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All about Me and My Life |
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Hi! My name is Joyce Willingham Jackson. I am a seventy-three year old mother of three wonderful children, grandmother of six beautiful grandchildren (four Texans and two Virginians) and five great-grandchildren. My interests have been my husband, our children, gardening, sewing, crochet, embroidering, painting and hobbies but now it is Texas history, Genealogy, and the building and maintaining of my web-site. |
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| I was born in the same house my father was born in, the house Grandfather John H. Willingham built just outside of the town of Brenham, Washington County, Texas, USA. My mother drew water from the well and cooked our meals on a kerosene stove. In the winter time, the warmth in the house was from a big wood burning stove and love supplied by my parents. My grandmother Julia Ann Murdock Willingham lived next door in the house that Grandfather built for her mother, Sarah Jane York Murdock. The photo on the right is me, age 3 and my sister, age 4 standing by the tree at the back corner of the house we lived in. |
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I walked to school with my brother and sister. We started first grade at Central School, the same school my father had attended, which consisted of Elementary through High School. Daddy always made such a big deal about how he had to walk to school, fighting Indians all the way, that it took me many years to realize it was the same one I had walked to! |
| We moved six weeks later, in October 1942, from Brenham to Morgan's Point. I attended school in LaPorte from first grade until my Junior year. Morgan's point was founded by Colonel James Morgan, a plantation owner and the owner of an indentured slave by the name of Rose Morgan. She was the inspiration for the song, "The Yellow Rose of Texas". |
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In 1952, we moved to Houston where I graduated from John H. Reagan High School June 2, 1954. I went to work at Lambert's Paint Company and then at Prudential Insurance until time for our first child to be born. |
| While attending school at LaPorte, I met Lynn Jackson. After moving, we wrote letters for the first year I was in Houston and then in our Senior year, we lost interest in writing letters. I guess we both had other things going on. It was after graduation that Lynn called, he had joined the army and wanted to know if we could exchange letters again. The picture on the right (click for larger view) was taken on our first date in 1954 when we went to Playland Park. What a wild time, and winding up in the city jail! Playland Park no longer exists, now there is Astroworld! |  |
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Bethany Lutheran Church |
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We spent our honeymoon in New Orleans, Louisiana. On the evening of October 26th, we ate in the "Blue Room" at the Roosevelt Hotel
where we were entertained by George Rank and his Orchestra, the Kirby Stone 4, Sonny Howard and Elisa Jayne.
click for larger view
We lived in Houston where all our children were born before moving on to Montgomery County, Texas, USA July 31, 1971.
This is our "little house in the woods" of
Cut-N-Shoot, Texas, USA
where we have lived since January, 1972
since 2 Jul 2002
