MELVIN EDWARD 'PETE' STRAWBRIDGE September 28, 1946
Parents: Melvin Frank and Augustine Joanna (Norris) Strawbridge Wife 1 - Lois Davis Children: Daniel Lindley, Traci Leigh
Wife 2 - Carol Smith
Pete, and his sister Melanie, and I rode the same bus to school everyday for years and never knew that we were related. We lived maybe 6 miles apart - which may sound like a lot but I was born in Baltimore City (40 miles aweay) and my father got a job which moved us into the area. Call it fate, coincidence, accident, or whatever you like.
It was about 6 years or so ago that we found each other again. Since then Pete and I have had a lot of fun visiting relatives and exploring our roots.
It's a sad fact, but a true one for most people, that families don't talk about their ancestors that much. I used to think it was just my family that was like that. I'm finding that is more the rule than the exception.
My grandfather William Abraham Smith - 'Pop' - would drive up from Baltimore, Maryland to our house in Whiteford, Harford County, Maryland to visit. Sometime during that visit he would leave for several hours and if asked where he went he'd just say he was visiting. Even if pressed he never said anymore.
When Pete and I started exchanging stories we found that Pop would be visiting Pete's grandaunt Bessie (Elizabeth Ray) and Pete's mother Gussie (Augustine Joanna) amoung others. Pete and Melanie used to call him 'Uncle Will'.
On one of our explorations Pete and I went into Bessie's old house. It had fallen into great disrepair and was about to be torn down. In a pile of trash in one of the upstairs bedrooms we found a Christmas card which was sent to Bessie in 1957 from "your Cousin Will". The return address on the envelope was my grandfather's address in Baltimore. It sort of tied it all together.
Why my grandfather never talked about the family I'll never know for sure. I know that his childhood was very hard. But what I do know is that he knew all about his great grandaunt Joanna (Smith) Norris and all of her descendants. I was not interested at the time and I never asked and apparently nobody else in the family did either. And that's a shame on all of us. When Pop died he took all that information with him.
Come to think of it, he must have known about JoAnna's brothers too.
I wish I had him back for just a few hours - the stories he could tell. And this time - I'd listen.
Pete and Carol are two of the nicest people I know and what a marvelous suprise when I saw Melanie for the fist time after 35 years she had turned from a skinny little pigtailed girl into a very, very, very beautiful woman. I couldn't help but stare.
Pete and Melanie and I (and my brothers) are third cousins with George W. Smith as our common ancestor. We're also friends.
