My Mother Would Have Been 100 Today

I've been planning to get this new genealogy blog started and this seems as good a day as any. Today my mother, Sarah Agnes Jones Dunn, born August 1, 1912, would have been 100 years old.

She died in 1966 when she was only 54, a shock to everyone. The youngest of 12 kids in a big Irish Catholic family, her older sisters (one, Edith, lived to be 97) outlived her.

Though her name was Sarah Agnes, everyone called her Agnes or Ag. That included her sisters and my Dad, though she always claimed she liked Sarah better, and used to say that "in movies, Agnes is the name of the mule." Nobody listened. But my daughter is named Sarah, not Agnes.

Actually, since this is a genealogy blog, it's worth noting that Sarahs in my mother's line skip a generation. Mama was almost certainly named for her own grandmother, as my daughter is named for her. Her maternal grandmother, Sarah Fitzpatrick Cleary, left, born in Ireland in 1848, died in Missouri in 1897, was presumably her namesake and, if you look at both pictures (particularly around the forehead and eyes), I think you'll see a very striking resemblance.

So to launch this blog, which I hope to use to post interesting family stories, unsolved genealogy problems, and cool old photos. happy 100th, Mama. I'll be shifting soon to my Dunn side as we vacation in North Georgia, the ancestral stomping ground.