Quips from Kay

I have gone over my notes, the letters from my cousin Bill D'Olive and some information gleaned from the library in Mobile and have arrived at the conclusion that someone younger than I and with more patience is going to have to finish this family story. There's a  massive amount of information on this family because they laid down the towns along Mobile Bay, Alabama, and they contributed to the history of the area...well, they ARE the history of the area. Anyway, here's what I know and most of it is probably correct, but there's a lot more. In 1721 a ship called La Baleine arrived on Ship Island off the coast of Mississippi, having traveled from Nantes, France, carrying eighty-eight young women with the express purpose of providing wives for the men of the Louisiana Territory. The girls were chaperoned by the Grey Sisters and were plucked from Paris' General Hospital, La Salpetriere, where, according to one story, they had lived since infancy. Thus begins the con...

In 1995, Louis and I traveled to Spain with the express purpose of visiting his ancestral Basque country. We rented a car and drove north from Madrid into the most beautiful part of Spain. His ancestors were from Navarra, a province which borders the Pyrenees. By making this trip we were covering ground trod by ancestors from both of our families. My ancestors were from the southern French province of Gascony, present day Department of Gers, also near the Pyrenees. My children are familiar with their father's Spanish ancestry but there has been little written about my French roots so that is what this is about. In 1770 my g,g,g,g,g,grandfather, Dominique D'Olive, then about 39 years old, immigrated to America from his birthplace in Tillac, France. He settled in Mobile, Alabama, which at that time was under British dominion. Mobile was established in 1702 by the French and was the first capital of the Louisiana Territory. Dominque wound up on Mon Louis Island in south Ala...

I know I should write something thought provoking or extremely intelligent, but simple little memories are invading my brain so I have to pull them out and share. As I told you before, we lived "out in the country" so to get to school I either had to ride the bus (ugh!) or Mama took me in. There were special times when I was allowed to spend a school night with one of my "downtown" friends and we would walk to school. That was fun for me because we would meet other classmates on the way and wind up with a bunch of us walking together. I know that sounds stupid but it was a treat for me, an only child with adults and cows to communicate with most of the time . My high school years were from 1948 to 1952 and there were particular dress codes we had to adhere to. However, we girls decided that we wanted to wear jeans so we chose a particular day and wore them only to be told to go home and put on a dress. We did the same thing the next week and went home again unde...