An Old Fashioned Mother

The kids are all back in school and with my most recent botox treatment making many tasks feel impossible these days, I have found myself back in the recliner scouring the Internet for any more tidbits on my ancestors that I have yet to uncover. My favorite thing to search are old newspaper articles. It gets a bit tricky though because there are often so many typos and spelling errors.

There's a great free newspaper archive from Texas Tech University, I've mentioned it before. They changed their website a while back and I couldn't get to the newspaper search, but I was finally able to get it to work a few weeks ago. Today, of course, as soon as I start to type my blog, it has become glitch-y. We will see how far I get before deciding to come back another day....

This time I'm searching the Foard County News for any records on my NALL/FOSTER ancestors.

Today I found where my great grandmother Willie Belle competed in the County Interscholastic Meet and won second place in arithmetic. There of course was a typo and her name was given as Winnie Belle, but I'm 99.99% sure it's her. Claytonville was a very small rural community. Grandma would've just turned 15. The article is from March 1930.

Foard County News 28 March 1930

 I also found where in May of that same year, Grandma, portrayed the Mother, in Walter Ben Hare's 1917 play "An Old Fashioned Mother".  How fitting. I know she was the great matriarch of our NALL family. I was actually able to find an online copy of the play. Just click on the title to take a look at it yourself.

Foard County News 16 May 1930

I'm not certain when this picture of Grandma was taken, but I imagine it was close to 1930. If you were wondering what she looked like back then.

Just to give you an idea of the severity of the typos, below is the Birth Announcement of my grandfather, Willie Belle's first born, Charles Bryant Nall, who was born 13 May 1935. To Willie Belle (Foster) and Benjamin Rufus Nall. There is a town called Benjamin, where my grandfather attended school, so I think that part is right.

Foard County News 06 June 1935

I'll go ahead and wrap this post up. I'll come back and add direct links to the newspaper articles, if the Texas Tech website ever comes back up. It really is a great resource when it's working. The trick is getting past all those typos.

Until next time,
Becky