Old Notebook
   A few old pictures, some cracked and broken, some with notes on the back  partially readable, a couple were picture post cards addressed to Miss Addie  Dobbs and a few stories that I only remember fragments of. Is this all that is  left of my grandmother Ada Ethel Dobbs Collier. It could have been, there was  no gravestone, and no book written about her, my Mother, Willyne Collier Layne  was the last one that remembered her. She died in 1929 when Mother was 15 years  old, but her memories were kept alive in stories.

The stories Mother told were not elaborate or long-winded but just every day  things told with love.  She did have a way of adding the special little details  in her stories that kept the listener interested. The weather was many times  the start of the story. It had been raining for several days when we started  out and Dad was worried the creek was out. Cars with air conditioners and  heaters insulate us from the weather but making a trip in a wagon  pulled by a team of horses, kept you very much in touch.

Mother told us how she liked to hear her own Mother sing and play the organ.  This was just about all I had until a few of years ago I met my second cousin,  Diane Dobbs Wilson. She gave me a copy of a diary written between 1891 and 1909  by Mother's grand Aunt Elizabeth J. 'Rudolph' McSpadden. Most of the entries  were simple act of life in a turn of last century home. She told of setting  hens, quilting, spinning, cooking and births and deaths.  The entry for July  17, 1895 "Went to Ida and Addie's birthday dinner, they are 16 years old". This  was my grandmother Addie and her twin sister Ida. Then, February 3, 1900  sandwiched in between having a picture taken and news of her grandsons birth,  the entry Mack Dobbs got them an organ. Was this the organ Mother so loved to  hear her Mother play? I like to think so.

I am not the storyteller my Mother was but I would like to add a few things to  her story and share some of the family pictures with you.

Thurman Dwight Lane
 4th son of Luther and Willyne 'Collier' Layne

The person responsible for this work is my Mother Sarah Willyne 'Collier' Layne  who shared the stories.

I can not name all the people who have helped me on this wonderful Odyssey.  One person I must mention is Harriet D. 'Brantley' Lane who shared so much of  her research on the Lane/Layne part of my family. Harriet has spent many years  interviewing and researching and shared her hard earned work selflessly. Thank  you. Dwight Lane