During the summer and fall of 2007, I was corresponding with a new-online-cousin. (How I found her is for another blog post.) We were getting to know each other via email as we confirmed the relationship, we believed existed. Coincidentally, she lived in my own hometown of Livermore, California.  Shelley Parks Covey was the gr-granddaughter, and I was the gr-gr-granddaughter of Mary Ann Adams Brown Parks, (1849-1940). We shared only the Mary Ann half of the married couple, as I was from the line of Mary Ann's first husband and Shelley from the line of her second husband. I won’t muddy those waters or tell that story here, the one I want to share is about Shelley’s mother, Betty.

As Shelley & I were getting to know each other, I'd told her I’d been researching the Brown & Parks family connections since my first research trip to Tehama County, California, in 1995. I knew all the names of this family from the cemetery visits and then documents research in the county courthouse.

Shelley too lived in the Tehama County area where these families had lived, and yet here she was in my own backyard, 195 miles due south, in Livermore, California.

I’d been telling her my father, Norman Brown, was born and raised in Red Bluff, California. Shelley said “so was my mother Betty Hunter, later Betty Parks. Knowing Red Bluff was and is still a small town, I said “Dad lived on Jefferson St.” she said, “so did my Mom!”  (Coincidental as it was our father's lines who we had in common not her mother....)

Betty was living in a retirement home in Livermore; Shelley called her Mom and asked if she remembered Norman Brown as a childhood neighbor. We already knew Betty was 9 years older than Norman, but they may've been neighbors.  Shelley found out that Betty had moved right about the time Norman was born but did remember “old lady Hillhouse and her daughter” who lived in the same house. 

These images - Susan Hillhouse, on the left about 1890 just before her marriage, on the right, 1931 she's now "old lady Hillhouse, holding her grandson, my father Norman Brown" ... 

Turns out “old lady Hillhouse” was my gr-grandmother Susan Hillhouse, she and her daughter Dene Hillhouse lived in the house on Jefferson Street for a number of years before Dene married my grandfather, Norman Brown Sr.  Time frame is about 1922 when Betty was born, Dene and Norman married 1929, and Norman Jr. was born 1931. The images below, on the left Dene circa 1925 and the house on Jefferson Street take in 2001, it had been sold to the Red Bluff Police Department, they used it for storage until it was demolished about 2005...

So now as “Paul Harvey” would say, the rest of the story. Betty told Shelley she had a photograph of Dene Hillhouse holding her as a baby! I was floored and yet I had a niggling in the back of my mind that I’d seen that photograph. Shown here my Nana, Dene holding Betty Hunter, circa 1922 in Red Bluff. I know from other images during that time this is Dene's house @ 526 Jefferson Street. 

Our face-to-face gathering was a few weeks later. Shelley and I were there in her home, along with Betty and shared cousins, Susan Levine and John Moller. John goes with the rest of the story for another blog post. What a delightful time we had, Betty sharing with me her memories of my gr-grandmother Susan and my Nana, Dene Hillhouse, and growing up in Red Bluff, and listening to the other cousin’s chatter about their lives in common. We shared the photograph; yes, indeed I’d seen it before, not knowing who the baby was at the time. As I finish readying this post I have to think of the odds, yes, ok it's a small town, yes, it was just the way this unfolded, serendipity of the story, we'd never have known who was the baby in the photograph with my own Nana...connections and conversation...

The original relationships, Shelley's father Frank & my grandfather Norman were half 1st cousins, Shelly & my father are half 2nd cousins from a small town through both of their father's, BUT Shelley's mother Betty was being held in the photograph by my father's mother, Dene, who 7 years later was the wife to one of the first cousins....and it just came out from a conversation about that small town, Red Bluff, California...and I knew I'd a picture of my Nana holding a baby.... (I had someone ask about half first cousin, our common ancestress, was married twice, we all descend from the children of each of her marriages, hence "half.")