Blue Kentucky Girl

Don't wait to bring great riches home to me
I need no diamond rings or fancy pearls
Just bring yourself, you're all I'll ever need
That's good enough for this blue Kentucky girl

-Emmy Lou Harris

My grandmother was born in Kentucky. So was my mother... unexpectedly. My grandmother was seven months pregnant and although she was now living in the Midwest, she had gone home to visit her parents in Kentucky. While she was there she went into premature labor. My mother was only about 3 1/2 pounds when she was born and not expected to live. This was in 1924, a time when babies were still born at home, and even if they weren't, ICUs and life-saving medical care for premature infants didn't exist. Her grandmother, my great-grandmother, administered the Last Rights herself because she didn't think the family priest would get there in time to do it. But against all odds, my mom fought, and she made it.

Growing up, I remember there had always been discussion about why the family had moved from Kentucky. No one seemed to really know why. It always seemed to be a hush-hush topic and people joked that it was almost as if the family up and moved in the middle of the night, leaving things behind. I came across a book about prohibition and local gangsters once, and some of the names mentioned in the book were names I remember my mother talking about as acquaintances of her father's. My grandfather had a license to sell alcohol to pharmacies during Prohibition and I asked my mother if she thought he might have been "on the take". Oh no, she said. Her father was an honorable man. I showed her the book and some of the people mentioned in it. She didn't know quite what to think.

A few years later though, she approached me with an idea. She'd pay for a trip for the two of us to go to Kentucky if I'd help her look up her family's roots there. Never did I expect what we'd find... We started with the house she was born in, and met the current owner who was renovating it at the time. We got a great tour. Next stop was the public library to do a search of the newspaper archives. I set mom off looking up wedding announcements and obituaries while I did a more general search and that's where I got one of the biggest discoveries -- and shocks -- of all my genealogy research ever. Her grandfather, along with the chief of police and five others had been caught breaking into a warehouse on New Year's Day, stealing several kegs of whiskey, and transporting them across state lines for sale -- all the more serious because this was during Prohibition. (Her grandfather had been a successful saloon keeper before Prohibition.)

A series of articles chronicled the trial and then that one of the men had connections in Washington that commuted the two year sentence in Federal Prison to a three month sentence in the county jail. That "connection" was never identified, but I strongly suspect it was my grandfather. My grandparents were married just as all this was happening. And my grandfather worked as a page in the US Senate and had connections. And as for the move to the Midwest, I suspect that once my great-grandfather got out of jail, either the family felt their reputation was ruined, or else they simply needed to start over with a new job. Now that their daughter and son-in-law had moved to the Midwest, that's where they eventually headed too.

Don't wait to bring great riches home to me
I need no diamond rings or fancy pearls

There is a legacy we have in some of the family jewelry. My mother wore two diamond rings. Her wedding ring was the diamond that was given to her by my father, his mother's diamond ring. And when my mother died, that diamond was passed down to her son, my brother, with the intention that eventually it will go to his son's bride some day. The other diamond she had was her mother's diamond ring. That was passed on to my sister. There was a heart-shaped pin set with pearls that I wore on my wedding day. It was her grandmother's and was worn by most of the women in my mother's family on their wedding day. It wasn't mine to keep, but I wore it. But in our family, the most important legacy are the garnets.

When my father was in college, and traveling with the theater department in Brazil, he had the opportunity to buy some garnets. He bought one large one, and several smaller ones. The smaller ones, he had set in a gold cross for her and gave that to her as a wedding gift. The large one, he had banded in gold and put on a simple gold chain for my mother. She rarely took that one off. When I got married, I asked if I could wear her larger solitaire garnet. It symbolized who my mother was, and I treasured the opportunity to be able to wear it on my wedding day. I graduated from college four weeks before my wedding. My graduation gift from my parents was my own garnet necklace, just like my mother's. It means the world to me. Each of my sisters was given one when they graduated, and my brother was given a garnet ring. When my mother passed away, my youngest sister was given her garnet cross and I was given my mother's garnet solitaire. Now I had two. Because my youngest daughter had spent so much time with my mother as she was dying, I felt it was appropriate that the garnet go to her. It was passed on to my Baby Girl when she turned sixteen. When each of my two oldest daughters graduated from college, they were given a garnet necklace as well. This family tradition carries on and is a little bit better legacy than the one we discovered in the papers...