Second Cousins Reunited

January 2006

Today, I've been going through this year's Christmas cards, checking for new addresses. In doing so, I looked again at the card from my mother's cousin, Nellie Burk who lives in California, and smiled about what she wrote:

You know, the way I remember Doris goes way back to when we were little girls picking wild flowers on the Sees farm.

Nellie means that they were at the Harry Sees farm, which was Mama's home, of course. Mama and Nellie were second cousins, if I am counting correctly. Their maternal grandmothers, Emma (Hart) Eaton and Henrietta (Hart) Barto, were sisters. They had the same maternal great grandparents, Daniel Kennard Hart and Hester (Scotten) Hart.  The mothers of the two little girls were first cousins, and that makes the girls second cousins.

 
Mama and Nellie were good friends when they were little girls, but life separated them. Nellie's family moved to California during the Depression, and after Mama's mother, Violet (Eaton) Sees, died, I don't think Mama had much contact with the extended Hart family.

About 1990, Mama found Nellie's address on one of the Hart family newsletters that Bob Buchan of Rushville, Nebraska, published, and for the last years of Mama's life, these two cousins wrote many, many letters to each other.