Pat's Family

 

It is indeed a desirable thing to be well-descended, but the glory belongs to our ancestors.
~~~ Plutarch (46-120), Greek essayist, biographer ~

Motivation:
I have been interested in family history most of my life. For years I have saved notes or tapes of interviews with the older generation and have collected old family photos. I never had any idea as a young woman that there would be this amazing venue, the computer with the Internet, that would make it possible to share family stories and photos with so many people. My talented husband Mel has done virtually all of the technical work and much of the advanced research and for that I am so grateful. Like Mel, I have been so excited when I have found and reunited photos that were taken at the same time but have been scattered over the years.

What I thought would be a fairly straightforward story of four Winter brothers in Scotland has turned into a bit of a mystery as Mel has found a sister Janet and a brother James, older siblings of John, Charles, William, and Patrick Winter. We never knew anything about them. Mel found Janet's baptismal record and James appears in the 1841 Scots census when he is about 9 years old. We are still checking to see if we can find further confirmation of their existence and what was their fate.

Anyway, this is a work in progress. With the generous help of the many family members listed below, we have made a lot of progress, especially on the Winter and White families. There remains much to be done organizing the accumulated materials and photos for the Browns and the Bensons. I'm looking forward to doing that. I hope that you will enjoy the site, will use it, and will choose to participate by providing additional information, photos, or corrections. We all should be proud of our families and their accomplishments. Let us all work together so that future generations will know and love our history.–Pat Winter Oakes

 

 

 

Lois Winter (1919-2004)
Bob Winter (1916-2006)

Hide and Seek

That throwaway memory
Filed in the trash drawer
Lies forgotten
Dead, until it rises resurrected
In a dream
Or lingers unwanted
At the edge of consciousness
A daytime ghost,
A puzzling déjà vue.
Who knows what mysteries
Of memory
Are lurking in the brain
Waiting for a hook
Which will raise them
Wriggling to the surface
While some pictures of the past
Play hide and seek
With our eternal It,
Refusing to appear
Even when we call
“Come out, come out,
Wherever you are.”

Written by Fran Briggs, 2011

 

 

Click albums above to connect with family albums.

 

 

Acknowledgements

Muriel Winter Beresford, Ida George Meikle, Marion Winter Thomson, Rebecca Brown Erlenbach, Doris Brown Gragg, Martha Brown Koziol, Robert Hanson,Virginia Gommi Viéira, Winnifred Elliot Hebb, Nancy Winter Hatch, Priscilla Elliot Farquharson, William Winter Elliot, Lee Cochrane, Grace Cochrane, Joanne Raymond Cummings, Bob Haraden, Minin Winter, David Murie, Mel Oakes, Carl and Bud Scheffy, Marge Bates, Marge Davies, Cody Dolan, the late Ted Gommi, Mary Jane & Holly Hutchinson, Ellie Reppucci, Judi Medeiros, Peggy Meikle Egli, Teresa Meikle, Jim Rose, Rick Rose, the late Dolly Rose, Bill & Faye Griffin, Richard Griffin, Ski and Marie Raymond.

 

Below is a hymn by Ruth Duck which Pat and I think captures the spirit of family genealogy. It from the New Century Hymnal. The tune can be found here on YouTube.