Page 11 - People & Places In Time

Introduction
As I move thru and about this life, I watch, often at the smallest events over the larger life changing experiences, though there have been more than enough of those to suit me. So indeed, it becomes the life changing events that are written about. Still it’s the small things, the details that give a life meaning. Not particularly articulate in conversation to recite what has happened I need time to reflect writing has been a gift to me in this journey.
If personally I’ve gained anything during the time spent writing, it is to have created a place to say some things to those people for whom I didn’t take the opportunity when they were alive to tell them what they’ve meant to me. Here, I’ve allowed myself to brouse through time, to reacquaint with the people, places and events that have determined who I’ve become. A friend of mine from some forty years ago told me something that at first seems a given, something you or I might otherwise have respond, “well of course”; yet her comment “we are always becoming who we will be” has stuck in my brain ever since. What happens as we travel to new places whether for a brief stay or to stay for a while, whether it’s the people we briefly encounter or those who become part of our lifetime is all part of a process that will bring us to where we find ourselves today, but also to who we have become.
I have no thoughts as to whether anyone reading this will have known me well, if at all, but that perhaps they will find what I have to say of my life interesting; or if they have known me, that perhaps
they might know me better. As to my own experience, there is so much that I did not take the opportunity to learn about too many people from my past; to have further probed the knowledge of others to learn about those I could not have known . . . now there is no one left to ask. This is the reason I’ve included the opening chapter on the family history associated with my father and mother. I don’t think that to truly know someone, it’s necessary to know from where they have come, but somehow, I think it’s important as an introduction to my story. This opening chapter is only as complete as the information available to me. Most of what is included was compiled by others, leaving the contents less complete than I would like. I hope someone down the road can take what I’ve tried to do and expand it further.
The opening chapter, as a glimpse into my heritage, was more than I expected as I began to compile and write about what I thought I knew. As I became aware that my heritage was as deeply rooted in the founding of America as it can get, I began to study the history of Jamestown and the Virginia Colony, of which I knew little. To find that my seventh great grandfather was a founding member of the House of Burgess has piqued my interest in learning more of early American history.
Of the Mitchell-Duff side of the family living in south-western Virginia and Tennessee, they were known as the Over-Mountain men. These were the men who turned the tide of the Revolutionary War at the Battle of Kings Mountain in North Carolina, a decisive battle. As a descendant this was the heritage that allowed Mom to become a DAR. There is comparable Revolutionary War heritage on the Smith-Hutchens side as well.
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