Mam-ma's Southern Family

This is my third year 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 have enjoyed writing about my children’s ancestors in new and exciting ways. My grandfather, Tom J. Johnston once grew a beard for a contest. I had written previously about my grandfather’s beard . This post is an update because I found a record held at the Contra Costa County Historical Society that substantiates the contest. In Walnut Creek, where my maternal grandparents, Tom J. and Pansy Johnston, and their daughter, Lela Nell, lived is a yearly festival in September called the Walnut Festival. Before large housing tracts were built, the area had numerous walnut orchards and a big packing plant in downtown Walnut Creek to process the walnuts. When I was growing up in the 1960s in Walnut Creek, many of the homes had some of these old walnut trees in their yards. Kids would come to s...

Your mission, should you decide to accept it (cue the Mission Impossible! music) is to: 1)  This week we're going to look for men's facial hair in our photograph collections. 2)  Find one or more photographs of men in your ancestral families that have facial hair - a mustache and/or a beard.  3)  Show the photograph if you have it and tell us a bit about the person shown.   If you don't have a digital photograph, please describe the man and his facial hair the best you can. 4)  Write your own blog post, or a comment to this blog post, or a comment on Facebook or Google+. I have a photograph of my grandfather, Tom J. Johnston (1912-1973), sporting a beard. Supposedly, he grew it out for a beard growing contest for the Walnut Festival, a four-day event in late September held in Walnut Creek, California. This probably was in the last 1940s or early 1950s. I have never seen my grandfather in a beard at all, so this was really...