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Showing posts from November, 2022

Happy Thanksgiving!

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I'm making my mother's cornbread stuffing for Thanksgiving dinner. It is likely a recipe passed down from my Mam-ma. Of course, I'll be cutting this recipe in quarters, as I'll just bake it in a casserole. This is my favorite part of Thanksgiving dinner. Copyright © 2022 by Lisa S. Gorrell, Mam-ma's Southern Family, All rights reserved.

Shadows: Great-Grandfather George Warren Lancaster

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I have a photo of my mother’s grandfather, George Warren Lancaster when he visited their home in Walnut Creek in California. This would have been in the late 1940s, before my mother’s parents, Tom J and Pansy Johnston, moved to Pleasant Hill in late 1949. How do I know? The background of the photo is the yard of their house in a rural part of Walnut Creek. I have other photos of my mother and my grandmother with the house in the background. This photo of Warren doesn’t show the house but it clearly shows a rural location. The Johnstons moved to a suburban tract home in 1949. I don’t know the exact location of the house. Personal records in my archives always listed their address as Route 1, Box 49 in Walnut Creek. My grandmother told me they rented the house from Mr. Ford and had wanted to buy it, but he was not interested in selling it. I did discover a 1947 directory covering Walnut Creek and Lafayette that listed Tom J. Johnston’s address as Route 1, Box 49, living on Castle Hil