The Craves & Carolan genealogy

Family Photos

All genealogies are works in progress. Our families are constantly changing with the passing of generations and birth of the next. Most of us remember earlier times with a fondness that seems to improve with age, but our youth is spent wondering why we have to endure visits with old people we don’t know. Yet we recollect deeply embedded memories of the aroma of a great aunt’s freshly baked bread or the creaky floors of an old family farmhouse that once belonged to someone we only know from a fading photograph. I always find it interesting how people in our family photos are looking out at us. We hold them in our hands and they look us straight in the eye. Perhaps there is a purpose in that unending stare. I know it is the function of the photographer asking them to look at his lens, but sometimes it seems as if they are watching us wondering who we are and what we will become.

For those who enjoy the search of family history I want to say that the group of researchers who have worked to compile the records contained here did it because of their own fascination with family, history, and a desire to capture that for those who will follow. For me it started when I was sixteen with a simple statement by my Grandma Carolan who one afternoon said the classic line “it’s too bad nobody ever wrote that down.” We spent an entire afternoon transcribing her incredible memory of ancestors and relatives. I later had a stirring experience when I read in the margin of a family history written by Marguerite Bammel Beals in the 1930’s, “I am sure many in the family would not be interested in this, but if one should be it would mean much. So please do not destroy, but save it for that one.” So for Grandma Carolan and Great Great Aunt Marguerite I’m honored to be the keeper of the story until the next one comes along for whom it will mean much.