Prickly Summer: Would You Like a Beveridge?

Oral Interview Sheets by Midge Frazel, 1971

Prickly Summer: Would You like a Beveridge?

While my soon to be husband was in Vietnam, I decided to interview my father's family on Thanksgiving, so after dinner, I went with my father to his sister's home and started with simple names and dates. The thing I remember most clearly is that it became obvious that my family didn't know everything about their own generation. The most fun was the surnames and listening to them try to decide how to spell them. As you can see I spelled Aiken incorrectly and my aunt fixed it. It did turn out that it was only partially wrong.

After my aunt wrote her mother's name, the men wandered into the living room and my aunt said, "Do you want a beverage?" So, we had to stop while dessert was served in the kitchen. I looked at the four interviews I has conducted, while my aunt put a big piece of pie and a cuppa in front of my father without asking him what he wanted. 

My Aiken and Beveridge family has been a lot of work and this week, I finally figured out what a family member said about the birth of my great grandparents first born child. He was born in 1879 and his parents weren't married until 1881.