Messages from a Mirror at Merry Mount

Good Morning Mirror,

Who do I see?

Not myself today,

But Mother and Dad,

Looking back at me.

-CPW

If I stop in the morning and study the image of myself in the mirror, I am surprised to see whose image is staring back at me.  In one glance, I see my Mother and yet from a slightly different angle I see Dad.  It occurred to me that perhaps both of them at some point had experienced the same phenomenon.  If so, do I have the ability to look in the mirror, to glance back into time and see characteristics from all my descendants?

Let’s explore just three generations.  Wow.  What a DNA soup exists in a period of only 158 years.  The magic mirror at Merry Mount can show me glimpses of:

Dad: Charles L. Woliver (b. May 21, 1927)

Mother: Dorsey Lou Justice Woliver (b. March 11, 1931)

Paternal Grandfather: Earnest William Woliver (b. April 8, 1903)

Paternal Grandmother:  Leona Baker (b. September 27, 1906)

Paternal Great Grandfather:  Alexander Woliver (b. October 5, 1877)

Paternal Great Grandmother: Edith Evelyn Huckleby (b. 1885)

(pictured far left)

Paternal Great Grandfather:  Isaac Lewis Baker (b. June 26, 1877)

Paternal Great Grandmother: Flora Bessie Knight (b. June 1, 1890) 

Maternal Grandfather: Ulis Justice (b. March 26, 1891)

Maternal Grandmother:  Lucinda Hayes Justice (b. July 7, 1893)

Maternal Great Grandfather: William Hayes (b. May 29, 1871)

Maternal Great Grandmother:  Mary Penina Golden Stallard 

(b. March 23, 1874)

Maternal Great Grandfather: William Patrick Justice (b. May 2, 1858)

Maternal Great Grandmother:  Elizabeth Lowe (b. June, 1870)

Heredity

When I was a child, all the neighbors said,   

             “He looks exactly like his father! ”

While back at home, said all my kin  

             “He looks exactly like his mother! ”

Then came the age I went to school   

            Teachers commented in perfect scroll

And wrote back then, “All things considered,    

            He is, in many ways, his sister! ”

So to home I scurried and found a mirror   

            To know which one was true, and what a wonder

And curious! Yet surprised I should not be   

            To find my father, mother, sister, all three—       

                       —staring back at me.

                                                            -Robert Uy

Oh Mirror, Mirror, on the wall,

Who will our son and daughter see?

Who will our twin granddaughters see?

When they each look into a magic mirror at thee?

I am the family face;

Flesh perishes, I live on,

Projecting trait and trace

Through time to times anon,

And leaping from place to place

Over oblivion.

The years-heired feature that can

In curve and voice and eye

Despise the human span

Of durance -- that is I;

The eternal thing in man,

That heeds no call to die

                                    -Thomas Hardy

 Be well and stay alert.  Who do you see in the mirror?

CPW