By Michele Norton Mattoon If you find enough rough evidence to suspect you might be able to gain entrance into The Society of Mayflower Descendants, prepare yourself – it is not a quick process, however, it is extremely rewarding and personally links you to the beginnings of our nation’s history. It will also take you longer than the actual journey! I had suspected for some time that I might be descended from William Brewster, Edward Fuller and John Billington as I had found information about their descendants that dovetailed into the information I had discovered from working backward from myself, but had done little or nothing to confirm that as I suspected, correctly, that the approval process is long and involved. In 2014, I attended RootsTech in Salt Lake City, and found representatives from the General Society of Mayflower Descendants; some dressed in period costume! Deciding that I really needed to find out the next steps in pursuing the project, I decided to talk to ...

By Michele Norton Mattoon Grandma worked on the railroad. No, that’s not a typo. Grandma worked on the railroad. No, not a cushy desk job! My grandmother, Mary Grady, of Ravensdale, Washington, at age 40, went to work on an all-woman railroad section gang and worked eight hours a day doing back-breaking manual labor. Women do all the jobs men do now, but that wasn’t the case in 1942. In fact, it was such a big deal that The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Pathé and Time Magazine all came to town to report on it.  First, let me tell you a little about Grandma. Born Marija Bele in Slovenia in 1902, Grandma lived on and worked the fields (haying) at the family farm in her small community. Our family has always said we were from “good peasant stock” and I think Grandma’s beginnings prove that. After marrying and immigrating to America in September 1922 at age 20, Grandma arrived in Hobart, Washington. Her husband had settled there the year before. Alone, and not knowing a word of...