Squawkie Hill Reservation and Elizabeth Lucille Nichols

 

An old woman looked out, staring sternly from within a black frame, holding tightly to black and white.  Oh, she is your great-great grandmother.  My grandmother told me about her, how she had long black thick hair, hanging straight down her back.  She was from the Seneca or Oneida tribe, you know...eleven children born in a log cabin in an Indian Reservation..

I did not know that.  Grandma, with her abundance of hair, told me of this ancestor, bits and pieces.

Grandma died at an old age and it was as if I were now the keeper of the knowledge. 

The photo on the wall, now sepia, was put away, lost in the dark, until boxes and trunks were opened.  My mother stared at the stern ancestor, told me a little more.

When Mom died, there were not any family members who knew the other bits and pieces of this ancestor.

               I was the Keeper.

          When I am gone, so she will be as well.

 

 

 

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Where my great grandfather (one of eleven) was born, left side, "Mrs. Nichols"