Two Faces in the Mirror

So, I had this great idea of a post, and well, I realized it was not entirely going to work out the way I wanted, but here it goes.

These are two of my eight great great grandmothers. I had planned on saying I chose them because they represented two of the families I have researched the most, my favorites as you will, and then I realized, oops, one of them was the wife of the one family. (My bad.)

The top picture is on my paternal side, she was born Plina Pauline McCurdy, and she married Archie Bald Pyburn (my most researched and favorite family on Dad's side). The bottom picture is from my maternal side, she was born Margaret Trahern, the wife of Jason Adams.

Plina was born in 1878 and died in 1940 and Margaret was born in 1880 and died in 1955. Of a similar age the women had far more differences than similarities. While Margaret married at age 19 and remained married to Jason until he died, Plina had four husbands, and  (I hope) three divorces. Margaret had 9 children with 7 living to adulthood. Plina had only three that I know of. (I know of no stillbirths). Margaret was an avid church goer and was revered and well loved by her children and grandchildren. Plina is rumored to have assisted her sister with running a whore house and was resented by her eldest daughter.

On the surface, it surely seems like two women of an age where women had little to no voice were vastly different. They both had challenges in their lives. Margaret was born in the Choctaw nation, her father ran around with other women and boot legged alcohol, and was supposed to have been murdered in 1899. Margaret's mother died when she was 12-13 years old, she and her elder sister had to raise the younger children, including the youngest only 1 year old. When her father died, Margaret quickly married Jason. He seemed like he was a pretty good guy, but he had a horrible head for business. He lost his son's allotments over a bribe to clear charges for bootlegging, and he mortgaged Margaret's Dawes allotment which then was foreclosed on. Of course Jason didn't have that great of a childhood either. Margaret ended up raising three of her grandchildren because her daughters were a little wild too.

Plina was one of 14 children by her father's first marriage. By the time her father had married his third wife and began having another 14 children, Plina had married and was not that far from leaving her first husband, Archie Bald Pyburn. Archie was I believe abusive, and sometime before 1908 when he was out of town, Plina left her children (somewhere between 1-2 yrs old, 8-9 years old and 10-11 years old) with her sister and ran off to New Orleans. In 1908 she married George Bilbo, the brother of the Governor of Mississippi Bilbo's. They didn't remain married all that long, and by 1919 she married Harry Bodin, and finally in 1929ish Andrew Svedson. Growing up I am sure times were hard financially, her father farmed and ran a ferry across the river to Alabama, and with all of the other siblings, it's quite likely money was tight.

Where Margaret was reserved and quietly went about her life as a mother, it seems like Plina was quite the opposite. She spent time in Pensacola, New Orleans and  New York, dressed well for her time, and well, allegedly participated in running a New Orleans bordello. Plina's eldest daughter Lula didn't care much for her mother, but Plina bought her a fancy dining room table set, and her grandchildren, they adored her. The few pictures I have show one a women dressed in home sewn gowns who rarely smiles  and the other dressed in finery with a great big smile.

If our ancestors are part of our faces in the mirror, these are two of mine. Despite the differences, both women had courage. They faced hardships in a time when women legally owned no property in most states, when they couldn't even have their own bank account. Margaret faced discrimination because she was 3/4 Choctaw, and ensured her children grew up being able to survive in a white world, but all of her children left home early, because with so many kids, the expectation was by age 13 or so you went to work. She raised her grandchildren with food subsidies during the depression, until she had to go live with relatives, and I guess their mom's took the kids, at least some of the time. Plina, faced an abusive husband. And while I really don't know that I like where she got the money to have her style, but she sure made the most of her independence when she got it. She had gumption, and I admire that.

These women are special for what they represent to me. Margaret Trahern was the reason I started genealogy in the first place. It was a sentence in a book that made me go, well that can't be right, and made me want to find out the answers. And what a journey it has been. I have so many people I have researched in the Choctaw nation who aren't my relatives, looking to confirm the maiden name of Margaret's mother, and that journey, that Choctaw research has lead me on some wonderful friendships with other researchers and the opportunity to assist grad students on Choctaw history.

Plina, well she isn't a Pyburn by birth, but I have spent a lot of time on the McCurdy's too, and well, yes, the Pyburn family is the one I am the most proud of. Like the Trahern family, I have developed a large group of fellow researchers for my panhandle families, but with the Pyburn's, a lot of the ground breaking work, well that's all my own discoveries. Finding them in Tensaw, finding the baptism records in Mobile, tracing the sister of Jacob Pyburn's family (very interesting in that line), and finally finding all of the girls, who they married and tracing their families. If the Choctaw research has me proud, so does the Pyburn. It's not to say I don't try as hard on every family, but in regards to time, well these two have taken a lot of my time over the last 18 years.