Calling all Genea-Musings Fans:
It’s Saturday Night again –
Time for some more Genealogy Fun!!
Come on, everybody, join in and accept the mission and execute it with precision.
1) It’s Valentine’s Day – a day for lovers! We all have hundreds of love stories in our ancestry.
2) What was the great love story of the ancestors in your family Tree? What wedding had a great story in it? Choose one ancestral couple. Share how they met (if known), when and where they married. Note how long they were married. Highlight something that suggests affection or partnership.
For this post, I am choosing my grandparents, Leon and Winnie (Currey) Crawford.
It was 1919 in Dodge City, Kansas. Sixteen-year-old Winnie Currey had spent the past year helping her sister, Myrtle, care for a new baby. Twenty-five-year-old Leon Crawford had recently returned home from service in the U.S. Army during World War I and had gone to work for the railroad.
The two met at Myrtle’s house, where evenings were spent playing cards and visiting. Somewhere between the shuffling of cards and friendly conversation, a courtship began.
On Christmas Eve 1919, they were married in Myrtle’s living room — a simple ceremony surrounded by family. It was a humble beginning to a lifelong partnership.
And every Christmas Eve after that, Leon gave his wife red roses in honor of their anniversary.
Their marriage lasted more than fifty years and endured both joy and heartbreak.
Just six months after their wedding, Leon’s brother Marion was killed in a railroad accident.
A year later, Winnie and Leon’s first child lived only one day.
During the 1920s and 1930s, Leon experienced periodic layoffs from the railroad.
In 1961, their youngest son, Leon Jr., died at age 22 from a brain tumor.
Yet through every sorrow and every hardship, the roses continued to arrive each Christmas Eve.
In 1969, they celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary with a reception at their church — a quiet testament to a love that had weathered decades of life’s storms.
Sometimes the greatest love stories aren’t dramatic or glamorous. Sometimes they are steady. Faithful. Enduring.
And sometimes, they arrive each year in the form of red roses on Christmas Eve.
Previous Posts
- ABC BIography: Leon Russel Crawford
- ABC Biography: Winnie Letha Currey
- A Time in the Life of Winnie Letha Currey
- A Video Tribute to My Grandmother
- Exploring Leon Crawford’s Life thru AI Created Media
- Winnie Currey’s Life in Video and Song
- Golden Anniversaries
- Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Sept 2024:Chat GPT Narrative
- Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Dec 2025 – Christmas Eve 1969
What a great love story and I loved the yearly red roses. The style of their photo is definitely very 1960s – early 1970s.
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