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| Aunt Essie |
Growing up, we referred to New York relatives as if they were clans down 'yonder. In Roscoe we'd visit the Dudleys. In Queens, we had cook-outs with the Shippens. My father being an only child, the Shippens represented his only NYS family. They consisted of Aunt Essie (born Esther Dudley (1894, Sidney NY) and her 2 daughters Fran and Betty. The photo above shows Aunt Essie exactly as I remember her. At picnics or in back yards, her daughters would gently set her up comfortably in a lawn chair where she'd reign in the shade as resident matriarch, with a directness I found a little intimidating. When I look at that photo above, I can actually hear her distinctive raspy voice.
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| Essie's mother, Lorena. |
The reason I am honoring Aunt Essie on this genealogical journey of mine, is that I vaguely remember my mother holding a shoe box full of photos and saying that Aunt Essie had given it to us. Then I promptly forgot about the photos until 50 years later.
AND the person who passed the photos down to Essie was probably her mother Lorena, as women usually are the keepers of family artifacts. Lorena Rogers married a Dudley which explains why there are so many photos of Dudley's in the collection. Since Lorena and my great grandmother Helen Rogers Jones were sisters…well let's just say thanks to my great aunt Lorena Rogers Dudley and Essie for this gift of photographs and family history.
