search the 1800 U.S. census on just the first name of Hazel. I got sixteen hits, with half having spelling variations. My ancestor’s brother, Hazel Loveless, b. about 1770, turned up in Newberry District, South Carolina.  Others were found in New York, Vermont, Maryland, Connecticut, North Carolina, and New Hampshire. I thought it was a southern thing to name boys Hazel. Census Year No. with Hazel as First Name 1810 26 1820 33 1830 66* [1] 1840 84* My Hazels Hazel Loveless was born about 1770. He was an older brother of my maternal 4x-great-grandfather, James Loveless, who was born about 1771. Both may have been born in North Carolina or South Carolina, b...

I come from a line of women who loved clothes and loved posing in them. Previously, I shared some photos of my great-aunt, Beryl Johnston and you can find that post here . There are many more shots similar to those that I will share here. My grandmother, Pansy Louise Lancaster Johnston, also liked posing for photos in her favorite outfits, some she made. Pansy "Johnnie" Johnston & Beryl Johnston Russell Posing in Johnnie's backyard Pansy showing off her new dress she made My aunt loved posing for the camera in her home and I have boxes of slides of her in different outfits such as these two. I think Hollywood influenced her poses. My grandmother and my great aunt were not related, but got along well. Beryl was my grandfather's sister. She lived in Sacramento and came often to our holiday get-togethers. Such fun seeing all of these photos and appreciating the change in fashion over the years. This is my fourth year working on this year-long 52 Ancestors in 52 Wee...

Martha lost her mother when she was just three years old in 1872. Besides her, she had four siblings under ten: John E, Mary E, James R, and Daniel K., who was just eighteen months old. It is likely that her older sisters, Sarah “Sallie” Coor and Irma Anna Coor, took care of the younger children. Her father, James Madison Coor, was a farmer. By 1881, he moved from rural Copiah County, Mississippi to rural Erath County, Texas. All eight of his children who lived to adult moved to Texas, too. He died in 1889, leaving two children needing a guardian, which was done by their uncle, Samuel O Durham, husband of their sister, Irma Anna. S.O. Durham reported annually to the court in his capacity as guardian for DK and Doll Coor. In December 1894, he reported that Doll Coor married Cary Lancaster on 9 March 1892 and that she sold her entire interest in the Coor Estate to A.A. Chapman. [1] Her husband’s full name was William Carlton Lancaster, son of George W. Lancaster and Martha J. Polly...

For many years, I did not know what had become of my 2x-great-grandmother, Martha Jane Polly who married George W. Lancaster. She was with their family in the 1880 census and then gone. Also gone were their two children, Lonnie and Margaret. I assumed she had died and searched for clues to her death and burial, but never found any records. I couldn’t find any records of the two lost children either. Then I received an email from a descendant of one of George and Martha’s children. There had been a divorce and a remarriage, and Martha died in Tulare County, California in 1932. [1] Life Before the Divorce George W. Lancaster married Martha Jane Polly on 25 Oct 1871 in Kaufman County, Texas. [2] Twenty-two years and six children later, they were divorced on 23 December 1893 in Pima County, Arizona Territory. [3] They had six children, all born in Texas, except Reginald, who was born in Phoenix, Arizona Territory: William Carlton, born 21 July 1873, Rockwall Co, Texas [4] Lonnie O...

When I began researching my Mam-ma’s family, I wanted to go to Texas to see where my mother and grandmother grew up. I broached the subject to my grandmother and she agreed to go on a trip to Stephenville with me. The year was 1995. My mother had been gone three years already and I had been working on genealogy research for probably two years. As I worked on Texas research, I really wanted to visit the places my mother lived. Mam-ma was willing, especially as I paid our way, and she made the arrangements for the places we would stay: the homes of her niece, Sandra, and her brother, R.D. My great-uncle, R.D. was great. He took us all around Stephenville, stopping at each of the houses where they lived. It seemed they moved a lot, looking for better or cheaper places to live. Some were in town and some out in the country. When my grandmother was born, her father was still trying to farm. But it didn’t work out and he learned to fix cars instead, which had a steady income. I kept no...

I began this blog in 2011 to honor the southern roots of my grandmother, Pansy Louise Lancaster, and have a place to tell the stories of her family. Another motivation for writing blog posts is hoping that cousins will find my posts and contact me. This has happened several times, but not as much as I had hoped. I heard from a Hutson cousin and he has done tremendous research, taking the family back many generations. He formed a Hutson Family Facebook page where other members of his immediate family have also joined and shared photos. He is related to me through my 4x-great-grandfather, Robert Hutson (1821-????). I also heard from Loveless cousins, some of whom live in Texas and others in Arkansas. These are descendants of Ebenezer Loveless (1851-1929). I have been contacted by some Lancaster cousins, who are descendants of George W Lancaster (1839-1919). One descendant helped me discover what had happened to his wife, Martha Jane Polly (1855-1932), who I had thought died. This...

My great-grandfather, George W. “Warren” Lancaster died in 1964 and his obituary mentions his surviving relatives. His survivors include his wife, Mrs. Maidee Lancaster, two sons, Col. R.D. Lancaster, Alexandria, Va., and Wayne Lancaster of Pampa, a daughter Mrs. Pansy Louise Johnston of Pleasant Hill, Calif., nine grandchildren and one great grandchild; two brothers, Wilson of Muleshoe and Early of Southland; three sisters, Mrs. Jodie Lovelace and Mrs. Maggie Self both of Fort Worth and Mrs. Pearl Weatherly of Ropesville. [1] Whenever I read obituaries like this, I try to figure out who the survivors are, especially when they are not named. In this obituary, these numbers don’t add up. I am one of the great-grandchildren and by 1964, I had two brothers and one sister, making a total of four great-grandchildren. If the great-grandchildren number is wrong, are the other numbers correct? I checked my genealogy database. For grandchildren, I found his son, RD, had seven children, hi...

You may notice a change to the look of the blog. I have done this so my content can be viewed better on tablets and smart phones.  I was hesitant, but discovered that I really like this new template. It has a very clean and modern look. Plus, I was able to upload my own photo of my Mam-ma, my grandfather, and my mother, which you can see really well using a smart phone.  Let me know what you think! Copyright © 2021 by Lisa S. Gorrell, Mam-ma's Southern Family, All rights reserved.