Talented Tuesday is a daily blogging prompt used by many genealogy bloggers to help them post content on their sites. Got ancestors who had a special talent? Be it musical, comical, or any manner of skill, we post at our genealogy blog through words and pictures. Here is my story today.
My sisters,
Elaine and
Melinda, were wonderful horsewomen. From an early age they loved horses and horseback riding. My parents were able to give them horseback riding lessons very early and they had horses most of their lives up until about 8-10 years ago when age and Fibromyalgia (we all three have it) forced them off their horses. Before we could no longer ride,
Melinda taught me to ride and I was able to ride one of her horses for about 3 years before I had to give it up. They continued to ride for awhile. Since I'm the oldest, by the time they reached my age, they also had to give it up. But I can say I was able to keep up with them on a lot of trail rides. I especially enjoyed the mountain trail rides we got to do especially the last one which was arranged for my birthday. It was unforgettable because we had a good ride up and a wonderful picnic lunch. But a thunderstorm came up on us and we had a hell of a ride back down in the pouring rain and thunderous lightening. It's something we laugh about even today!
There is a story about one of our Great Grandmothers,
Noda Vesta Miller Lamb. She was supposedly a good horsewoman. They lived in the western NC mountains when it was a very poor area. For her to have her own saddlehorse says something about her horse skills and her husband's ability and desire to give her a horse.
Noda Vest Miller was born 11/6/1887 in Madison County, NC to
Anderson Miller and
Cynthia Ann Hickam. She got pregnant at the age of 18 yrs old and had a daughter named
Pearl Juanita. She married
John Edward Lamb, aka
Ed Lamb, on 10/9/1904 in Madison County, NC. He raised
Pearl as his own daughter. He must have really loved
Noda.
Noda and
Ed added 4 more girls to their growing family:
Sueda Lamb (DOB: 10/23/1906 in Madison County, NC; DOD: 8/1918 in Madison County, NC of the Spanish Flu Epidemic);
Artie Mae Lamb (DOB: 4/3/1908 in Madison County, NC; DOD: 12/28/1999 in Blount County, TN; married
Clyde Bovy Johnson);
Fannie Marie Lamb (DOB: 2/2/1911 in Madison County, NC; DOD: 12/29/1988 in Greenville County, SC; married
Conrad Cutlass Copeland); and my Grandmother,
Geneva Margaret Lamb (DOB: 2/14/1915 in Cocke County, TN; DOD: 7/23/1984 in Spartanburg County, SC; married
Wilford William Reese).
Noda's daughter,
Pearl, married her first husband,
Dewey Roberts, in May, 1916 in Cocke County, TN. She and her husband had a daughter named
Edna Roberts about 1918. The story goes that there was some heavy rain and
Noda worried about
Pearl and
Edna being caught in a flash flood. She saddled her horse and rode down to their house and rushed in and told them to leave immediately.
Pearl had just bought a new Easter hat. She grabbed the baby and the new hat and they made it out of the house just before the water came and, sure enough, flooded the house. They would have drowned if not for
Noda.
Noda was possibly newly pregnant with another little girl when this happened. This little girl would be her namesake.
As we know, the Spanish Flu Pandemic hit the world in 1918 and it hit little Madison County, NC too. In August of 1918, their daughter,
Sueda, died of the flu. She wasn't yet 12 yrs old. In January, 1919, Noda also came down with the Spanish Flu. She gave birth but only lived 4 days after her baby girl was delivered. She died on
1/26/1919 in
Madison County, NC. Little
Noda Vesta Lamb didn't live a full 2 months before following her mother and older sister in death. The 3 of them are buried in the Old Antioch Cemetery (it's been virtually abandoned now for the newer Antioch Cemetery). There are 2 headstones but the last time I visited their graves, the tombstones are barely legible.
Ed moved his remaining 3 girls,
Pearl,
Dewey, Edna and his widowed mother-in-law down to Laurens, Laurens County, SC to work as a carpenter for one of the mills there. They are found there in the 1920 U.S. Census. Eventually he put the girl's in a girl's boarding school back in Madison County, NC. But they thought it was an orphanage and they were terrified that they would be adopted seperately and would never see each other again. They thought my little Grandmother was so pretty that she would go first so whenever someone would travel by the school, they would grab little
Geneva and run to the fields where they would hide in the grass. Eventually
Ed remarried to a neighbor woman that he knew (she and her family had lived near them).
Bess' husband had died a couple of months before
Noda had and she had 4 children too. The marriage was not a good one but back then you just lived with it.
Ed and
Bess had a son named
Daniel Lamb.
Ed Lamb died
2/27/1939 in
McDowell County, NC.
Bess Freshour Harkelroad Lamb died
7/31/1958 in
McDowell County, NC.
Seriously? I've got nothing today. It's not like it's a totally slow news day, but pretty much. They're still protesting in Wisconsin and there isn't a Democrat Senator in sight. Sarah Palin has spoken up and stated that President Barry's problem is that he's inexperienced. This coming straight from the mouth of a woman who didn't quite manage to finish out half a term as governor. We've got a college professor at Northwestern University who apologized for the live demonstration for one of his classes of a couple of people using a sex toy. (A sex toy that, as it turned out, was attached to the end of a reciprocating saw, for cryin' out loud.) And the Nissan Leaf, the car that was supposed to cut our nation's dependence on oil so that we can stop kissing the ass of the sand lands, managed to sell 67 in the month of February. Not 6,700. Not 67,000. 67. (Mind you, we're a country of over 300,000,000 people. They sold 67. Gas is going to be $4 a gallon any day now. And you and I are going to be bending over at the pump and paying it. We are so scroomed.) And while that seems like a lot of stuff to choose from, it all just makes my ass so incredibly tired I cannot even tell you. (And yeah, I don't know what the deal is with that sheep. But it kind of sums everything up in a weird sort of way.) 
