52 Ancestors Week 50: Tradition

Question

Time for the next 52 Ancestors challenge!

Please share with us a profile of an ancestor or relative who matches this week's theme:

Tradition

From Amy Johnson Crow:

This is the time of year when many families celebrate various traditions that they have. Several days from now, I'll serve pork chops and sauerkraut, the traditional New Year's Day dinner on both my paternal and maternal lines. Do you know the origin of any of your ancestors? Or, taken another way, what's a genealogy tradition in you family that you've had to dispute (or proven)?

Share below!

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Comments

I've been counting down for several weeks now. Only two more weeks!!!!

Answer 1

Check out the following profiles for a tradition that has persisted among women for five generations in my family: Stillwell-1172,

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Stillwell-1172

Also, see Bird-7138, and Smith-174831.

More recently, I wore the Bird-Stilwell cameo, dated 1852, on my wedding day and I will pass it on to one of my nieces, which, by that time will make six generations.

Answer 2

Our family dinner traditions were shaped by Frances Klapperich LaBrie (1877-1960) who taught us that food is always better shared with lots of friends and family. The holiday dinners are a madhouse of everyone talking, babies passed from arm to arm, extra drop-in guests.

Her grandson, Darrel Rainford, wrote this memory: "In the 1930s and 40s there were tough times in farming and all of us Rainford kids used to go to Grandma's house on Sundays, along with our cousins. All the kids went outside to play on the farm. Grandma could drag a dinner out of nowhere and feed 10 to 12 kids just like that. She never had a fridge until 1940. She knew all the recipes and she made the best beet pickles. She had her own smokehouse, about 8-feet square wood building where they would hang the hams for preservation and to add taste. They built a fire in the smokehouse of hardwood or cobs. South Dakota had almost no trees, so when the wagon wheel went bad, that was hardwood. Nobody but Grandma Frances had a smokehouse."  She learned to cook for farmhands and harvest crews as a teenager. [[Klapperich-35|Frances Klapperich]]

Answer 3

One of my resolutions for this year is to help my dad look into the family tradition about his aunt, Bertha, who supposedly went to Montana.  I've actually found many of my family traditions to be surprisingly accurate, though often in an Oracle of Delphi fashion.

Answer 4

My dad's family his mother and after she died and her sister married granddad they would way ahead in the year they would make up a lot of homemade biscuits that was so good and all the food here and my mom's side of the family was so good that I would over eat and get sick to my stomach where I threw up during the night for Christmas and Thanksgiving. My dad's family his dad and mother and his aunt when she was married to my granddad they would give us candy every time we got together. Their names were Roosevelt Jason Barnett and his profile is https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Barnett-3557
, his first wife was Mildred Hester (Jones) Barnett and her profile is https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Jones-33183 and her sister who married Roosevelt is Flora (Jones) Barnett and her profile is https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Jones-33184.

Answer 5

I know I might stretch the topic again a bit, but with my 2x greatgrandmother ended a tradition in her birth town. She was the last of 8 generations of her direct ancestors born in the same town.

Answer 6

Sometimes a family will invent a tradition of its own. Christmas and Thanksgiving were – well – timeworn, and commonly celebrated. But airplane travel was new.

Whenever someone in our family traveled by airplane back in the 60's it was a major event. We would always go to the airport armed with home made "welcome back" posters to greet the returning brother, sister, mother or dad. I think my parents even pulled that stunt on me as late as the 1990's.

Answer 7

Extended family holiday (and other occasion) gatherings are a tradition for my Hart side of the family. I found a newspaper account of a milestone birthday party for Elizabeth (Savoy) Thorpe Dean whom I am crediting with the tradition of family getting together to mark events.

I have a group photograph of my newlywed Hart grandparents and various of Lou's mother's siblings and their families either Christmas 1902 or New Year's 1903.  This same group also had a Hart-Thorpe reunion into at least the 1930's.  There were Christmas gatherings with Lottie's sisters too.  After my dad died, my mother started a tradition of gathering for Thanksgiving with her siblings and their families.

We seem to be in an ebb for family gatherings right now as the Thanksgiving gathering has shrunk to one family - but a large one.  It makes one aware how fragile traditions really are.  After 40 plus years there have been deaths and long-distance moves that thinned out broader family participation.  In hindsight, I realize that's what happened to the earlier gatherings too.  Hopefully memory of Elizabeth's tradition will continue to inspire family to meet in some form in the future.

Comments

OK my picture is there as an itty-bitty icon type thing that does link to the free-space it is in, but how do I get the actually picture to appear?  I've done this before and it worked.  Help!

Answer 8

My maternal Grandfather's , Edward Carney, family had a tradition of serving Vinager Pie at every family gathering.  If you didn't like the pie, "you weren't a Real Carney"!  It was supposedly concocted by my great, great grandmother while traveling in covered wagons.  I absolutely love it!  Unfortunately, there are only a couple of "Real Carneys" left.  The new generation detest it!  P.s. My dog, "Ziggy", a Rat Terrier, was a "Real Carney"!!!

Answer 9

My grandmother of German descent was an amazing baker and jam maker.  I have the best memories of all holidays at my grandparents house where she made homemade pies, and gave us all jars of homemade jam.  They had an apricot orchard at their Sunnyvale home, and it had the best apricots I've ever had.  I haven't had an apricot that delicious in over 30 years.  The ones you buy in stores now are horrible, and even at their best, they pale in comparison.  Back in the day, my grandma would make homemade apricot jam and home-dried apricots as well.  Great memories, but sad that the apricot tradition is nearly impossible to implement due to the low quality of apricots to be found (and the lack of real estate to grow my own orchard).  The good news is that I've carried on her tradition of baking fresh homemade apple pies, one of my sons favorites!

Here's a picture of my grandmother in her youth, about 20 years before I was born.

Answer 10

Christmas tradition was always the family getting together at my grandparents (Sanders-2826 and Broadway-64) home for a meal and to exchange gifts.

Answer 11

The only tradition is one my mom started. Every year we would start a large complicated puzzle at the beginning of December and try to have it done by the end of the year.

Answer 12

The best tradition in our household has been the baking of cookies. The recipes my grandmother gave me as the oldest granddaughter and that I've passed on to my grandchildren along with the tradition of doing them by hand. When they were six and four they started mixing the butter and sugar until blended and then I would add the other ingredients. It made a fun day for us. We were able to repeat it this year when my 33-year-old granddaughter was visiting us in Florida. The original recipes came to my grandmother from her mother-in-law because her mother-in-law had no daughters. Her mother-in-law received them as part of her inheritance from her mother, as was common in Norway, who had also gotten them from her mother and on back.

Answer 13

As a child I spent a lot of time with my grandparents but never at Christmas time so I have no family traditions other than the typical open presents on Christmas morning, attend Church, and eat turkey and all the trimmings.  Mom was a great cook.  On the other hand my wife has strong traditions from the Tex-Mex border (Laredo).  We have incorporated those traditions and passed them on to the following generations.  Back before Thanksgiving we made tamales.  It’s a big production that takes two days.  We made dozens and dozens of tamales, some with beef and pork skins and some with beans.  We ate a few along the way but the tradition is to have them for Christmas.  YUUUUUMMMM!  Forgot to mention the homemade chile salsa.  Later we made menudo: cow’s feet and cow’s stomach (tripe) with pozole (hominy).  Another full day production that has to be cooked outside because of the stink.  Finally we made tripas, beef intestines: washed multiple times, then cooked till the water boils away.  The fat on them melts and they fry in their own fat making a yummy crunchy treat.  For New Year’s we’ll make buñuelos which are like deep fried tortillas covered with sugar and cinnamon.  Great traditions, but lots of work in the kitchen.

Answer 14

My side of the family never had any traditions that I am aware of. Not sure if this was due to the fact of limited funds or the fact the family moved around a lot, especially my parents and siblings we moved every 2 or 3 years comes from being in the Royal Air Force.

My husbands family have a Christmas tradition of giving table presents at the end of the meal, Irene tells how this might have been a small toy or a bar of chocolate. In the current generation the table gifts are a little bit more varied but no less treasured. Small lego sets for the grandchildren, handbag emergency kits for the ladies, torch and hankies for the gents.

Of course every year the gifts vary, between the practical and the crazy but I have great fun  shopping for these. The great thing is to see the next generation doing the same.

Answer 15

My family tradition is to go to the Kristkindl Market in Mifflinburg, PA with my family. I have been going since I was a kid and now take my kids. Since it has started it has grown. Our tradition is to stop by this little shop that sells Old World Christmas and Inge Glas ornaments to pick up ornaments when we go home.