Facebook follower David Damron’s paternal great-great grandparents are George Wesley DAMRON and Mary ROGERS. In 1863 Mary’s father John ROGERS was lynched by Confederate Bushwhackers in Mulberry, Arkansas. She married George Wesley DAMRON a Union soldier from Company F, Kansas 13th Infantry Regiment. He was a part of the occupation of Van Buren, Arkansas. He died in 1876 the same month his brother murdered her brother.
Tag: family
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From Snail Mail to Book: My Dad’s Story Unveiled
I can’t remember a time when my dad wasn’t my hero. Like most kids, I thought my home and family were just normal. I had a mom, a dad, siblings, a house, pets, neighbors, and church. Didn’t everyone live like that? As I grew, I came to understand that I was fortunate because I had all those things; but it was more than just good fortune for me. My parents had very different backgrounds and shared tales of their youth in bits and pieces, which are both worthy of publication on a biographical level, but as the stories were told of a tough upbringing, poverty, independence at a young age, fire-fighting, military, a life-changing decision made aboard a military warship and missionary service, all before he met and married my mom, I began to see my father as a hero. When I reached adulthood, my deep regard for him continued to grow and change. Although he still remains my hero, I’ve come to understand the human side of him. When my dad asked for help putting his story into book form, I eagerly accepted.
Now that I’m an old lady myself, and I still have an 85 year-old mom and a 91 year-old dad, I’ve come to see the urgency in getting as many of these stories of common heroes told before it is too late. Mary’s story is more than ready to be told, and I have no intention of putting her off any longer, so I’ve got to take the time to put Dad’s story together while keeping both at priority level. You’ll be seeing updates and opportunities to help for both stories on a regular basis.
I am currently plugging Dad’s story into a timeline while fighting technological lag, (living in a high-tech world, without high-tech training). He lives in Utah, and I’m in Kentucky. Dad has a degree in Civil Engineering, but he doesn’t use a cellphone or trust the internet. (Can’t blame him.) Although mom didn’t work outside of the home much after she met dad, she does have a cellphone and uses it for more things than I know how to do with the device, that’s not a whole lot of help. I was lucky that I entered college as the internet was entering its childhood, but the lag is real for me, too. Dad does have a laptop, but he uses it mostly for reading Facebook and word-processing, so I’m getting a lot of printout and pc photo scans by snail-mail. I called my son in Utah an hour-ago and hopefully talked him into meeting with Dad on a regular basis to send the scans and docs by email. If I have to, I’ll get my brother involved. (Don’t make me call your uncle!) We’ll get this thing moving.
Dad’s story will be put into book form, but this is his biography, so my role will be more of a ghost-writer/editor than a third-party observer. I don’t know how the publication will work; that depends on Dad. For now, his biography is planned for private publication, but don’t you worry, I have plenty of third-party observations to be made. As they are approved you will be able to follow along and help, if you can and are willing, as his story is told.
Just like Mary’s story, Dad’s story is fascinating and compelling. I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.
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Introducing My New Pen Name and Writing Progress
The Second Wife’s Story is coming together, but I had to quit working on it for a couple of months. I’m now two months behind, but I’m back on track and working on a second biography as well. There’s so much to tell, and I’m so excited to share my progress with you!
Many of you know me personally and many others have known me by my birthname on Facebook and other social media sites. Here on WordPress, I have gone by Too Many Hats for too many years. Some of those hats have come off so it’s now time to change, not just my profile name, but my pen-name as well.
I chose my pen-name many, many years ago, when I decided that someday I would become a writer of books. That someday has been a long time in coming, so the name change is finally underway.
I began looking into that name on Facebook about a month ago–just to see how many individuals might be affected by my choice and just a couple of weeks later a profile with that very name showed up as a friend request. This was very suspicious to me at the moment, so I immediately blocked the request. I was concerned that someone, or some-thing, was trying to take over my professional identity. Since then, I have realized that it was most likely a Facebook generated suggestion and not an attempt to steal anything. I’ve since tried to figure out how to unblock the suggestion so I can send an apologetic friend request, but to no avail.
I thought I’d better go public soon, anyway, so at least my readers won’t get as confused as I am. I hope this helps. You may see me here on WordPress and on other social media by both my given name and Mari K. Flowers, an English variation on my given name. Either way it’s still me, and you will be seeing much more of both of me in the near future!
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A lotta changes goin’ on ’round here (a quick newsletter for 2026)
I’m back to Wednesday blog posts: and I mean it! No excuses.
This website is really old, and never has reached its full potential. It’s in desperate need of updating; so here’s what’s up:
January 2026: Thanks to Super-flu 2025, this newsletter, which should have posted the last year, didn’t make it out on time. So STORIES FROM THE PAST is already two weeks behind and I already have some catching up to do.
Here’s what you can expect this year:
- New Theme, Logo, letterhead, and other organizational updates. (You should already see some of them.)
- About Us focusing less on beginnings and more on readers. (This keeps you involved.)
- Regular cousin updates with new profiles for Cousin Connections
- MANY new stories from the past.
- More chapters for the Second Wife’s Story.
- Research for Mary Damron’s story (untitled) and at least one more story I can’t wait to get started on.
- Austria report from 2019
- Family History Conference reviews
- Added post days
- New Social media connections
February 2026: New research on a new biography. This is near and dear to my heart. but I am quite sure that many of my existing readers and even more of my new readers will be able to find a personal connection or two along the way.
I can’t wait to tell you about it! Stay tuned; preliminary details will be released on January 28.
You will see changes every week, and I’ll be sure to keep you updated.
See you next Wednesday!
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Unknown Family Members Identified
We interrupt your regularly scheduled blog post for this important announcement:
I am pleased to report that I have made a very special connection to family, friends, and neighbors who were lost in the Holocaust.
In the past few days a flurry of emails have gone back and forth between my parents, myself, and a new acquaintance from Austria.
It began with a message coming directly through this website. (Hooray for contact forms!) A woman in Austria has found my posts regarding my grandmother and my great-aunts who were members of the pre-holocaust Jewish community in Lower Austria. She wanted to know if I could put her in contact with surviving members of the Abeles family from Pitten, Austria.
Hey, that’s me!
Completely stunned, I had to read the message three times before I could comprehend that this woman not only knew of my family, but even had some information regarding my family that I did not yet have. I did not quite understand why she was contacting me, but the fact that she knew so much about my grandmother and great-great grandfather was enough to spur me to respond–right after making a very excited phone call to my mother in Utah.
It turns out that this Austrian woman seems just as excited to have gotten a positive response from me. You see, her family lived next door to my family before both families were sent fleeing from imminent Nazi threat. She was eager to know if there were survivors of her family’s old-time friends. The good news is yes, there were several survivors, and the fact that she was able to find me is evidence.
I. Am. Ecstatic.
As a result of my excitement over this new contact, I accidentally closed out all of the renewed pages I had open for research on this week’s new page and corresponding blog post. Once again, I am having to start over to gather resources for the page and article on Aucke Wikoff that was supposed to have been posted last week.Thanks to this new information, my family was able to update existing family members and add another we were unaware of. On top of that, we now know where my great-grandmother was buried and have a photo of her grave. I think the new page and blog post are going to be put on the back burner for the next couple of weeks as I converse with my new family friend and sort out this new story from the past.
My great-grandmother, Franziska “Fanny” Abeles Daniel
The tombstone, finally identified.Luckily, this new information came before the post I had planned for next week on the Daniel family. It looks like I’ll be doing something a little different now that I have new information that actually helps to clarify the blog post I had planned for next week. I am really looking forward to sharing all of this with you.
Hooray for Geneablogging and the internet!
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Cousin Connection #2 My Cousin Married My Cousin
This isn’t a William Faulkner novel, it’s reality. It’s also not like it sounds. When your family has deep roots in the same area where you were born and raised, it’s bound to happen, and it doesn’t take much digging to find family members marrying family members. They probably don’t even know they were doing it.
This case is different because my cousin on my grandfather’s side, married a cousin from my grandmother’s side. They are not related at all to each other, but it’s not totally coincidental that it happened. All of my New York cousins come from my great-great grandfather who was born in Poland. Their roots are not nearly as deep in American soil, and they know who most of them are, so the chances of marrying one of the Kwiatkowski cousins are pretty remote. My grandmother’s genealogy can be traced well into pre-revolutionary America though. They settled in Pennsylvania, a wild and untamed frontier, approximately two generations before my Chuck’s grandfather and my great-grandfather arrived with their parents from Poland. (more…)
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A Boy and His Sister
Warning: Despite my insistence that this blog is all about graveyards and dead people, it’s really about family history. This story is about part of my family, and it is part of my children’s history, so even though they are still alive to tell this story themselves, I’m going to tell it now to keep it from becoming untold.
My baby boy turns twenty this weekend. I haven’t been able to get him out of my mind because he lives nearly three hundred miles away. I have been too ill to travel for the last year or so. I’ve been having car problems too. So has Jake. I miss him terribly, but he promises to come and visit soon, and I can’t wait. Yes, this is the story of a boy and his sister. I’m getting to that–I promise.
But first, a little about a boy and his music. I usually begin my day by listening to uplifting music, and today was no different. I began by listening to “Bring Him Home” from Les Miserables, but that got me thinking of sons in general, which got me thinking of Jake. Again. And then I began wondering why I hadn’t listened to anything from Waiting for Compromise lately. In fact, I’ve been avoiding it.
You see, Jake is the lead singer in a band (Waiting for Compromise). Or am I supposed to say was? I don’t know. He is one of three extremely talented singer/songwriters. Two are brothers, and then there’s Jake. Jake moved to the other end of the state for a full-time job about a year and a half ago, and the two brothers have done a pretty good job of keeping their band going despite the fact that Jake is no longer around. In fact, they’ve even released their first album. Jake wasn’t able to be around for most of the recordings, so he doesn’t sing in many of them. But this one, “Morning’s Coming Soon,” brought me to tears:
Jake does sing in this one. He’s the crazy blonde always up front and in the middle. It’s not the song itself that makes me cry, but the video montage, the fact that the boys are separated, and the lyrics. They probably did it on purpose just to make me cry. Well, it worked, so I’ve been avoiding their music for a while. To be fair though, Jake tells me it makes him cry too. (more…)
StoriesFromthePast.com 
