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If you don’t recount your family history, it will be lost. Honor your own stories and tell them too. The tales may not seem very important, but they are what binds families and makes each of us who we are. ~ Madeleine L’Engle

Meet Betty Jean and Carol Dean Patterson. My grandparents. This photo was taken in 1950, the first year their marriage.

My grandfather was Chief Petty officer in the Marines and my grandparents moved to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba in 1963, where they raised two children, one of whom was my mother.

Many years later, my grandmother moved to Florida and worked as a bank teller, eventually managing the bank.
She lived with my family and helped raise me. She was the most loving, patient, hardworking woman I’ve ever known. ~ shared by @jollymean

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We make music, we sing songs, we share stories of those who came before us. Their tune is our legacy.

This is my “Aunt Foot,” as I’ve always known her, but her birth name was Hattie Brown Mosley.

I look at this photo on my Mom’s piano every day as I practice, and it inspires me to keep on pressing on.

She was one of my great grandmother’s younger sisters and she taught at several schools in Mississippi. I’ve always known her as the senior musician in the family. (Patrice P. Eaton is garnering national attention for her lustrous mezzo-soprano, dramatically “affecting” portrayals and great versatility across the range of operatic and concert repertoire. A passionate exponent of the African-American spiritual tradition, Ms. Eaton is a founding member of the internationally-acclaimed American Spiritual Ensemble, and is a soloist on the Ensemble’s live recording, Ole Time Religion.) ~ shared by @patricepeaton

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Old family photos are windows into our past; this one opens into the lives of children from a great generation who would grow up and answer a call to serve in World War II.
This is my Father (right) and his siblings in about 1924. The only one of these children still surviving is my Aunt, the baby, who is now 90 years old.

My Father and his older brother both fought in France during World War II.

My Uncle was awarded a Military Cross “MC” and was at the liberation of the Belsen concentration camp, near Hanover in northwest Germany, in 1945. It was the first major camp to be liberated by the Allies.

My Father was awarded a Croix de Guerre, a “Cross of War,” which was bestowed upon soldiers who distinguished themselves by acts of heroism involving combat with the enemy.

This photo was taken at their family home in Fife, in the south east of Scotland, just north of Edinburgh. The family home is now a hotel. ~ shared by @whistlingrabbit

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Is it possible to feel like you *know* someone you’ve never met?

This is my grandmother, Myrtle Rachel Whitworth, in 1938. I’ve always believed her birthday was February 27th, but actually it was January 27th!

She didn’t even find out her real birthday (January 27th) until later in her life.

She passed away three weeks before I was born, so I never got to meet her.

Yet I’ve always felt that I’ve known her. My Mom told me that, even as a baby, I always knew who my grandmother was in photographs. But the older I got, the more I seemed to forget. That’s why I cherish this photograph so much. ~shared by @matt1782
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I love my family heritage. This is my great grandma behind the house that my family and I now live in.

She lived to be 99 here in this home, raising three kids, and gardening on her own until she was 96.

I want to be like her; living simply, but rich in love, peace, and the satisfaction that comes from hard work.

I’m so grateful for these photographs of her; they help me share her story with my children.

What kind of legacy do you want to leave behind? ~shared by @melissataylorphoto

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