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Highsmith Family Migration
I do not have any precise records of when my ancestors came to America. General knowledge is that my father’s Scottish family has been here since before the revolutionary war and my mother’s Irish family settled in Georgia as part of a settlement of debt in the early 1800ss. The big migration in my family came about when my parents moved their small family north.
This must have been a brazen move on the part of my parents. My father was sure there were better employment opportunities for him in the north. Both he and my mother seemed to feel they had outgrown their small town environments. My father had recently graduated from the University of Georgia on the G.I. bill. He had gotten a taste of the bigger world outside Georgia when he served in the Navy during World War II.
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This a picture of my family when we were living in
Silver Spring, Maryland. We had moved there form Savannah,
Georgia when I was about three years old, so I do not remember very
much about the move. However, I remember hearing about the
repercussions of the move north throughout my childhood. My
grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins, good-naturedly referred to us
as "the Yankees." There were adult whispers during summer trips "home"
about moving far from family, locating in a place without good manners,
and the risks of having children grow up in an urban area where they do
not know their neighbors and the neighbor's relations. 
This picture was taken at Easter. We were all
dressed up and headed for church. The picture was probably sent
out to both sides of the family that remained in Georgia, so that is
why there are so many copies of the picture still in our family.
Pictures are very important to me because other than family recipes and
funny stories, there are no other mementos from my childhood. Due
to a reversal of family fortune and circumstance my family continued
their migration, first to Delaware and later to Florida