Family Ties Weave, Loop, Bind During Daffodil Festival

Julia Sonora Ritchie was an older sister of Ella Jane Ritchie Gordon. Julia Sonora married E. S. Greening, but she died as a very young mother, presumably of meningitis, though it was called "brain inflammation" in the death records.

When she died, leaving E. S. Greening as a widower with very young children, the family combined with the Lides, related to the Greenings also through marriage.

Only through research, walking through Oakwood Cemetery, and by reading Josephine Taylor's compilation of information about graves in the cemetery did I learn more about Julia Ritchie and husband E. S. Greening.

Visiting with Kathy Boyette and studying archived documents at OCHS stimulated my curiosity. It's taken over 18 months to pull all the documents together.That's after pulling out all of mother's research as well as documentation from my grandmother and cousins. I opened boxes Mother had saved, labeled, and secured with shipping tape.

Inside one large box inside the garage storage closet, I found a Mrs. See's Candy box. Opened, it revealed a lady's fan, several of Nana's handkerchiefs, and a portrait of both C.T. Gordon, Nana's Papa, and one of George L Ritchie, Nana's Uncle George. No candy, fortunately. I'd never seen these photos and could not believe how I discovered them.

At the summer writers' retreat at the Hemingway-Pfeiffer House and Education Center just north of Rector, where I currently live, I began to tie my own research and stories together. Taking information about creative non-fiction to heart, I attempted to breathe life into the characters and have them speak their own tales.

The House on Harrison Street is a family saga of the Gordons and the Ritchies and how it links with the history of Camden. The book will be launched during the Daffodil Festival, March 11-13, 2016.