1962: A Beginning, of sorts . . .
Taylors are spread far and wide. This is one branch--an Oklahoma branch, with deep roots in Tennessee. Virginia before that, and of course before that, Ireland. The Taylor in the above photograph, the guy on the right, grew up in Oklahoma and lives in Pennsylvania with the woman on his left, to whom he has now been married for thirty-eight years. They look out upon the Sierra Nevada Mountains of California at a crucial time in their young lives. If you could see their faces, you probably wouldn't see any fright. Who was to say what lay ahead? Good things, let them believe. And so they did believe it. And so it happened and still is happening, though they might have had reason for a little fear as well.
The pages ahead go back--back into the years before this meditative pair met, in fact before they began their lives. The past is as mysterious in its own way as the future. Once we get beyond names and dates, family history is composed in large part of fancy as well as fact, and when we reconstruct a version of our ancestors' lives we give a texture and depth and meaning to our own lives that will likely remain elusive when our own descendants begin to wonder what became of us. In the meantime, let us see what we can make of what has been left to us.
Entrance: Contents
