User:Carolyn branagan
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<My name is Carolyn Branagan. I live in the small town of Georgia, Vermont. Geneology has always interested me. When I was a young girl our family looked forward to summertime visits by my father’s cousin, whom we children called “Uncle Ronald”. The Reverend Ronald Whitney was Executive Minister for the Methodist Council of Churches in Greater Springfield, Massachusetts, and he came to visit us almost every summer with his wife and son for two or three days. Those times were filled with laughter as my father and Uncle Ronald enjoyed each other’s company a great deal. My mother used the occasion to fill the house with scrumptious food, earning her Uncle Ronald’s greatest compliment as the woman who could set “ the finest table anywhere.”
Summer was a busy time for us on our dairy farm, but Uncle Ronald knew how to work hard and each night after dinner he and my father sat at the dining room table, long after it was cleared, telling stories. Eventually the stories would turn to family, each man sharing what he knew about the relatives. Lying in my bed upstairs, I remember their voices as I drifted off to sleep. They talked of Uncle George in Arizona, elderly Uncle Arthur and Aunt Edith, beautiful Aunt Ella, Ruth and others whose faces I had seen only a time or two, or never.
On one of his visits, Uncle Ronald announced that he had done some research on family history and he promised to share it with us. A copy arrived at Christmas time and I read it under the lights of the tree. How exciting it was to learn even this little bit about the long ago Whitney’s!
The story of our line of the Whitney family is a long one, but I have chosen to start my research in 1635 when John Whitney emigrated from England. Our line is made up of farmers, preachers, woodsmen, teachers, war heroes and businessmen. It is made up of women who worked beside their husbands clearing land, building homes, and raising children and, in recent generations, taking advantage of the professional opportunities modern times provided them. Although times were different, all of these Whitneys were very much like we are today: everyday people doing the best they could in the circumstances that surrounded them. They had good times and bad times. Some made money, others struggled. They laughed with their families, went to church and saw that their children were educated. Together, these people make the story of America. They are our people, our family. I am pleased to have the friendship of distant cousins and others who contribute to the Whitney Research Group. Feel free to comment freely on my work.
