When Family History Collides With Current Events

Starting with the story of my husband’s two Tully ancestors—the cousins Edna Tully McCaughey and Agnes Tully Stevens—I’ve spent the last six months recounting the history of the families of two grandchildren of Denis and Margaret Flannery Tully of Ballina, Ireland, and Paris village in Brant County, Ontario, Canada.

In the case of Agnes Tully’s line, established in Chicago with the arrival of her father John Tully there, we’ve moved all the way to the near-present, from Agnes’ marriage to Will Stevens in 1912, to their many sons and daughter, to the line of Frank Stevens up through the 1970s. Thus, family history meets current events as the family moves from their last post-military residence in Albuquerque to a new home and future in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

With the arrival of Norma and the Stevens children in Colorado, it comes as no surprise that beautiful Norma’s beautiful daughters soon meet with some of the handsome, talented, and charming young men of the city—not to mention those of the Air Force Academy, itself. I alluded to that icon that featured not only in the Stevens family’s past, but also its future, and it did turn out that there have been a couple Stevens family wedding ceremonies held in that Air Force Academy chapel over the years.

Perhaps the military way of life gets in the blood—or joins in, courtesy of new in-laws—and soon, transfers are in order. Though the older children, now married adults, have their own lives to live, somehow, those family ties still claim solidarity, and when one family moves away, the others follow suit—at least that’s what seems to be happening only a few years after the move to Colorado, when the Stevens family—all new branches of them—pick up and head for Texas.

Or perhaps now, it’s about the grandkids.

Photograph, above left: United States Air Force Academy Chapel, Colorado Springs, Colorado; courtesy the Carol M. Highsmith Archive at the Library of Congress, via Wikipedia; photograph released by Highsmith into the public domain.