"A Lamb's Tale"

Some of the shows I most enjoy watching are genealogy programs: “Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates, Jr.”, on PBS; the UK version of “Who Do You Think You Are?”; and “Every Family Has a Secret,” which explores the hidden stories of Australian families.

History, family stories and genealogy have always been part of my life. My mother, Allece Lamb Leeds, became the family genealogist, inheriting her passion for family and history from her mother. I was taught that we should know who our ancestors were, where and how they lived and worked, and learn the history of migration and populations that helps explain how we came to live the lives we do today.

Fortunately for me, my siblings, her grandchildren and, hopefully, generations to come, Mom left us two books. One was personalized for each of us, beginning with our family genealogy. The other was her life story.

The first book is an album of our maternal and paternal genealogy, photographs and mementos documenting our family until each of us was born. The end of each personalized album contains photographs of us from birth through school, graduation, college, marriages and children.

“A Lamb’s Tale” is Mom’s biography.

The first chapter, “Talking About Family,” explains her research establishing that our maternal ancestors who arrived in America in 1634 were themselves descended from people from across the European continent. On the paternal side, my English Leeds ancestor arrived in America in 1676. This paragraph from Mom best explains the purpose of the chapter:

“Having been born in this country we are native to this country. However, the majority of ancestors came from other countries. You are fortunate to have Native American ancestors that inhabited the American continent for centuries before your immigrant ancestors arrived here. The merging of these diverse cultures makes our family and our country unique.”

The rest of the book tells the story of her life: her parents meeting and marrying, her childhood, and the world in which she grew up. Born March 27, 1932, Mom grew up on a farm. Her father was a telegraph operator for American Telephone and Telegraph in Muskogee, Oklahoma, and her mother, my grandmother, was a homemaker.

Mom tells of listening to children’s programs, “The Shadow,” “The Lone Ranger” and “Jack Armstrong,” on the radio after school. Saturday meant the excitement of going to the kids’ afternoon matinee at the Broadway Theater in Muskogee, OK. Sundays meant picnics along the Illinois River near Tahlequah, OK. Summers meant train rides to Illinois to visit her maternal grandparents. She also tells of growing up during the Great Depression and explains the devastation it brought to her family, her community and the nation.

Mom and my father, Harrison “Whitey” Russell Leeds, married on January 6, 1951. Born December 4, 1930, Dad grew up on the other side of the Arkansas River from Muskogee in Fort Gibson, Oklahoma.

Although both were raised on farms, Dad’s upbringing was very different from Mom’s. Mom had a brother and sister. Mom’s home had electric lights and inside toilets. Dad was the youngest of 10 children, with six brothers and three sisters. The older kids were so proud once they had jobs, to bring inside plumbing to their parents home. Times were tough for everyone during the Depression, but especially for farmers raising 10 children.

My grandfather, Thomas Harrison Leeds, farmed and was the custodian and bus driver for Georgetown School. My nephew and my grandson both carry on the middle name Harrison.

Six months after their marriage, Dad got a job with The John F. Beasley Construction Company, and they began traveling across America. Beasley construction crews helped build bridges, skyscrapers, seed houses and power plants from coast to coast and border to border.

Mom divided the “Whitey and Allece” chapter into sections labeled north, south, east and west. She details the many towns, places, landmarks and pieces of history they saw and experienced. She tells stories of herself and “the girls,” the other construction wives, exploring new towns and shops while their husbands worked. They would always be home with groceries, ready to have dinner on the table when “the men” got home. But Mom also documented something much darker. She wrote about racial tensions and discrimination against Native Americans, including those who, like my father, worked and traveled for Beasley Construction.

Dad inherited his father’s English ancestry, with blue eyes, fair skin and freckles. According to family lore, he was born with snow-white hair and was given the nickname “Whitey” by his darker-skinned Cherokee brothers and sisters. The name stayed with him his entire life. His hair eventually turned a deep auburn color. He looked more English than Cherokee, as do my siblings and me. Both of my parents could easily have been mistaken for people of entirely European ancestry. Mom saw the hypocrisy in that.

Other Native Americans, both Cherokee and members of other tribes, experienced discrimination, difficulty finding housing and being turned away from restaurants and businesses. It infuriated Mom, and she spoke out against it.

She often used Dad’s appearance, and the fact that his mother was half Cherokee, to point out the hypocrisy of racism. To her, discrimination based on appearance made no sense when a person’s ancestry could be far more complicated than what the eye could see.

My older sister was born in 1954, I was born in 1959 and our brother in 1964. During our childhood and travels, my older sister attended 21 schools in 12 years. Fortunately, when I was entering the fifth grade in Hurricane, West Virginia, American Electric Power offered Dad a position as assistant chief of civil engineering and our travels came to an abrupt halt.

From 1952 to 1969, my dad was employed in construction and engineering, and our family traveled across America as he helped build some of the infrastructure of this country. With only a high school diploma, he gained the knowledge and experience to gain the title of engineer without a college degree.

Mom finished her life story several years before she began her descent into dementia. My father died December 7, 1976, at the age of 47. Mom left us on February 9, 2023. Their lives, their story and our ancestry are documented for future generations in the hope that Mom would stir an interest, a curiosity and a desire to learn the history and stories of their family.

Losing Mom to dementia a few years before her body finally became too tired to live makes these two family heirlooms even more precious. They are filled with memories, photographs, history and stories that she knew might otherwise disappear. They are, in many ways, the treasure chest of her life, and she left the key with u