My grandparents were all farmers.

My father's mother died before I was born. My mother's mother died when I was very young and I barely remember her.

My father's parents had been clog dancers when they were young, and were reputedly very good, good enough to perform for an audience, but they gave it up when they began to raise a family, so my father never got to see his parents dance. My father's mother was illiterate. (My father's father was barely literate; he could sign his name in a shaky hand, but my father never saw him write anything else.)

My mother's mother raised eleven kids. Two of them were her stepchildren; she had married a widower with two kids, and then bore nine more. She made her own soap. She taught some of her daughters to cook and others to sew, but the ones who could cook never learned to sew, and the ones who could sew never learned to cook! A couple of the kids learned to play the parlor organ, but not my mom. There just wasn't time to teach all the kids everything. Once a kid learned a useful skill, he or she was kept busy at it!

That's about all I ever knew about them.