Three Women

The topic for the upcoming 68th edition of the Carnival of Genealogy is "A Tribute to Women" which is in honor of March being National Women's History Month. Our instructions were to "Write a tribute to a woman on your family tree, a friend, a neighbor, or a historical female figure who has done something to impact your life. Or instead of writing, consider sharing a photo biography of one woman's life."

Some of you may consider this post a "cop out" and it may well be, but I've already written a bit about the women who have had an influence on my life, so I'm going to link to those articles. I hope you will take the time to check them out, and that you enjoy reading about them.

Of course, the woman that has had the greatest impact on my life is my Mother. For better or for worse, she is what she is. And I am what I am, to some extent, because of what she was. My mother is still living so I haven't really written about her life, but I did post a photo tribute to her on her 80th birthday. Mom raised us kids the best she knew how, but above all, she did it with love.

And the woman that influenced my mother and who also impacted my life tremendously is her mother. We don't always (actually we very seldom) understand some of the actions taken by others, but those actions have a cause and effect that ripples through the generations. I wrote Grandma's Story two years ago as part of the International Women's Day Challenge that year.

The third woman in this chain is grandma's mother, my great-grandmother, Maude Wise Brubaker Yontz. A woman of small stature, whose life and actions influenced her children and their children. I was five years old when she passed away so I don't remember her at all, but she has come to life for me through the stories that my aunts have told me and through the photographs that have been passed down to me. It goes without saying (but I'm going to say it anyway) that I'd love to be able to spend a day with her, to get answers to all the questions I have about her and her family.