February 22, 1996
This story doesn’t begin here.
BEGIN THE STORY ↓Before Chandler,
there was
His mother. The first living link in a story that keeps moving backward through Arkansas, Tennessee, North Carolina, Virginia, New Jersey, Connecticut, and eventually across an ocean.
Chandler’s maternal grandfather was born February 28, 1930 in Carlisle, Arkansas. He farmed rice and cotton, later moved to Oregon in 1992, and loved bluegrass music and festivals.
When Walter died on December 26, 2013, his obituary named his daughter Debbie Dare and, among his grandchildren, Chandler.
The landscape is evidence too. Places, maps and period imagery show the world around the family without pretending contextual photographs are family photographs.
Walter Louis’s obituary names his father as Walter “Kitty” Nation. Cemetery and compiled records point strongly toward Walter “Kitty” S. Nation, around 1909–1975.
Another Walter Smith Nation appears in the same cemetery records with a conflicting birth year.
A 1984 Arkansas Family Historian transcription preserves “Hazzle Henretta Isbell”, born December 13, 1904.
Clara Fay Nation grew up on the family farm in Carlisle. She sang in the A Cappella Choir, belonged to National Honor Society, became a teacher, and spent 23 years teaching third grade.
Her obituary records an extraordinary fork in the road: Clara was offered a Fulbright Scholarship to study French at the Sorbonne in Paris.
She chose Bill.
They were married for 68 years. She could identify virtually any bird or flower, loved mysteries and Barry Manilow, had been a Rose Parade Princess and had an opportunity to meet Bob Hope.
Keep pulling.
Eventually, photographs disappear.
Then newspapers.
Then handwriting becomes a mark.
His will survives with “John (his X mark) Nation.”
“natural love and affection”
A father giving land to his son. More than two and a half centuries later, the words are still there.
Nothing becomes family history merely because an online tree says so.
There are still photographs to find.
Records to read.
Names to prove.
Stories hiding in archives, newspapers and family albums.
There are still people waiting to be found.