Hidden Haven Homestead

Its not a picture of pilgrims but close! This is a picture of a wagon train that goes thru Franklin, NC every year. The boy standing next to the wagon wheel with the hat on is the girls dad (my first husband). The wagon train always stopped and camped overnight at the farm and they let the neighborhood kids ride in the wagons before they settled down for the night. I have a picture somewhere on my girls at the wagon train when they were small... Have to dig it out. Our ancestors had to travel in wagons to get to their homes or go to town. My dads parents came across a mountain with one wagon that was loaded with everything they had so the kids and grandma had to walk every step. My grandpa who was German married grandma who was Cherokee and if that wasn't bad enough she was divorced when that was considered a terrible sin! They left the small town that had been their home and their families so they could start their life together. It was hard on them because their families wouldn't have anything to do with them after they married. They lived 15 miles out of town and back then that was a long way by horse. Grandma become the community nurse and midwife. She used lots of herbs for the sick and injured. When my dad was born premature he only weighed 2 pounds and wasn't expected to live. Grandma made a bed for him in a shoebox, put the shoebox in the warming oven of the wood cookstove and made her own incubator. Grandma used a lot of the Indian ways to treat people and she also tried to pass them on to her grandchildren. Grandma died 2 days before her 103rd birthday. So this Thanksgiving I will be thankful for my pilgrim ancestors that came to this land but I also will be thankful for my Indian ancestors for being here to greet and help the pilgrims thru the first winter.