FOUND

I'd loved her name all my life.

When I was a young girl--having always been in love with my family history--I would pour over the names on my pedigree charts.  Names going back hundreds and hundreds of years, from places all over the world.....

(wish I still had one of my charts in my little girl self's handwriting--This was my teenager self!)

I loved them.  Loved spending time with them.  I would even practice my handwriting by writing the beautiful, antiquated and unusual names over and over again...

Ruby LaPriel.  Augusta Maria.  Adeline Amarilla.  Sarah Indiaetta.  Celia Cotton. Brita Stina from Sweden.  Patience and Mehitable from the Mayflower days....and infinitely more.  Not to mention all the amazingly wonderful names of my fathers through the centuries!

All familiar.  All loved. 

And then there was Sarah Lavinia Gant Perkins.  My fourth-great-grandmother.  For some reason her name was so very lovely and charming to me--but never a face to go along with the name. 

Until one day.  Decades after my love for her began.

While my own daughter Sarah was far away on her mission in Argentina, I was spending a little time looking through Ancestry.com... 

I looked through my pedigree--scrolling through all the familiar names.  A feeling, suddenly, to stop and click on my Sarah Lavinia once again.  And--

A PICTURE.  

A picture?!  My heart stopped--I just stared.  There had NEVER been a picture before.

It was so small.  Small, but perfect.  A painting--a portrait.  "Sarah Lavinia portrait from locket", the description said.  I sat there stunned.  Finally, a beautiful portrait for her beautiful name.

As she was so young in her portrait, I pictured her loving parents commissioning the painting to be done of their dear daughter. 

And to keep it close, I pictured her mother wearing it next to her heart.

And just to make sure that I never, ever lost my Sarah Lavinia again--

--I put her in a locket of my very own.

I made another for my Sarah Rose and sent it to her in far away Argentina.   She could keep it with her--one red-headed Sarah to another.  She has it still.

Found.  Found and loved.