Letters from Aunt Dona
Kindex is thrilled to have a guest post from family historian Katie Farnsworth. Katie has dabbled on and off in genealogy for the past 20 years. Besides researching her ancestors from Ohio and Indiana, most recently Katie has focused her efforts on adding richness and texture to her ancestors through researching pictures, personal histories, newspapers, letters and journals. Katie lives in Centerville, Utah.
As a young girl growing up in a small, rural community in central Utah, I was fortunate to live close to relatives. I spent a lot of time at my grandparent’s home. And the house next door belonged to my great aunt, Dona Sandberg. Aunt Dona, as I called her, was compassionate and loved me just as much as her own grandchildren. She was tall and slender with a full head of perfectly coiffed, brilliant, white hair. She dressed elegantly and loved to talk. She was a homemaker and “beauty operator” as they were called back in the day. As she aged and lost her strength and stamina, I mowed her lawn during the summers and cleaned her home.