Several years ago I inherited 5 or 6 boxes of family history from my mother. I've been lugging it around with me all this time, but hadn't ever looked through it. This week I decided to delve into it to see what was there, and I found a TREASURE TROVE! One box was FULL of letters and journals from my great grandmother Florence Grace Pettes Thacker. The letters go as far back as 1922 (maybe further) and include the love letters she and her husband Gerald Quincy Thacker wrote to each other when they were courting. There are about 300+ letters, 20 journals, newspaper clippings, odds and ends, a lock of my grandmother's hair when she was a baby, pictures, and even the ration books they used during WWII that still have the ration slips in them! I am so excited I can hardly contain myself! I'm going to start transcribing the letters today.
Also, as I was digging through the letters I found and email from one of my grandmother's cousins. I knew it was a long shot, but I tried the email and.... IT WORKED! He wrote me back and told me that he was thrilled to find me and told me that he was VERY active in family history and that they even had a yahoo group for the Pettes Family that I could join! I've meet several more of my grandma's cousins and I feel like a long lost daughter finally being found. It is the most AMAZING feeling. I can't wait to get started on my great grandmother's history. I can feel her cheering me on. I've never felt like this before, and I can really feel the presence of angels who are interested in seeing me succeed. They are counting on me. I now know Malachi meant when he said,
"Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord: And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse." (Malachi 4:5-6)
