The Velvet Bridge
by
Anita Stubbs
This true-to-life rags to riches tale, my first novel, is set during WWII and could have actually happened if not for one thing: Mattie Featherstone never existed, other than between the covers of this 381-page book. But the lifestyles, the culture of the time, and some of the places ring so true, you'll wonder. It's classic 1940's, Dallas, Texas, in and around Oak Cliff.
Too young to be
widowed and too pretty to be alone, Mattie Featherstone is both. Suddenly
impoverished, this confused, tormented woman abandons her children and seeks
refuge in an encampment for vagrants situated near the Trinity River on the
west side of Dallas during World War II.
When a twist-of-fate encounter eases Mattie out of destitution into the
genteel world of her paper doll dreams, she manages to conceal the truth
about her past from her benefactors. She even justifies - in her own mind -
the abandonment of her daughters.
However, everything changes when yet another unforeseen event turns her life
into sensational headline news, revealing more than even she could imagine.
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From Roots To Trees
Piecing Together the Family Fabric Through the Study
of Genealogy.
Genealogy records are proof of each bloodline’s birthright,
the validation of everyone’s place in the foundation and landscape
of a country, joining us all in a common heritage. Alex Haley’s
book, Roots, first sparked my interest in the study of family history.
It made me more acutely aware of the strength, the pure willpower of each
of our forebearers, to survive, and the miracle that each one did, in
their own place and time—at least long enough to produce what would
become us! The legacy we all share, regardless of our biological beginnings,
is that we are all descendants of survivors—generation after generation
of survivors. You know, that is a mind-boggling thing when you think about
it.
By the time I actually got serious about doing family research, my grandparents had all died. My parents had limited information. I was a pilgrim in a strange land, so to speak, for nobody in my family, on either side, as far as I knew at that time, shared my interest in our family roots. So, when I began to wonder about my ancestors, who they were, and where they came from, I had no idea where to start looking, or who to ask. I also had no idea how addictive the process of researching old records would become.
I began in 1983 by going to the courthouse in Hopkins County, Texas where both sides of my parents’ families have lived since the 19th century. Vital records, readily available at that time in the county clerk’s office, gave me easy access, and unlimited viewing of birth, marriage, and death indexes to records filed there, leading me to the actual recordings. It is no longer that easy, for birth records, especially, are not as open to the public, due to privacy considerations and identity theft. But at that time, I had unlimited viewing of every index there. I was hooked.
I easily discovered my paternal grandfather’s birth certificate. I will always be grateful to him, for he had probated it himself in the county where he lived and died, although he was born in another state at a time when birth records were not even required. It was a gem of a find, the first in my collection of family jewels, and the act of his recording that document inspired me. Although he never discussed his history with me, that single act of recording his own birth, with all the detailed information about his parents, endeared him to me even more. Gleaning every bit of information from that single document started me in the right direction, and soon I was unraveling one mystery after another, discovering surname after surname, birthplace after birthplace, cemetery after cemetery, in state after state.
From that first day onward, the pursuit of my family’s linkage became my self-appointed assignment. Gradually, after much time spent in libraries and courthouses, across this state and several others, I pushed further, in search of that first elusive immigrant, then the next, digging backward through the centuries into their countries of origin. I was on an ancestral quest. At times, looking back, I believe it might have become an obsession.
I uncovered one immigrant ancestor after the other, as they established themselves in America’s colonial life and times. Even further back, the knights and lords, and their ladies, ancestors all. Why it was the stuff of fairytales for me! Imagine the sense of pride I felt in finding our family’s Revolutionary War soldiers, and then tracking their descendants as they moved westward, pioneering their way to Texas.
That was before the computer took over our lives, at least my life. The different methods of record keeping, organization and arrangement, fascinated me. I was always looking for better ways to display the ever-increasing tangle of connecting lines. Oh, it kept me awake nights! I compiled book after book, after family book, and filled several file cabinets with paperwork, absolutely refusing to throw away any scrap, for fear there might be something written there that would become important later. Now, Family Tree Maker organizes everything for me, but boxes of those old family group sheets are still in my attic.
I had no way of knowing in the beginning the story ideas I would unearth, and the creative juices old accounts would stimulate, awakening my too-long dormant muse. My passion for research and fact-finding directed me back to school for my B.A. in English, and soon I was writing again. I haven’t stopped since.
I certainly never expected to fall so much in love with the artistry of piecing together the family fabrics, as I like to call my genealogy records. At one time, I published a quarterly family newsletter, entitled The Friddle Fabric. My subscribers were Friddle family relatives from connecting lines, scattered across the country. Another way I found to display my ancestors is through scrap booking and creative journaling—a picturesque complement to genealogy. I have created unique memory books, family heirlooms to be passed down through future generations.
My family tree sprouted from the prolific root system of my own genealogy. Just as the tree germinated from the fertile soil of absolute facts, growing quickly into a substantial mass of limbs and branches, my fiction takes root in the shadows, in the myths hiding between the twigs and under the leaves, of that same tree. My poetry sometimes rides on the breeze, somewhere between fact and fiction, but more often than not, it is truth personified.
Today, I enjoy helping others interested in discovering their own family roots. I am influenced everyday by the past, and am constantly aware that I am who I am in many ways because of the collective individuals who preceded me. Learning all I can about them is inspiring, progressive, and fun. And obligatory, in the sense that if I don’t, who will?