I have started going through letters and using ChatGPT to transcribe them. The letters reveal more information about the families that are not found in public records. Examples:
- Bernice, Minnie’s daughter had cancer. She wrote a letter to Anna in 1968 telling about her life with cancer. She died later that year in December.
- Blanche wrote a letter to Anna with a Christmas card in 1968. Apparently she was living with Anna Marie’s son Micheal – and that is how she spelled it. I will need to change the John DeC Lawless story. I had speculated that the name was misspelled.
- On the same card, Blanche talks about Anna Marie’s son Frankie who is 6 years old and had an operation on his foot. I didn’t have any information about another son.
Many other letters tell other stories and hopefully will answer questions that fill in the rest of the story. There is much more to learn!
I made this timeline for Minnie’s family because I was getting confused about who/when. From what I can tell, Minnie has no surviving descendants. If I find out otherwise, I will certainly update her story! I am working on her longer story, but not publishing it yet because of all the letters I am finding that give more details.
This shows Minnie’s two husbands, Daughter Bernice with husband Arthur and her daughter Kathleen who married Gary. Minnie’s son Donald married Elizabeth and I do not know of any children.
Uncle Victor took movies and still photos of the family that are in a movie in the 1950 Videos. He took movies of them in 1954 and again in 1960.
My present focus is on sorting through the several hundred letters, putting them in year/person order and getting the most significant ones transcribed.
Always more to come!
B