the last of the Mohicans

Lucretia "Lou" Ramsey P. Dill, my great great grandmother

I remember learning to write my name.  I was furious with my mother for giving me a long, unusual sounding name when I was surrounded by feminine Jessica's, Jennifer's, and Ann's.  My sister didn't have it any better.  I was named for my mother's family, of whom my mother is the last surviving member.  Mom is indeed the last of her kind, the last of the Mohicans.  She was being sentimental, naming me for her great aunt.  When you're a kid ANYTHING is better than being named for a great aunt, because the names of generations past are more formal and traditional.  I believe formal and sentimental names are making a come-back, but then trends are trends. 

My great aunt was one of four sisters, Annie, Daisey, and Noel Ramsey
who raised my grandmother Noel and her little brother, John, in Kittyhawk.  Noel Ramsey Dill had all the beaus, they say.  Wish that translated to me, haha.  Clara was my mom's grandmother, and a permanent installation in her life until she passed in the morning of 1980.  She had come to live with my mother's parents and had stayed with them for decades.  Twice married and feisty, Clara E. Dill Gibbs O'Neal lived to be 89, passing just weeks before her 90th birthday. 

I have a confession to make.   I had a geneology project to do in the fourth grade.  This kind of research isn't uncharted territory.  But there was a large hole in my mom's story until this very day.  The Gibbs, the Dills, and the Ramseys have all been traced by yours truly. to their humble beginnings in the New World.  There's so much that I must condense and type it in another blog.  This one's all you, Mom.  Pictures, from the top: Lucretia "Lou" P. Ramsey Dill, Clara and her sisters Annie, Daisy, and Noel Ramsey in Kittyhawk, Clara and my grandmother Noel in Venezuela, and my grandmother Noel with her brother at Pawley's Island.