Our Women

This journey can get emotional.  Because of technology, multiple stunning revelations can happen in a very short period of time and create a profound and heartfelt appreciation for the lives of  2nd, 3rd... even 9th and 10th great grandparents that I'd never even heard of before.  These direct ancestors were very real people who lived in houses that I can see up close on my computer.  They loved, and married, and had children, many of whom died at a young age.  Some died in childbirth.  Some women were helpmates to husbands who were prominent leaders in their towns, churches, businesses, cities, states or military.  Others were leaders in their own right, in classrooms, newsrooms, publishing, inventing, and professional careers long before it was fashionable for women to do these things. Some women traveled across the country in a covered wagon and had to defend their homes from Indian attacks.  Some sent their men off to war - French and Indian War, Revolutionary War, War of 1812, Civil War, Mexican War, Wars against Cherokees, Apaches, Lakota Sioux, and other Indian nations, ...WWI and WWII.  Women carefully recorded births, baptisms, marriages, and deaths in their family Bibles.  Some had husbands who had affairs and broke their hearts; I just found out last night that my 3rd great grandmother had her three children taken away from her by her ex-husband. This woman was my Nanny Zaun's grandmother.

It was a nostalgic moment last night when I discovered the address of my Nanny Zaun's home.  We had looked for the house last fall but could not identify it which was distressing to me and to my sister.  We drove up and down the street several times looking for a familiar house.  We finally concluded that it had probably been torn down.  Last night I stumbled on the house number in an old city directory and looked it up on Google Maps.  It took a minute, but soon it was all clear.  The memories came flooding back.  The house is pretty much the same... the yard is more neatly manicured now and the concrete animal sculptures and benches are gone.  There is a garage where the fish pond used to be.  The fenced area across the street where we used to visit the playful palomino is still there but no horse.  Here are some snapshots from the satellite photos:

At the corner of Penick and Fernwood

The reason we had trouble identifying the house last fall is because as children we always came into the house from this side entrance on Fernwood.  We never used the front door on Penick Rd.  

Holly and I spent many long boring hours wandering outside while the adults visited.  The most interesting thing to do was watch the goldfish in the pond right here.  This yard was more overgrown with grass and trees then.  It seemed much bigger than it looks here.  My great grandfather's business was concrete statuary and garden ornaments, so the yard was full of concrete chickens, squirrels, and turtles.

View of the horse's yard across the corner.  The little palomino loved company and would run up and down the fence playing with us.

Entire family at the Zaun house on Penick Road, circa 1953.  Virginia and John Zaun, Joe and Gail Watson, unknown couple. 

This couch backed up to the front window on the Penick Rd. side of the house. My dad and mom (before kids) sitting there with a cousin.  This is where they sat and visited with Nanny and Poppoo for hours and hours on our biannual trips to Richmond.  Mom asked for some of Nanny's glass figurines when she died - the ones behind the lace curtain in the window - but all she got was a box of mason jars.

The picture of the little girl on the steps with a collie was a favorite of mine.  The girl looked like Shirley Temple.  Wonder what became of it?  The portrait in the back room was of Nanny's grand? great? grandmother.  I remember that she looked like me.  That portrait was the only thing I wanted of Nanny's when she died, but some evil step-aunt got hold of everything. Nanny and Poppoo had a small but strange assortment of antique toys that she kept by the hearth - a cannon, a grotesque bullfrog, and a pickaninny doll that had two heads, one black and one white.  I treasure the items that I inherited - Poppoo's tobacco cannister and jar for matches.  The tobacco lid is worn from his gnarled hand caressing it as he sat in his big leather chair and smoked his pipe.

50th wedding anniversary.
I now have the picture frame shown above their heads.  Dad discovered a hidden portrait of four year old Nanny behind the picture in the frame.

In the yard by the pond.  On a concrete bench, of course.