My treasure

I have wrote about this many time, but this ancestor (though really my husbands ancestor) is so dear to my heart.

When I began my search for our ancestors more than three years ago my husbands grandmother had only one request. She wanted me to help her find where her mother was buried. She didn't know for sure where and she had never been to her grave.

Estelle Connor was only eleven years old and the oldest of four children when her mother, Flora Mae (Manning) Connor died two days after giving birth to her last child Geneva who also died and was buried with her. Grandma didn't even know the sex, let alone the name of the last child.

I took me nearly two years to find anything on Flora. However once the doors opened I was flooded with information on her. She was the youngest child of Thomas Manning and Mattie Smith. She was born 25 May 1911. It is said that her mother died of dropsy (heart attach) with a baby in her arms. The child had to be pried from her arms. We can only assume that since Flora is the last known child of Mattie that she was that child.

We don't know much more about her childhood. She became estranged from her father and three brother when she choose to marry a part Native American boy, Ernest Ghamo Conner. This is the only known photo of Flora. We believe this was taken shortly after their marriage.

I eventually found where she was buried in Amarillo, TX. Grandma finally got to visit her grave and was so sad when she discovered that only a brick size piece of cement marked their graves of her mother and youngest sister with only their first names on it. She then bought new stones for both of them before going back home.

I hope that some day I will have the opportunity to visit the grave of the woman that I worked so hard to find. She may not be the grandmother who inspired my passion for genealogy, but she was the one who kept me going until I found her.