A new project

I started a new project the day after my birthday. I know, you must think I'm completely off my rocker -- and maybe I am.

I'm putting together the Plumb Family Scrapbook.

As most of you know, one of my big interests is genealogy. It's one of the main reasons I started this blog.

I went to my favorite photographer and had this formal, glamour shot taken for the scrapbook. In it I'm wearing the dress I wore to Aunt Margaret's funeral, and yes it is in the same style as a dress Aunt Margaret herself wore. It wasn't intentional, but it worked.

My late Aunt Margaret traced the Plumb side of the family back ten generations in her book, A Practical History of the Plumb Family. She researched records in England, Ireland, and Wales and found that a concentration of the Plumbs from whom we're descended came out of this one town in Yorkshire.

I'm also trying to research the Jolina, Bellingham, and Alto branches of the family tree. The Jolina branch is from my paternal grandmother, Jamie Jolina. Information on the Jolinas is scarce indeed. All I know is that their name is derived from the French word for 'pretty,' jolie. I do suspect that Jolina wasn't the actual family name -- trying to find THAT will be a challenge.

Information on the Bellingham branch (my mother's) of the family tree is even more scarce. What I know of my mother's background is this -- I know she was 'adopted' by a benefactor named Edmund Browning after a hurricane pretty much wiped out her hometown, killing the rest of her family, and her benefactor died well before I was born.

I know that after her benefactor died, she was involved with a man who called himself Cyclone Sword, and that he was the father of her twin daughters, Cylene and Clarice.

I know scarcely more about the Alto branch (Noah's) of the tree. I know his maternal grandparents were from Italy, and they came over to Sunset Valley with little more than my paternal grandpa did.

Ari is a computer whiz, and with her expertise on internet and such, we set up a website -- plumb-family.org (Author's note: not a real site). With it we're seeking to contact Plumb relatives all over the world. I know of Plumbs in England, certainly, and I've heard from someone in Wales.

Making this project more challenging is my father's indiscretions. He'd be the first to tell you that as a youth he did some things he's not proud of, and he readily admits he did those things. He slept with a lot of women and some of them got pregnant, hence, my brothers. I know even less about their branches of the family tree.