by Joan Husby When I was young, the gorgeous desert and canyon photographs in Arizona Highways magazine enticed me. I was also fascinated by the lovely art of the indigenous peoples of the desert. If only I could leave behind the drab, wet Northwest winters to experience for myself the light and warmth of...
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by Joan Husby This has been one of those unpredictable winters without a lot of rain, no snow, and occasional glorious sun breaks that make us feel lucky just to be alive. Late one sunny afternoon this week, Hank came upstairs from his windowless office and said, “Let’s go up in the mountains to...
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by Joan Husby This Christmas will go down in my personal history book as “the best ever.” Not because of the gifts, or the way-too-abundant holiday treats, or the decorations. Not because of the Christmas concerts and other celebrations, or the cards and letters reminding us that we’re important to the far-flung people we...
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by Joan Husby Recently, a morning fog mass crept across Skagit Bay and the farms on the delta below us. For a few moments the bank’s leading edge paused at the northern reach of Port Susan and the mouth of the Stillaguamish River. We watched the fog swallow the farms along the shore and...
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by Joan Husby Did your family, like ours, have a reunion this summer? It’s not too soon to begin planning your next one—no matter when you want to schedule it. About sixteen years ago, when my dad and his youngest sister Mary were the only siblings still alive out of the original seven, we...
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(This is Part 3 of a 3-part story.) by Joan Husby With the discovery of their plot against the Revolution’s local leaders, the conspirators, including James Rawlings, fled. He must have kept in contact with his family, because about a month later a man named Abram Jones heard that “a certain James Rawlings was...
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Part 2 of a 3-Part story. By Joan Husby Our first Rawlins ancestor in the New World, James Mason Rawlings, was a Loyalist who in 1777 found himself accused of high treason and conspiracy against the state of North Carolina. From the clues available in a few old documents, his arrest and imprisonment seems...
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by Joan Husby Most of us have skeletons in our family closets. Other people are proud of famous ancestors. Our family has both skeletons and ancestors with claims to fame, but mainly our Rawlins predecessors were simply people living out their lives in the best way they knew how. They were swayed by political...
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by Joan Husby Along with most families in America, ours can tell stories of journeys, bits and pieces of history that help us understand how we got where we are today. We share the following story about our own new-world beginnings with many people who trace their ancestries back to the courageous settlers who...
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by Joan Husby We’ve waited a long time for summer to arrive this year, but perhaps it’s the late arrival that makes these August days so extraordinarily delightful. We’re surfeited with colors and smells; our windows and doors stand open to let summer blow through. Bees buzz in the flower beds, hummingbirds hover in...
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