fascinating stories! Quite a history we have.

My maternal grandfather, Albert Walker Martin, was a barber in Missouri, where my mother was born. He moved to San Diego, California in the late 30s and worked part-time as a painter. I barely remember him, as my mother & I only went to visit once, in the summer of 1942, (on the train from Oklahoma...full of service men)..my grandfather took me to the San Diego zoo (we threw peanuts to the bears) and to the beach...and swung me between his legs...*smile*. The next year, he died in a fall from a ladder while painting a theater lobby.

My paternal grandfather, William Lindsey Day, was a farmer in western Pennsylvania in 1900-1912 or so, when he moved the family first to the Oklahoma territory to try his hand in the oil boom....I guess it didn't work out, because in a couple of years they moved again...to central Kansas, where they operated the hotel in Lost Springs.

here are 2 pics....at their "mansion" in Oklahoma (my father is on the right), and in front of their hotel in Kansas (at the far right, Grandpa is not there)

I never met William Lindsey, as he died in an auto accident when his 'touring car' driven by my older uncle "turned turtle", as the newspaper article says. I do have his pocket watch, though, and a medal for sharpshooting he earned in some sort of military training in the 1890s.

Almost all of the male members of my family were the wrong ages for recent wars....so maybe that's why I'm here.