Tuesday, December 3, 2013

A Dill Cousin Connection, and More

Linda and I had a fun evening last night in La Jolla.  We visited one of my 6th cousins and her mother at the mother's retirement home.

The back story is:  I posted a photograph of the gravestone of Albert Freeman Dill (1840-1905) in Mount Hope Cemetery in San Diego - see One Stone at a Time (posted 29 November 2008).

In May 2012, I had emails from two different descendants of Albert Freeman Dill who found my blog post with the gravestone of Albert.  I wrote about the contact in Geneablogging works really well... (posted 24 May 2012).  One of the email correspondents lives in San Diego and is a great-granddaughter of Albert Freeman Dill, and the other correspondent is a great-granddaughter of Albert who lives in Vermont, but visits her mother regularly in La Jolla. 

So yesterday afternoon, I talked to Marnie, the Vermont great-granddaughter, and we arranged to meet Marnie and her mother, Gay, at Gay's care center at 5 p.m.  We got there on time, met and sat in the large room in the entry area of the center.  This center had been a resort hotel back in the 1930s, and Gay had been to dances in the entry area while in high school.  

Gay had known my mother, Betty (Carringer) Seaver, since 1938, and they both were members of the same sorority at San Diego State College.  The sorority merged into another in 1949, but the group continued to meet on a monthly basis - my mother attended right up to the end of her life in 2002.  Apparently, Gay still attends occasionally, although the ladies are up in years.

Gay wanted to know how we were related.  I took a relationship chart I created that showed that our common ancestors were Thomas Dill (1708-1761) and Mehitable Brown (1714-1758).  Gay and I are fifth cousins once removed, and Marnie and I are 6th cousins.  

I wanted to hear about Gay's memories of my mother.  Gay was one year behind my mother in school, but both went to San Diego High School before going to SDSC.  She said that my mother was so talented in Artwork and was one of the smartest girls she'd known.  

Gay wanted to know more about my mother's life...where did we live, what did she do, etc.  I recapped her life and described her homes, and where my parents were buried.  It turns out that Gay's family lived about one  mile from where Betty's family lived on 30th Street in San Diego.  They both remembered the Piggly Wiggly market on Juniper Street, the corner drug store, the Number 2 bus route, the rickety 30th Street Bridge before it was rebuilt, and the meandering streets of Burlingame.  

I added some family photos of Betty, our Seaver family, and my Seaver family to Dropbox before we went, and showed Gay and Marnie the pictures on my smartphone.  Gay had a photograph of herself and three other young ladies with their babies taken in May 1944 - my mother and I were in it!  And it was labelled on the back!  Marnie gave me a photocopy of the photo and I'll probably show it in Wordless Wednesday tomorrow.

I also brought printouts of the 1938 San Diego High yearbook pages that mention Gay, and the 1939 and 1940 SDSC yearbook pages with both Gay's and Betty's pictures on it.  She was happy with that, and giggled a bit about how young they all were.  

We took a picture of Gay, Marnie and myself, and here it is:




 Marnie and I had a chance to discuss her own family, and to talk a bit about the Dill research I've done.  She has a brother in San Diego, and two sisters living elsewhere.  She had some papers about Albert Freeman Dill who was a boat pilot in San Diego Bay, and there are several newspaper articles in the San Diego Union newspaper archives about him - he was kidnapped during the Chilean Civil War in 1891!  I may do some work finding those articles for her.  We may visit her in Vermont the next time we wander into New England.

This was a really fun genealogy experience, and two hours flew by quickly!  I think we'll get together again the next time Marnie comes to town.  It's amazing that we had a cousin connection, the neighborhood connection and the sorority connection.  Maybe we'll go visit Albert Freeman Dill's gravesite too.

The URL for this post is:  http://www.geneamusings.com/2013/12/a-dill-cousin-connection-and-more.html

Copyright (c) 2013, Randall J. Seaver

1 comment:

Cormac said...

Doesn't the smile on both of your cousin's faces make it worth everything? Worth more than money!