Eight Generations

Left to right: Me holding my granddaughter Celene (2025), my grandmother Ruth with my father and me (1979 or 1980), Richard Jeffreys with baby Ruth (circa 1914-1915).

Today, May 10, 2025, is my grandmother, Ruth Messenger Kerns', 111th birthday. My granddaughter, Celene, was born five days ago.

There’s something amazing to me about seeing eight generations of your family history in one place—185 years of history spread over eight lives, each reaching out to touch the next, the past brushing against the future.

On the right side of this composite image is Richard Jeffreys, born in 1840 in Portland, West Virginia. He served in the Civil War as a member of Company O, 6th West Virginia Infantry, enlisting on October 5, 1861. His unit operated mostly in what is now West Virginia and western Virginia, engaged in railroad protection, scouting, and skirmishes with Confederate guerillas in a region as divided as the nation itself. In the photograph, Richard holds his infant granddaughter—my grandmother—Ruth Messenger. His posture is weary and stooped with age, stooped with the weight of conflict and a hard life lived in trying conditions.

My grandmother Ruth’s early life was shaped by sorrow. Both of her parents—Alice “Allie” Nine and Norman Wesley Messenger—died in the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918, leaving her an orphan at the age of four. She spent some time living with an uncle and some time living with her brother Floyd.

Her mother, Allie, was the product of a deeply unusual—and troubling—union. Her mother was Virginia Jeffreys, daughter of the man in the photograph. Allie’s father, however, was Jacob Nine—Virginia’s uncle by marriage. Jacob was married to Virginia’s aunt, Sacharissa Jeffreys Nine.

According to newspaper accounts from the Preston County Journal in July of 1886, Virginia had come to stay with the Nine household to help watch Jacob and Sacharissa’s five young children. During that stay, Jacob began a relationship with his niece by marriage, and the two eloped.

The scandal rocked their community. Jacob divorced his wife and was quickly married to Virginia—but only for the length of her pregnancy. They were not allowed to see each other again. When Virginia gave birth to a baby girl—my great-grandmother Alice—the marriage was dissolved.

Soon afterward, Jacob remarried his former wife, Sacharissa, and the two went on to have four more children together. In total, Jacob Nine fathered eleven children: ten with Sacharissa and one with her niece, my great-great-grandmother, Virginia.

It is strange to me to read those clipped newspaper stories so long after the fact. To see a real-life drama played out in print, tracing the origins of my family through both love and violation, through memory and omission. I wonder how much of this story my grandmother knew. These things don’t always get handed down in words. Sometimes they’re carried in silence, until they emerge in an old article or an unexpected photograph.

In the middle image, taken around 1979 or 1980, my grandmother Ruth holds me on her lap, while my father, William, smiles beside her. I was to young then to remember the day, but I remember the feeling. Ruth, who I called and knew as Nanny, was my favorite person when I was a child. I don't think she was always an easy person—she grew up without her parents during the Great Depression—but I was young enough that all I ever knew from her was complete and unabashed love.

And finally, on the left, I’m holding my granddaughter Celene, born on May 5, 2025. My daughter Cherith sits in the background, both weary and radiant from birth. Celene’s eyes are wide open to the world. I wonder what kind of world, what kind of life, that will be for her. What kind of story she will live and leave behind.

Three images. Eight generations. One continuous thread of family and time—stretched across wars, pandemics, heartbreak, resilience, and joy. Not every part of our family story might be proud, but all of it is ours.

And now, it belongs to Celene too.