Historic Family

[Reanm8er]

I'm posting some fine old photos of my wife's family the Gashes from Asheville, NC. William Leander Gash entered West Point in 1870.
He was expelled for disrespecting an upper classman and subsequently went to Texas and became a schoolteacher. And was either injured or got sick and wound up marrying his nurse, Susan Taylor. They started their family in Brownsville, Tx.

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In the 1890s they moved from Texas to Asheville, by wagon train, to reclaim the Gash homestead that was a land grant for their Revolutionary Service and included the entire East End of what is now the city of Asheville. They built a new home there as well as some smaller log cabins for the grown children from native timber. They grew old together and were blessed with seeing their children
grow into larger than life folks like themselves. They must have bought the first camera they ever saw and took hundreds of photos.
Sue was the shutter bug and used to pile the daughters into the Model T touring car and just drive and tour the country. The boys were very mechanically inclined and built a sawmill from a Model T chassis. The last photo shows the junk man hauling off the body of the car. Sue was not only the photographer but loved to dress up and was quite photogenic herself.

Sue's parting shot!

When WL passed the legend says he was buried in his West Point great coat. When we cleaned out my mother in laws estate
we found a small box full of round silver plated buttons with no markings. The exact number from a cadet's great coat.
Legend was nothing shiny was buried with the body because it might attract the devil.
Thanks for looking!​

Sorry about the large photos folks but I can remember to save my life how to resize them.

 

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[RVRoamer74]

Not all attachments opening.

You can re-do some of them since sometimes you may be timed out due to length of story.

GL and thanks for sharing.

 

[devldog]

Great pic's and Family History to go along. Thanks for sharing them with us.

 

[Reanm8er]

I can open them by clicking on them. You might try again as I have edited since you viewed them. Can someone please remind me how to adjust the photo size?

 

[RVRoamer74]

Hmmm..Not for me for some reason. Probably on my end.

 

[Mackaydon]

Great history and pics.
Would be interesting to MD the area around that homestead.
Don.......

 

[Tom_in_CA]

Great story. Great provenance. Some of that is museum quality !

 

[Professor of Engineering]

Thank you for sharing!

 

[david680]

loll, I actually worked in a small sawmill that was partially made from Model T parts around 30 years ago. Interesting stuff.

 

[xcopperstax]

Great history there! Fascinating story!

 

[BLK HOLE]

Very cool, thanks for sharing

 

[Inspector]

Nice story & picture, ty4sharing

 

[Valley Ranger]

I really love those old family photos. Thanks for posting!

 

[ANTIQUARIAN]

Very interesting read Phil, you're lucky to have had an early shutterbug in your midst.
Thanks for sharing your families history.

Dave

 

[WannaDig3687]

Very cool post! I love old photos and the fact that you know the story behind them is awesome! Please, if you haven't already, write it down for future generations.

As for resizing your photos, if you are using Windows 10, in the photo viewer there are 3 little dots in the upper right hand corner. [...] Click on those and a drop down menu appears and there is an option to resize.

Thanks for sharing your family history!

 

[Old Pueblo]

Nice story and I hope you still have those buttons!