Family history

In my spare time I've been organizing the mound of family papers - putting them in binders titled with family names;
Egan
Dean
Camp
Flanary
Armstrong
Stroud
Camp
Walling
Breeding
Crozier
Smyth (or Smythe)
Kuhn
Denton
and others.

It has been fascinating and I've been lucky to be the family historian. Most of the men in my husband's family have left a personal record of who they are and from where they came.

Here's mine:

I was born in Pecos, Texas December 3, 1943, the second child of John Robert "Bob" and Nancy Elizabeth Camp Dean. My older brother was born October 31, 1939. My younger brother was born July 25, 1949 and my younger sister born September 1, 1952.

Pecos, a town of about 15,000 people at the time, was a great place in which to grow up. We had prosperity from oil, gas, cantaloupes (the World's Best) and cotton. My father and grandfather operated an abstract office - very important in determining ownership of mineral properties - and Daddy and his cousin Marcus Dingler operated cotton and cantaloupe fields.

Our high school provided us with exemplary education with outstanding teachers and many of us went off to colleges. I went to Christian College in Columbia, Missouri (which a cousin had attended) then transferred to the University of Texas (at Austin - a suffix not required in 1963).

My father's family moved to Pecos, Texas in 1918 (when he was 8) from Carlsbad, New Mexico. (He was the youngest of four siblings - Jane, Bill, Jr, Katherine).

Mother was the youngest of her family, as well. She had two brothers, Hilliard and Keith. She was born in Pecos in 1916 and was delivered by her father, Dr. Jim Camp.

More fascinating family history later.