#52Ancestors – Week 4                                             Randi Mathieu

I have a fun app on my phone that tells me I might be related to Julia Child – so alas I will use her for my prompt of someone I’d like to have dinner with.

We are related by the following ancestral map according to the app. My grandfather was Edward Rountree, son of Marybelle Archibald, daughter of Celestial Dalton Woodard, daughter of Eliza Jane Butler daughter of Jesse Butler, son of Lawrence Butler, son of Jesse Butler, son of Robert Asa Butler, son of William Butler, son of Sarah Cross.  I will mention I have only documented back to Jesse Butler the father of Eliza Jane Butler.  Anyone further back is strictly conjecture of the app.

Julia Child supposedly descends from the same Sarah Cross through her daughter Sarah Butler, her daughter Sarah Giddings, her daughter Lydia Bennet, her daughter Lois Marsh, her daughter Lucinda Brewster, her son Clark Ward Mitchell, his daughter Julia Clark Mitchell, her daughter Julia Carolyn Weston and finally her daughter Julia Child.  Again I caution anyone using this as a genealogy completely unproven by myself.  By putting this in print and on the “inter-webs” I am hoping to challenge myself to see if any rings true.

I couldn’t let this prompt be truly answered though unless I say with all sincerity the ancestor I would most like to dine with is my grandmother Bernice Lee Simmons.  I knew her as a child and she passed away before I could get to know her as an adult.  From my research into her life, she was such an amazing woman who was so well loved by everyone who met her.  She was raised by her Aunt because her parents died when she was young.  She battled off tuberculosis when she was a young adult, her first fiancé was killed in a mid-air collision as a Navy aviation machinist.  She married my grandfather who was in the Army and lived all over the place including Alaska and France.  She made a loving home for my mother no matter where they were. The family eventually wound up in Pensacola – their original home and grandpa died a year after I was born.  She worked as a switchboard operator and at Elebash’s Jewlery.  She lived a long wonderful life and was able to see me get married.  Unfortunately she was not able to stay with us long enough to meet my son.  She is probably the strongest women I will ever know and she lived with such grace and poise.  She was a true southern lady – first to wake in the morning and always last to bed.  I miss her tons and really wish that I could go back to the time I did have with her and soak it all in again.