Long Lost Eddlemons

Today I got to meet some (sort of) long lost relatives. It all started maybe a month or 2 ago when I was doing some research on the Eddlemon family. I don't remember who contacted who first, but someone living in Kansas had a lot of the same information that I had so it looked like they were researching the same Eddlemons as me. We emailed back and fourth and I found out that a lot of the information that this person had found was given to her by her aunt that was living in California. So I'm like, "hey I live in California, where does your aunt live?" She replied and then I was like "hey, that town is like 25 minutes from my house! Can I meet her?" So today was that day.

Ella (Eddlemon) Short is my first cousin, twice removed - in law, cause she is actually related to my wife. I spent a few hours at her house with her and her daughter Melinda listening to stories, taking down names and dates, and scanning some pictures. One of the best parts was finding this gem:


This is a picture/drawing of my wife's great great grandparents, Charles Henry Eddlemon and Mary Jordan from around 1895. They both died relatively young, she was about 27 he was about 34, so not many pictures of them exist, and this is probably the nicest.

Ella is my wife's grandma's cousin. My wife's grandma (Jennie Allene (Orrell) Wisner) lives around 75 miles from where Ella lives, and neither of them knew that the other lived so close - for over 60 years! They both were born in Arkansas and had moved to California, Allene sometime in the late 30s and Ella came over in the early 50s. But now we know where they live and hope to keep in touch with this lost branch of cousins, especially to exchange some more family knowledge.