Saturday Night Genealogy Fun – A Fearless Female Blog Prompt

From Randy over at Genea-Musings:

Here is your assignment if you choose to play along (cue the Mission Impossible music, please!):

1) Read Lisa Alzo’s blog post Back for a Fourth Year: Fearless Females: 31 Blogging Prompts to Celebrate Women’s History Month on her blog, The Accidental Genealogist.

2) Choose one of her daily blog prompts from the list (this is March 9th, do that one if you don’t want to choose another), and write about it.

3) Tell us about it in a blog post of your own, in a comment to this blog post, in a Facebook post or a Google+ post.

Here’s mine:

I selected the March 9th prompt – Take a family document (baptismal certificate, passenger list, naturalization petition, etc.) and write a brief narrative using the information.

New York, Passenger Lists, 1820-1957 Record list my grandmother Caroline Bough and my mother Joyce Bough departing St. Croix and heading back to New York in April, 1933.

Growing up in New York, and hearing stories about St. Croix, was very common in my household. One such family story, was when my mother, went to St. Croix when she was 2 years old. It was a difficult time for the family, my mother was very sick with a chest cold with symptoms of bronchitis/pneumonia.

During the 1930’s; pneumonia was considered the leading cause of death. Apparently, her parents were fearful that the rattling on her chest would lead to pneumonia. As a result, my grandmother who is native to St. Croix, took her daughter back home for healing. The combination of warm weather, and I assume the local herbs, proved to be very beneficial.

When I told my mother about the passenger record, showing her and my grandmother returning to New York, after spending time in St. Croix as child; she recalled the experience through her mother’s eyes high lighted by the fact that she was thankful to God for recovery.