Contagious Genealogy: A Pandemic

In a previous blog post on my Great Grandaunt Mary , I wrote about her quilting hobby and how I coincidentally found a photo of her sewing a pattern that wound up in the hands of a cousin whom I had just met online (all due to this blog!). Quilt made by Mary (Dixon) Stalnaker Hogg and gifted to Nancy Hogg.  Photo supplied by Nancy Hogg, 2022. Mary wasn't the only quilter in the family though. Her mother, Lizzie (Rockwell) Dixon, and grandmother, Elizabeth (Pitcock) Rockwell, had also been avid quilters. In 2009, our family attended a small reunion outside of Tulsa, Oklahoma at my Great Aunt Frances (Dean) Wise's home to celebrate her 90th birthday and her sister Thelma's 81st. It was the perfect opportunity to raid Frances' closet, figuratively speaking! She gave us the low down on several family heirlooms and photos hung about her bedroom, including the many handmade quilts she had stored in a box, as well as two garments she produced herself. Both she and Thelma are n...

On 6 July 1936, my maternal great grand-aunt, Mary Lucretia (Dixon) Stalnaker, who was a widow, married her 2nd husband, Thomas Gilmore Hogg, in West Virginia. She was 43. He was 33 and had also previously been married. Tommy worked as a hired hand for the Dixons. The two had flirted with each other at the store owned by Mary's mother. Thomas was quite a different match from her first husband, Walter, who was 26 years her senior. This time, she'd be the older, wiser one of the relationship. Tommy and Mary (Dixon) Stalnaker Hogg, 1936 In a previous blog post , I wrote about the supposed suitors that Mary had, due to the sheer number of postcards she had received and kept from eligible bachelors back in her prime, before she was married. But many blogs previous to that one, I wrote of a "Spanish influenza" victim in my family tree who just happened to be photographed in front of a big brick house belonging to Mr. Thomas Hogg. To my surprise, Tommy Hogg's niece, Nan...