Hi, My name is Carole. I've been on this list a long time now. Mostly, lately, however, I have not had time to read my mail. I had a death in the family --- my Uncle Bob. His terminal cancer laid him low for the last few months of his life and took my attention. We had a couple of good visits before he could no longer talk (which happened shortly before his death). During one of the visits, we joked together about him asking his dead father (my grandfather) what his real name was, when he finally got to see him again. I'm now waiting for the message. <g> Yes, we have a weird sense of humor in my family. I have a BA in Anthropology and an MA in Archeology from the University of California, Los Angeles (1976 and 1979). I worked in public archaeology for a time after getting out of school, but couldn't support my children on the money. I retired from working about five or six years ago due to medical problems. So, one would think I'd have more time. <g> But, I had five daughters and for the last eight years, they have been giving birth to eight children. So, that keeps me kind of busy, too. One is going to spare me and probably not have any children. Her husband and her keep changing their minds about it. Another one of my daughters, though, may break the two to a couple rule that the rest of them have set for themselves. So, I may end up with ten grandchildren after all. I have three grandsons and five granddaughters, to this point. A lot of you have said you enjoy history. I hated history in school and only got interested in it, somewhat, when I visited the South on a business trip. Visiting some of the museums, I got an idea of what went on with the regular people during the Civil War. That interested me, though wars and dates of wars never had. Since doing genealogy, I have gotten very interested in History, though. It has become useful. It helps me find my ancestors, and the history I'm learning through genealogy is about people and not wars. I am still having trouble with the dates, though. I envy hearing some of the stories of your families. I would love to be able to fill in my family tree with stories about the people on it. I have only gotten to know by their names and statistics to this point. I tell people that I know where the bodies are buried. I don't, though, not all of them. I can't find out where they put my grandfather, C.B. Strickland's ashes after they cremated him. I checked with the hospital where he died and was cremated, but they don't keep records back that far. Darn! One of the people I really would like to talk to from my family tree is my grandfather, John Bernard Calhoun from Iowa. We think he changed his name and lied about where he came from. We don't really know why, though. We don't believe it was because he murdered three brothers, as he always said. We think it was because he was hiding something else, though we aren't sure what could be worse than three murders. I'd like to ask him for the truth. The other person I'd like to talk to is my great-great-grandmother Sarah R. Lowry, daughter of Cindarilla Breedlove and Thomas Lowry. She married a man named William Alan Mullicane. According to family lore, "the Mullicane married an Indian woman." So, I'd like to ask Sarah what Native American group she belonged to and if both of her parents were Cherokee, like we believe. I'd also like to ask her how I could prove it. The only wagons that I can talk about my family having traveled in were the ones that the Stricklands built in Nebraska at an uncle's dairy farm in which they came to California from their home in Springfield, Missouri. That was in the 1930s and they were pulled by brand new Ford cars, not oxen or horses, and came on highways, not trails. I had the pleasure of meeting my great-grandmother, Sarah Frances Mullicane Strickland before she died (in her late nineties). She chewed tobacco and spit it into a coffee can all the way across the room (or so it seemed to my sister and me aged 6 and 4 something). My Uncle Guy and Uncle Claud played the fiddle and a one stringed base while we were there, and I enjoyed the whole experience a whole lot. That's probably why I still remember it though I was not yet five years old. My Uncle Bob told me about a time when Uncle Guy and Uncle Claude had a gun fight over a ham that they couldn't decide how to divide up that they'd won at the Los Angeles County Fair. They had both been drinking. Claude shot Guy and accidentally got Guy's wife Agnes in the arm, too. My older sister remembers going to see them when they were both recovering from the wounds, laying in bed in the big old house in Los Angeles where the entire family (at least three generations) was living at the time. I believe Claude had already gone back home to Missouri. I always was told that Claude left because of the shooting. I have since found out that he came back to California for a visit after that. So, I don't believe they had any hard feelings about the shooting. They were quite a group. They were, I believe, where the idea for the Beverly Hillbillies came from. My grandmother, Claude and Guy's sister, worked for a movie producer, Stanley Kramer, for some time while she lived in Los Angeles, so it is possible that he told someone about them and the idea of them eventually got turned into a TV show. Researching on my father's side: Calhoun, Strickland, Mullicane, Lowry, Breedlove, Carr, Parr, etc. etc. UK>VA>IL>MO>CA I enjoy this list and plan on staying on it no matter what junk you guys post. (Just kidding.) Carole C.