rooted in resilience – Someone Peed In My Gene Pool!

July 27, 2025

Introducing Edna Mae Applegate

🕯️ Introduction Page: Edna Mae Applegate
Gathered in memory, shared in love.

She was born in a wintery corner of Crothersville, Indiana, and passed on in the springtime hush of Indianapolis—but the life of Edna Mae Applegate was lived in the warmth between those seasons. A daughter, a sister, a mother of six, and the steady center of a home that shifted through the decades, she is the kind of ancestor whose story is stitched into quiet gestures—the iron still warm, the front door left unlocked, the hum of someone cooking at dusk.

Married at sixteen, widowed too soon, and remembered by grandchildren who knew her simply as Mom, Mama, or Grandma, Edna’s legacy is one of everyday courage. She didn’t ask to be remarkable. But in the way she raised a family, weathered illness, and rooted herself in love through every move, she became just that.

This space is for you, fellow memory keeper.
If you knew Edna, have photos of her, or carry tales told by someone who did, please share them in the comments below. Even the smallest recollection—a favorite recipe, a holiday ritual, a sound to her laughter—adds texture to her tapestry.

Want to explore the full timeline of her life? You’ll find it here:
📜 Read Edna’s Family Page

Thank you for helping keep her story alive. After all, family history isn’t just about the past—it’s about finding our way back to one another, one memory at a time.

Warmly,
Kris

(and occasionally, Bones, when the dirt under the fingernails calls for it)

July 26, 2025

Introducing Muguette KL Biver

Muguette Kathern Lucy Biver Rovansek

August 30, 1922 – December 15, 2012
A lifelong traveler, loyal military wife, devoted mother, and proud daughter of France.

Welcome to the space where we remember Muguette, not just by the facts of her life, but through the stories that shaped her and the echoes she left behind.

Born in Phoebus, Virginia, to two French immigrants, Muguette grew up speaking French in a home where postmen delivered more than mail—they delivered dreams of opportunity. She married a soldier, raised children across states and oceans, and made homes from Japan to California, Colorado to Hawaii, and finally Arizona.

She was a woman who wore navy blue at her wedding, played golf in her golden years, and navigated the life of a military spouse with grace and grit. She knew how to pack a house, raise a family across military bases, and wave goodbye to ships and soldiers more times than most. And she did it all with resilience and style.

We’ve gathered the milestones of her life on her Family Page, but here is where we hope you will help fill in the quiet spaces between the lines.

Did you know her in Hawaii? Remember her on the golf course in Sun Lakes? Have a cherished story from one of those cross-country moves, or a moment of kindness she offered you?

Share your stories, your photos, your memories.

Let’s give her more than a headstone—let’s give her a legacy of laughter, remembrance, and shared history.

Feel free to leave a comment below. Your words become part of the thread that ties her story to those of her children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren—and to all of us who believe that every life deserves to be remembered well.

Thanks for coming,

~Kris

July 26, 2025

Introducing Margaret Elizabeth Kern

🪶 Introduction: Margaret Elizabeth Kern

1855 – 1919
Matriarch. Fighter. Furnace of the family forge.

You don’t make it through the late 1800s raising seven children, surviving the loss of three, working a poultry house, and making headlines for smacking someone with “colorful words” unless you’re made of tougher stuff than most. And Margaret Elizabeth Kern? She was steel wrapped in homespun.

Born in Indiana in November of 1855 to German immigrant parents (names still unknown), Margaret carved her place in Columbus, Indiana, first as a Beyl bride in 1871, then as the powerhouse matriarch who held the household at 228—and later 542—Jackson Street. She bore five children who lived to adulthood, ran a household even when her husband was maimed, and outlived him by nearly a decade. Her life was marked by love, labor, loss, and, yes… a legal scuffle or two.

She wasn’t invisible. She wasn’t passive. She wasn’t background.

She was the keeper of the hearth, the mother of carpenters, the grandmother with the sharp tongue and sharper elbows when needed. She was the one who fed the chickens and the children, who paid the bills and buried her dead, who showed up in every census with a new job title and a house still full of kin.

There’s more to find—we’re still tracing her German roots and looking for a glimpse of the girl she was before she became “Mrs. Beyl.” But for now, we remember her here, not just as a name on a stone at Garland Brook Cemetery, but as the force that shaped a family.

🕊️
If you’ve got stories, memories, photos, or even family whispers about Margaret Elizabeth Kern, we’d love to hear them. Please leave a comment below or visit her Family Page for more on the children she raised and the life she built, one Jackson Street address at a time.

With curiosity and reverence,
~Kris

Tag

Muguette Kathern Lucy Biver Rovansek

Share your stories, your photos, your memories.

🪶 Introduction: Margaret Elizabeth Kern