I received a tremendous jump-start on the Honodel side from my Honodel uncle Ed. He had much information, anecdotal stories, old letters from a great aunt, and was instrumental in getting me started on the right path.

For the Hughes ancestors, I had an equal jump start from an unknown distant cousin named Nova Lemons. And another cousin was very important in pointing me to some of the side lineage information. Everyone should be so lucky!

The Honodel name originated in Europe, possibly in Alsace, France when it was a German provence. The name was originally Hohenadel. I haven't yet traced the family to Alsace, though there are clues, but I may have found the birth record for GG Grandpa Adam Hohenadel, in Furth, Hesse-Darmstadt.

Adam and his family arrived in this country around 1835, settling in Pennsylvania near Waynesboro, and there he raised his eleven children. Two of them, G Grandpa Franz (a.k.a. Frank Honodel) and his sister married two members of another family, the Gosserts. The Gosserts were a well-established family in the region, and can trace their lineage to heroes of the revolution and war of 1812. Thus, so can we! 

Great Grandpa Frank had a large family of his own, 12 total! His son Norris, my grandfather spent a stint in the army as a drummer for the cavalry, in Dakota, then moved to Washington DC where he met a winsome lass named Margaret.

Her story is equally interesting. She was born in Germany, probably near Birkenfeld, and entertained a very young granddaughter with stories of the Black forest, and a journey to Brazil. There she lived on a rubber plantation, and competed with very large snakes for her breakfast. Brought to the US to finish her education, she worked as a clerk and as a housekeeper before meeting Grandpa. After their marriage they moved to Washington State.

Their daughter Elsie, my mother met a displaced Oklahoma lad while working in the local shipyard in Bremerton. This handsome guy named Shannon should have been easy to trace. After all, he gave me his grandmother's bible! Records here are easy to find. Right? Wrong.

Shannon's family came from Cleveland County Oklahoma. But there were cousins in the Oklahoma City area as well. His grandmother Lizzie McClure Eastep had a farm near Norman, and he must have visited there often. Yes, I have skipped over a generation. I'll come back to it shortly. 

Lizzie came from Lauderdale County, Alabama, a daughter of James McClure, and Sallie Smithson. She married an Eastep. So I had a GG Grandpa McClure, and a GG Grandpa Eastep, both from the Florence area of Alabama, who both served in the same company during the civil war. Great Grandpa Eastep was captured and held prisoner until the end of the war. I think there was a Smithson in their company too. I haven't persued it, but one of the people who gave me so much information on the Smithsons has traced our ancestry on that side back to the revolution too. 

I skipped a generation earlier, because that's where things become complicated. Lizzie McClure Eastep had a daughter Lillie, my grandma.

Lillie married into the Hughes family, a man named Thomas. He had an electrical shop in Oklahoma City, the same shop where my father gained his apprenticeship. 

Now Daddy always told me he was named for his grandfather, thus, Shannon Smith Hughes the first. The documents for Thomas also list Shannon Hughes as his father. So why did Thomas sign the death papers of a man named Samuel Hughes, and claim kinship of "son". Why does another son of Samuel Hughes claim Thomas as his brother, claims Daddy as a nephew, and remembers my own father playing guitar at Thomas's funeral. 

Oh, it gets even better! Both men are said to have a woman named Mary Louisa Porter as wife! Sam was definitely married to her, and Thomas claims her as his mother!

In the past year, from two completely independent sources who do not know and have never met each other, I had the same story that Thomas's mother was Cherokee. "Shannon came to this country and met an Indian girl and married her." Other quote "I was raised with the knowledge that I had Indian blood and was always proud of the fact." 

Ok, I've rambled enough and this page is getting too long. Those are the high points of my digging. If you're wondering why there is no mention of my husband's side of the family, well, he likes his privacy, so I have to honor that.