In the next letter, Kathryn mentions only one name on her side, “John also is enjoying the best of health. He is taking his after dinner nap.”
They are obviously living together, and there seems to be an air of intimacy reserved for family, so I assumed that John was her husband and made a note to search “John Lorenz”.
The 2017 holiday season renewed my interest in the vintage letters I had inherited. Visiting my side of the family for Thanksgiving, and my husband’s side for Christmas really hit home that I needed to share what I had with anyone who was related to the letter writers, no matter how distant.
Continue readingThe story of Aunt Kathryn will be told a little differently than my other family history blog posts because I think the story of how I “rediscovered” a relative, and in turn a completely new side of my family, is as interesting as the woman whose story I’m telling.
I stared at the envelope, trying to make sense of the unfamiliar name in the upper left hand corner, K.M. Lorenz. Who is that?
Among the names I’d become so familiar with during the decades of researching my family’s history, Lorenz hadn’t popped up once. The postmark from Remsen, Iowa didn’t ring any bells, either.
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When Mary’s father, Lewis Blessing, died in 1825, he left her 150 acres of land next to the 150 acres that he had bequeathed to her brother, John, “running the whole length of my survey out from the river bending on my son John’s line, the whole length thereof, and such distance from his line so as to include the 150 acres.”
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The Women Who Gave Us a Legacy of Strength 