Fearless Females: Religion

What role did religion play in your family? How did your female ancestors practice their faith? If they did not, why didn’t they? Did you have any female ancestors who served their churches in some capacity?

The current generations are not nearly religious as my great grandparents were, and I think a lot of that is due to the inter faith marriages that happened on both sides of my family.  There is a repeated theme of Catholics and Protestants marrying each other.  I am not saying that is a bad thing, it just caused some interesting dynamics in the family.  Where to worship, what to baptize the children, who was right...

Most memorably, was my great-grandmother Bertha Zeta Kelley.  She married a Catholic man, James Albert Arvin, but didn't like Catholics.  They had 9 children.  The first three were baptized Catholic, my grandfather was fourth and he was not baptized as they had an argument about what faith he should be.  The rest were protestant.  She couldn’t even bring herself to vote in the Presidential Elections that JFK won, even though she was a democrat, because she couldn't vote for a republican and couldn't vote for a Catholic.

*Image: swainboat via photopin cc