Gag Order Not Observed by Ancestor
by Mickey Paulson Aranki
My e-mail address is mickeyaranki@netzero.net
and I live in Humble, Texas.
I never knew my
grandfather, Robert Lee Paulson. My grandmother Mamie Eaves had married
then divorced him twice. My father would not talk about him and wouldn't
let anyone else mention him. Even the two pictures of him in my
grandmother's picture box had the faces scratched out by my father when
he was a boy.
When my oldest daughter was born in 1977, I was bitten by the genealogy
"bug" and realized that I had to find out about my Paulson side. Dad had
passed away in 1971 and I still felt disloyal to try to contact his
father, but looked him up in the phone book and called. I was so nervous
that I didn't ask the kind of questions that I should, he was so excited
to talk to me and begged me to come to see him.
Later that evening, my
mother called, very upset and told me that my grandfather's current wife
had called and requested that we leave him alone, he had children with
her and she never wanted them to know that their father had been married
before. I dropped my quest on the spot.
A couple of years ago I spent the day with one of my brothers looking up
records in the Houston Library and discovered that they had old city
directories stored in another building, upon searching we located Robert
Paulson's grandfather's last address in 1923 and several addresses for
Robert and other Paulson family members.
We drove out to try to locate
the houses, the ggrandfather's house was no longer there, a business
located in it's place. We decided to drive out to the last address we
had for Robert.
As we came to the freeway exit there was a large cemetery
to our left and we decided to check the office for any Paulsons. He was
the only one in the hugh cemetery and buried just across the driveway
from the office! With no information to go on it was like we were led to
him.
Since then I have found his family going back to the 1830's in
Alabama but still have not learned anything about his subsequent family.
Submitted: Sat Apr 17 01:12:56 1999
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