Ancestors

A cousin has been collecting family history, and she sent this photo a few years ago.  The man and woman in this photo are Francis Furrow and Elnora Bennett Furrow, my great great grandparents.  The young man in the center is Harley Furrow, my great grandfather, who I met once when I was a child, when he was 91 years old. The small bits of family history I've gotten seem to confirm what I already know:  the family story is peppered with history of discord, abandoned children, and infidelity.  It's interesting to see the faces and recognize family features in later generations, to ponder our immigration patterns, to contemplate how each decision ripples down through the generations.  Being estranged from my own siblings, I recognize the complexity of family relationships, and I wonder if future generations will try to puzzle out the story, how one branch of the family broke away from the other.  I wonder if patterns repeat themselves, whether the discord, the substance abuse, the mistrust and fear that imploded the tenuous connections that existed between my siblings and I, are just patterns of behavior unconsciously carrying forth from one generation to the next.  

Elnora and Francis (Frank) Furrow divorced after this photo was taken.  Elnora remarried, and Frank left Michigan to homestead in South Dakota.  The two youngest girls in the photo, Mabel and Martha, were sent to an orphanage.  Mabel died in 1900.