I don’t know if her birthday (June 22) is closest to mine (June 26), but it’s pretty doggone close, so this week’s featured ancestor is my great-grandmother, Carrie McNeely Colvert Taylor, whom I’ve written about before here and here.

Grandma Carrie in Jersey City, New Jersey, with her daughter Launie Mae’s children, early 1940s.

——

Me: Well, I wonder where she got her name from?

My grandmother: Who?

Me: Your mama. Your mother. Caroline Martha Mary —

My grandmother: Yeah. Who ever heard tell of such as that?

Me: — Fisher Valentine McNeely. Well, I know where the Martha came from, ’cause that was her mother’s name.

My grandmother: Yeah.

Interview of Margaret C. Allen by Lisa Y. Henderson; all rights reserved.