My Dad was born in Taunton, Massachusetts in 1924.  On my grandpa’s side he was a “swamp Yankee” (a derogatory term for descendants of English settlers who lived in rural southeastern New England and never “made it”) and on my grandma’s he was the descendant of French-Canadians who came in the late 1800’s to work in New England’s textile mills.  While serving in the merchant marine during WWII, he met my Appalachian mother in Miami, where she had gone to get a job.  They married and returned to Massachusetts.  On a visit to my mom’s family in Tennessee in 1954, my Dad attended a Southern Baptist revival meeting (for those not familiar, a “revival” is a series of special religious services, usually featuring guest ministers, aimed at “reviving” the Holy Spirit in a community). Dad was “saved” at the meeting and made the decision to become an evangelist himself. At the time fundamentalism was largely found in the South, so this meant relocating our family to my Mom’s native region.  Dad pursued preaching jobs across the South until he died in Winston-Salem, NC in 1971.  This is Mom’s Bible, which my siblings gave her on Mother’s Day in 1961, two years before I was born, which I kept after her death in 2002. The Bible basically accounts for my father’s migration to and across the South, so it seemed a fitting object to use here.  
 

– Kevin Jennings

Relationship:  Child of im/migrant Child of im/migrant