Saturday, September 12, 2015

Presidential Connection

I started reading Jimmy Carter's latest book this week. I had requested a digital copy about a month ago from our local Library, before he announced he had cancer.

I had never read any of his other books so when I heard him announce his cancer fight live in a press conference, while driving across the State a couple weeks ago I was even more interested in reading it.

In the first chapter he talks about his family history and how the Church of Later Day Saints had given him a book about his ancestors back when he was President. His son has since become interested in genealogy and has traced the family tree in more depth. 

I have to admit Jimmy Carter was and is my favorite of all the Presidents I've known about first hand.

This reminded me that I found a family connection to his mother a number of years ago. Bessie Lillian Gordy Carter, who the press called "Miss Lillian" was the first cousin of the wife of my first cousin, 2x removed.

Eleanor Gordy married Carl William Bahrt in 1926, the son of my Great Aunt, Luddie Garner Bahrt. Eleanor was born in Columbus, Georgia and Carl was born in St. Petersburg, Florida. They met when he went to college at Georgia Tech. They ended up in Galveston, Texas where he worked as an Engineer. They died within a month of each other in 1989.

The 1925 Georgia Tech yearbook has this bio for Carl: 

"Carlos has succeeded in making an ideal college life for himself. A happy medium between hard study and the social side of life. Consequently he has developed into an efficient engineer and a dog with the women."

I wonder if that last trait would show up in our DNA match.


1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Carl William Bahrt Jr. was my maternal grandfather. He and my grandmother, Mary Eleanor (née: Gordy) Bahrt only lived in Galveston, TX long after he had retired from Allied Chemical, where he was a nuclear engineer for many years.