Week 1: I Would Want to Meet...

This week's topic from Amy is "Most of us have an ancestor who we'd like to meet (even if it's to ask, "What are your parents' names?"). This week, write about that ancestor or why you'd want to meet him or her." Two years ago this would have been an easy question to answer because I wanted to know about my great great grandma Olga's family and why they came to the U.S. but after learning about my *new to me* family line and how much that has changed what I thought I knew about my ancestry, I would now say that I would want to meet my great grandmother Helen (Hubbard) Hughes and learn her story from the woman herself.

She was born and raised in Kenton, Oklahoma to George Washington Hubbard and Carrie B. Sanderson. Her father decided it was worth a shot living in what was then called "No Man's Land" in the Oklahoma panhandle. She grew up with and later married Calvin Meredith Hughes, who I grew up knowing as my great grandfather. I would later find out that my great grandmother went to her grave with a secret that changed everything I knew about my ancestry and heritage. Until I took a dna test in 2021, I was a Hughes trying to find records for the Hughes family line and getting frustrated because I very few if any dna matches related to the Hughes name that I didn't know about already. I did however notice I had a lot of dna matches with the Cochran last name or were related to the Cochrans somehow. The common ancestors for a lot of my Cochran dna matches were William O. Cochran and Nancy J. Bibb. I started looking into the Cochrans and what I found was that there were a lot of Cochrans in the Kenton, Oklahoma area. I went back to my great grandmother Helen's Ancestry profile to look at the 1930's Census and saw that there was a lodger by the name of Clarence F. Cochran. I looked Clarence up on Ancestry and figured out that He was the great uncle to 2 of my closest Cochran dna matches on Ancestry. He was also the grandson of William O. Cochran and Nancy J. Bibb. This was when it started to sink in...I'm not a Hughes but actually a Cochran.

I took a step back so to speak and just sat with what I had learned. While processing everything, I started to think about my great grandmother and that no matter how it came about, she had a lot on her shoulders to carry. Her husband from what I've read and learned from stories wasn't a very nice guy and would leave her for days or weeks at a time home by herself for various reasons. I looked more into Clarence to try to learn about what kind of man he was. I learned that he didn't marry anyone until he was in his 50s and worked on my great grandparents' ranch for 15 years. He was a WWII veteran and didn't have any known children. From what I read in newspaper articles, he was an activist for veterans and highly regarded by his community. I know that I will never know if what happened between him and my great grandmother was consensual or not but I would want to meet her to let her know I don't fault her for anything. If Clarence and my grandmother had a secret relationship or whatever, I honestly could understand. Life in Kenton wasn't easy and having a douchnozzle for a husband didn't help matters. At that time I don't think divorce would have been an option for her. She outlived Calvin by about 22 years and died in 1974 (10 years before I was born). It seems fitting that she outlived him and I hope she found some peace in the last 22 years of her life.