YES, IT'S GREAT!

Last week I got to spend a little time getting to know my GREAT granddaughter. JOY PERSONIFIED!!! Little Miss Erin Mina Bosse had my heart captured before she ever arrived but now she carries it securely in the palm of her hand.
This precious little red-haired angel not only has GREAT grandparents on both sides of her family . . .

She also has two GREAT-GREAT GRANDMOTHERS!! How special is that?

All the talk of "grands" and "greats" got me to thinking about my own Great Grandmother for whom little Erin and her mommy were both named.

This is LAURA MINA McGEARY STITT, my maternal grandmother's mother. When my first daughter's first daughter was born in 1989, she was given this great-grandmother's maiden name for her middle name: nee Mallory McGeary Millsap. When Mallory gave birth to Erin last January, she chose this same ancestor's middle name for her daughter: nee Erin Mina Bosse.

Mallory's connection to Laura Mina McGeary doesn't end there. Mallory and Mike married on January 16, 2010. They chose the date for their wedding to coordinate with their personal calendars and based on the availability of their church and families. Only AFTER they were married did they discover that January 16th was also the anniversary of Laura Mina McGeary and Ross McClellan Stitt who had wed 120 years before them in 1890.

Thanks to a cousin who has done a great deal of genealogy research, I know a few things about this great grandmother who died many years before I was born. She was born in Westmoreland Co., Pennsylvania as the only child of James and Rachel McGeary. Her father must have passed away when she was quite young and her mother remarried a man whose last name was Leech. She grew up with a half-brother and half-sister. I wonder. Did her step-father love her? Did he treat her differently from his own two children? Did the loss of her father leave her with emotional wounds that never healed? Genealogy charts don't answer those kind of questions.

Laura Mina married Ross Stitt when she was only 22 years old and was married to him for 39 years before she passed away at age 61. She gave birth to four children in four years! I can't even imagine what that must have been like in the days before automatic washing machines! Her first son, Clinton, was born June 13, 1891, 18 months after she married. Fifteen months later, her first daughter, Edna Minerva was born. And only 15 months after Edna, my precious grandmother, Mary Elberta came into the family on December 30, 1893. The baby of the family, Earl Emerson, was born when my grandmother was 18 months old. Can you imagine having a newborn, an 18 month old, one not quite three and another one who has just turned four?? How busy her days must have been! How on earth did she keep up with that many diapers? Was Ross a husband that helped - or was he a man of his time that allocated child-rearing to the wife as most did? In most of the photos I've seen of the two of them, Laura Mina looks taller than Ross - and appears to outweigh him too. I like to chuckle and think she may have made him help whether he wanted to or not! LOL

I was thinking about what I know about Laura Mina - and the many thing's I DON'T know - and began to wonder about her faith. I know that the daughter she raised who grew up to be my grandmother was a woman of GREAT faith. Did she learn to love the Lord at her mother's knee the way she learned so many of the fine needle-work arts? I'm guessing that she may have.

And here's one of the reasons I think that may be so.

This tiny little book has a verse of scripture for each day of the year. It is one of my most priceless treasures. It once belonged to a little girl named LAURA MINA McGEARY.

The upper left tile shows where Laura Mina McGeary wrote her name in it in 1876. On the upper right is my grandmother's signature when her mother passed it down to her in 1904. The lower left tile shows my mother's 1933 signature and then on the right is where I inscribed my name and later my daughter, Lisa, wrote hers. This little book has been handed down to the youngest daughter in our family for the past four generations and soon I will allow Hallie to write her name in it as the fifth in the line of youngest daughters.

Someone gave my great-grandmother this little book of scriptures when she was only 8 years old. Did her daddy give it to her? Could it have been a confirmation or baptism gift? OR - Was that the age when she accepted Christ as her personal savior like I did many years later? I wish I knew. But seeing her name written in this little book of scriptures gives me confidence to believe that she, and her parents before her, trusted in God. How many generations back does my spiritual heritage go? I don't know. But the generations I do know of grandparents and parents who loved the Lord and lived their lives to serve Him fill my heart with joy and gratitude that is utterly overwhelming.

My heart cries with the psalmist:

You have been a shelter for me,

A strong tower from the enemy.

I will abide in Your tabernacle forever;

I will trust in the shelter of Your wings.

For You, O God, have heard my vows:

You have given me the heritage of

those who fear Your name.

Psalm 61:3-5