Ella

In the early days of the transcontinental railroad, the American west beckoned as never before. One of those who followed the call was my great-grandmother, Ella (Hawk) Norman. Of German ancestry and raised in Pennsylvania, Ella went to Laramie, Wyoming in the 1880s and met her husband, Frank Norman. Although the marriage did not last, Ella, with her young son, stayed in the west, in Colorado, for another fifteen years. Then, in 1911, she returned home to Scranton to live with her mother and her sister, a dressmaker making her way as a single woman. This is a non-fiction, historically documented account of Ella's life, It also includes poems dedicated to Ella and the short account of a modern pilgrimage to Laramie to see where Ella lived. Any of Ella's many descendants will want to read her story of courage and adventure. The book also presents methods of locating the lineage of an obscure family member and may be of interest to genealogists.