An invitation to a ball, 1891

Margaret "Mama" Atwood was invited with her sister Amanda to a Knights of Pythias ball on Tuesday December 15, 1891.  It was likely in Conroe, Texas where the Smith family lived at that time.

This invitation was in Mama Atwood's possession when she passed away at the age of 94.

 Mama kept all of her keepsakes in a cedar chest behind her platform rocker in the house where she lived when I was a child in Comanche.  Once in a while she would let me look through her keepsakes. I treasure those memories of her.

Mandy Smith, Margaret Smith, Mary Stovall Smith, their mother

Great Grandmother Maggie Smith

My father's mother was named Margaret Ruth. Everybody called her Maggie when she was young. In the first picture she is in the center. On the left is her sister Mandy and the older lady is her mother Mary Stovall Smith. 

When Maggie was eleven years old her mother took her out of school so she could help in her boarding house. Maggie was very smart and talented; she would have like to have art lessons, she told Manning Atwood.

below is A hand-colored photo in which the image of Maggie was maintained while another unknown person's image was removed.

 

.

Maggie had many suitors before she married John A. King.  This photo is of Thurston Rigsby, the man my father was named after.  My father Thurston was Maggie and Manning Atwood's youngest child, born in 1914.

Ma