Family history miscellaneous album, page 18

 

Minerva Adaline Carter Arnold (aka "Maw")

my great-great-grandmother, mother of Annie Arnold Hicks

Ulysses Fillmore Hicks

my great-grandfather

father of my grandmother Cleffie Hicks Burford

Cleffie Lorene Hicks

my grandmother (my mother's mother)

[My psychic medium friend Ericka calls her "two moms" -- she was as much of an influence in my life as my mother. Maybe more! And still is.]

Lester and Cleffie Burford

This is how they look in most of my childhood memories.

Cleffie Burford

This picture would have been taken around 1990-ish, I think.

Cleffie Burford

In the 1970s, maybe?

Charles Jones and Evalee Hicks Jones

My grandmother's sister

Evalee and Charles Jones

Ray and Vernell Hicks Leatherwood

another one of my grandmother's sisters.

There were six girls in the Hicks household (Ulys and Annie's children). Five of them lived near us in southwestern Michigan when I was growing up, along with one of their three brothers. (They had all migrated from Arkansas in the 1940s.) Gave me a great sense of identity -- "my tribe" -- which I didn't fully appreciate until later in life. My children were largely deprived of the experience of being surrounded by grandparents, great-grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins during their childhood. That's when I came to realize just how lucky I was to have had all that family around.