Forebears and Bears

 My small backyard garden is just about done for the year.  It produced again too many tomatoes, and not enough of anything else.  This year my husband, in an effort to use up some of these tomatoes, actually cooked and canned enough sauce to last us the winter.  Our cucumbers didn't do well; they were yellow and soft.  My sister's garden on the Cape, however, produced an abundant crop of cucumbers.  During a recent conversation we discovered that we had both recently looked into our grandmother's recipe files and pulled out handwritten recipes for Betty Gates' Pickles.   My grandmother made a lot of wonderful homemade goods which I recall with great love and affection.  Homemade pickles wasn't one of those items I particularly cared for.  I recall always being a little disappointed at homemade pickles not being as tasty and sharp as those found in a grocery store jar. But I was a kid, and now am much more interested in the "real" and "n...

It is understood in the Bear family, that cousin Rees was named after Rees Awalt, our grandmother’s brother.   And i n fact, my grandmother Wilma Awalt did have a younger brother named Oral Rees Awalt who died at age nine.     Siblings Sally, Wilma, and Oral Rees Awalt were the children of William Oral Awalt and Anice Ada Gray.   Anice Gray was the daughter of John Spencer Gray and Gertrude Rees. Sally, Anice (Gray), and Wilma Awalt William and Anice (Gray) Awalt Anice (Gray) and William Awalt                                                                                                      Rees Genealogy                     ...