A Picture Worth a Thousand Words: Sarah Belle and Evelyn Winch

This is Evelyn Caroline Winch Prey, and Sarah Belle Burnap Winch, my great grandmother, and great, great grandmother.

Having this picture of Evelyn as a baby is a great treasure, not only because I don't have many baby pictures of my ancestors, but it is also fun to see family resemblances. One of my sisters looked very similar to Evelyn as a baby.

Evelyn Caroline Winch was born 21 July 1907 in the beautiful village of East Aurora, New York, to Sarah Belle Burnap and Arthur Isaac Winch. She was very talented pianist and lived in many different places throughout her life. I have very few memories of her, but I have pictures of her, showing me how to bake. She died on the 16 December 1995 in Kanab, Utah.

Sarah Belle Burnap was born on 17 May 1887 in New York to Edward Burnap and Caroline Mary Stedman. I remember my grandmother telling me that, as a child, she always thought Sarah Belle a stern woman. I think you can see in her face that she had a strenuous life. Her family growing up was very poor. We found a newspaper article in the Old Fulton Postcard newspaper collection, of a time where her family's home burned down, and the family took refuge in a nearby farmyard (perhaps that will be a story for a future blog post). I think in many ways her life was one of survival, and this time raising a brand-new baby must have brought its own challenges. She died 29 September 1964, (incidentally the year my mother was born), and is buried in the Village of East Aurora.