Posted by
B Breeding
on
Saturday, September 15, 2012
In
one of my last blog entries, I talked about creating a museum that would honor
Hugh Breeding and his trucking company by restoring his house in Maysville,
Arkansas….well, there’s no way that my wife would allow me to purchase the house
in Maysville, Arkansas and attempt to create a museum. No argument on my part…she just will not let
that happen due to the sizable monetary investment that would require.
So
with that said, I was still thinking of ways to honor the memory of the grand
old trucking company. Recently, I was
watching a show from NBC called “Who Do You Think You Are?“ which comes on
regularly on Friday nights during the spring time. It represents a good
family time for all of us to sit together and watch TV without having to worry
too much about inappropriate content.
Last
Christmas, I also purchased the British version of the same show. On one
of the British episodes, a celebrity from the show Top Gear named Jeremy
Clarkson looked into his past and was trying to figure out about a famous businessman
in his family. His family had produced the Kilner jars which are a lot
like our Mason jars here in the United States. The company business
eventually faded and today it is solely a memory. During the show, his
process of discovery was incredible and even though he has a British distaste
for all things American, his episode is really entertaining and worth watching.
This episode really cemented my inspiration in trying to research as
much information and memories on the Hugh Breeding trucking firm.
To be fair, in the past, I’ve had other
relatives previously inquire as to whether I would research the company. In March 2009, a cousin of mine and I were
visiting about family research and he actually asked me if we would ever create a study on the Hugh Breeding trucking company. So early
on, we set out to gather all the known research that we could find in the hopes
that one day we’d have enough information to write a 10-15 page report.
Reflecting back, it’s unbelievable that our body of research in this area has
far exceeded those expectations – today our chapter on the Company is over 150
pages in length.
Of
course, one of the most exciting aspects of researching the company is extending
my network of contacts outside the Breeding family. That is the quite challenging bit in acquiring
the necessary interviews, photos, and artifacts on the trucking company. Currently, we are reaching out to numerous
families who had parents and other relatives that used to work at the Hugh
Breeding trucking firms. I have had numerous phone conversations and
have learned an incredible amount about the company and the trucking industry.
Of course, it is very difficult in finding new contacts and I’ll be
forced to think creatively in order to extend the reach of our project.
In
the future, we will be creating a Facebook Fan Page just on the Hugh Breeding
Company so that other families can locate us on the internet and contribute
their memories. We are always looking
for little memorabilia items like playing cards, ash trays, newsletters and
company photos (even of the office Christmas parties). We have
even created some custom-made promotional items such as coffee mugs, mouse
pads, etc. Just as the family research turned out, I’m fairly
certain that the trucking research will take some turns that will be totally
unexpected. Nonetheless, it is very
exciting to work on this current phase of the genealogy project.