52 Ancestors - #27: Five generations, twice in one family (week 11)

How many of you can document five living generations in your family? I don’t know what the statistics are but feel it must be a rare event as you don’t hear of this happening that often. My family can document this phenomena happening twice within a 12 year period.

The first time was in 1958. The picture to the right is of my 2nd great grandmother Martha Ogle Shields, her son and my great-grandfather James Stewart Shields, his daughter and my grandmother (we called her Granny) Daisy Shields Casbohm (her last name at the time), my mother Fay Holland Lankford, and my sister Bonita Lankford. I was there that day as well; just not part of the five generation picture. We have a picture of Martha surrounded by my family sent to us by a cousin living in California whom my sister connected with when we started to document our Shields line. He sent the picture to her and said ... I don’t know who these people are but the older woman is my Granny Shields. Imagine our surprise when it turned out to be us! The Shields family had gathered to celebrate Martha’s 88th birthday that year.

The second time we had five living generations was about 1970. The picture below is my great-grandmother Hattie Rhinehart Shields (we called her Grandma Shields), her daughter Daisy (now with the last name Vest), my mother Fay, my sister Bonita, and her son Brian Streetman.

I’m thankful my family thought to capture these moments in our family history.