My Annual Genealogy Binge

Memorial Day triggers my annual genealogy binge. 

I spent the past three days googling like mad, finding new bits and pieces of my family history, and expanding on my past findings. 

I will spare you all the self-analysis as to why I go on this annual binge. That will perhaps someday be the subject of a novel or short-story, but it is not relevant to this post.

In 2020 I discovered that the HS Yearbooks ("Annual") of the one-building, all-grades school that my father attended in Samnorwood, Texas are available online through the library of the Wheeler County Courthouse in Wellington, Texas. My dad attended high school until he "got smart" with his father and told him he was finished helping on the farm and was hell-bent on trying his luck picking fruit in California, upon which news my grandfather bought my dad the most expensive gift he had ever received, a brand-new suitcase, which my grandfather packed with all my dad's clothes then presented to my Dad along with a bus ticket to southern California. I was disappointed that I could not find an Annual for any of the years my dad attended the Samnorwood School, but completely delighted that many of my cousins with whom I was either close or had frequent contact as a child were in the treasure trove of class pictures I discovered.

I was able to trace my two favorite cousins (brothers) from 1st grade to graduation. And I discovered that one of them was the same age as one of my girl cousins, which meant they went to the same classroom in the same building every school day for twelve years. Because most of my first cousins were much older than me (my dad was a late baby, with his only brother and four sisters anywhere from 12 to 20+ years older than he was), I had never known them--the way they knew me--as young children. Discovering grade-school pictures of people I had come to know only as early as in their middle teens or young adulthood was fun and touching. Many of them are no longer with us. I wish I had been able to share the fruits of my efforts with them, and not just their children or grandchildren.

Because I had six first-cousins who were separated by anywhere from 0 to 5 years, there was a long stretch during which several were in the same school building at the same time. One thought that occurred to me was that each of my cousins, who all possessed a goodly amount of native intelligence, were all probably in the top ten of each of their graduating classes--the largest graduating class being 12 students (the population of Samnorwood proper has fluctuated between 39 and 100 people for the past 50 years, the current population being 59; the only reason each grade at the school was so "large" was because "non-city"kids from the surrounding farm population were bused to Samnorwood).

I spent an inordinate amount of time, as I always do during my annual genealogy binge, flipping through at least 15 yearbooks. It was well-worth the effort though. It was fascinating to note that every student in every class was involved in at least two extra-curricular activities, and a few seemed to be involved in all the activities offered. FFA, FHA, school plays, boy's basketball, girl's "six-man" half-court basketball, baseball, the Annual staff...everything that bigger high schools had, and surely the pressure was on for every student to partake of at least one of these activities. 

I traced my cousins Gail Bradley and Wayne Lindley from 1st grade to their Senior years. 

The school in Samnorwood was replaced somewhere in the past twenty or thirty years. There is more than just the single school building now, but not much more. The school remains populated by mostly rural farm kids and the children of farm workers. Some of them are the children and grandchildren of students from more than 50 years ago. 

I never went to Samnorwood schools, but they had a large, tangential affect on my life. Here's hoping that the school system sticks around for another 100 years.

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