52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks - Invite to Dinner

This post is part of Amy Johnson Crow's 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks for 2018. The prompt for the week of January 22, 2018, is "Invite to Dinner."

Suggestions from Amy: Which ancestor would you most want to invite to dinner? Do you have a story of a memorable dinner with an ancestor? Is there a special recipe that’s been handed down? I thought I'd answer all three questions.

Deciding which ancestor I’d like to invite to dinner is tough! There are so many to choose from. For starters, I’d like to invite my maternal grandfather, William Liming Redles. I feel like he led such a fascinating life during his career in the Marines. I wrote a lengthy blog post about him when I first started this blog back in 2011. Click on his name above to read it. Then I'd like to invite my maternal grandmother, Leona Roberts, and my paternal grandparents, Albert S. Pendleton Sr. and Helen Brown (click on their names to go to the blog posts I wrote). I'd like to ask all of my grandparents what their lives were like as children and adults. 

Unfortunately, I don't have any memorable dinners with an ancestor. I wish I did. I know we had dinners with my paternal grandparents, but I don't remember when or what we ate or talked about. I remember being in their dining room at the table when I was very young, probably on a holiday. We had numerous dinners at the Big House (where my mother grew up) with my maternal great aunts, uncles, and cousins when I was young. 

One of my favorite family recipes is the brownie recipe I shared on my blog. I found out later that this recipe is probably Great Aunt Mary's. She was Mary Converse and was married to my maternal great uncle John Young Roberts, my grandmother's brother.

If I could, I'd invite all my ancestors to dinner, one by one. Everyone has a story to tell.

Catherine