What Did Your Granny do?

Subject: What Did Your Granny do?
From: Cats
Date: 05 Nov 04 - 02:50 PM

This thread is dedicated to Janie's Granny.

My Granny was a suffragette. She tried to burn down Oxted railway station in Surrey in April 1913 as she, and others, had failed to blow it up the week before!! It was the track just outside the station so no-one would get hurt but it would stop the Prime Minister getting to his country seat for the weekend. She was also a very close friend of Rudyard Kiplings and we still have the pink pearls he gave her when she turned down his offer of marriage. 'He wasn't the marrying kind, my dear!'

Subject: RE: What Did Your Granny do?
From: Blissfully Ignorant
Date: 05 Nov 04 - 02:56 PM

All my grannies still do(i'm lucky enough to have three due to step-parents). And they're all wonderful, strong, opinionated, generous, forgiving women. I owe them a lot, and love and respect them dearly! :0)

Subject: RE: What Did Your Granny do?
From: mg
Date: 05 Nov 04 - 03:32 PM

one was a sharecropper in Texas and one worked in a chair factory in Tacoma for $13 a month after she was widowed from the Spanish flu. mg

Subject: RE: What Did Your Granny do?
From: Kim C
Date: 05 Nov 04 - 03:38 PM

One granny shot at the sheriff's deputy in West Virginia. The other granny had a lot of children & fed 'em all peaches.

Subject: RE: What Did Your Granny do?
From: PoppaGator
Date: 05 Nov 04 - 04:00 PM

My paternal grandmother, who died long before I was born (in 1925, when my father was only 8) had been an organizer for the Ladies' Land League in County Mayo, Ireland. I'm not sure exactly what she did for this non-violent political movement, but her obituary was prominently featured in a couple of Irish-American newspapers, presumably because of her political activities as a teenager, before she married my grandfather (who also died before I ever knew him) and the two of them emigrated to America.

My maternal grandmother, on the other hand, lived well into her nineties, and I knew and loved her her very well. She was an immigrant, too, from a German-speaking family living in the French province of Alsace. When her husband, a self-employed printer, died at age 61, leaving no retirement fund and little in the way of savings, Grandma -- who had never even ventured down the stairs to the basement print shop -- took over the family business, learning to set metal type by hand, humping heavy assemblies of lead onto the two Chandler-Price letterpresses, ordering paper, making sales and deliveries, etc. -- and she kept it up for years, finally "retiring" -- gradually -- sometime after age eighty. Of course, she had many other wonderful qualities, but her identity as a late-blooming independent businesswoman is quite a story.

Subject: RE: What Did Your Granny do?
From: Bev and Jerry
Date: 05 Nov 04 - 04:05 PM

Jerry's granny came to the U.S. from Latvia in 1903 or 1904 with her husband and daughter. Her husband was refused admittance to the U.S. because he was suspected of having tuberculosis so he returned to Latvia and shortly died of same. She remained in the U.S. taking a job as a houskeeper. When the lady of the house died giving birth to her fourth child, Jerry's granny married the man of the house, his grandpa, and they had six more children together.

Jerry's mom considered this a scandal and did not reveal it to him until he was in his forties.

Bev and Jerry

Subject: RE: What Did Your Granny do?
From: Chris Green
Date: 05 Nov 04 - 04:22 PM

My granmother was born in 1909 to a mining family in Co. Durham. She started school the day she was seven and left the day she was fourteen. By the end of her life she could speak fluent French, Italian and Russian (albeit with a Geordie accent!), play the piano, had written several plays which were performed locally and also had a book of poems published. One amazing woman considering she taught herself to do it all!

Subject: RE: What Did Your Granny do?
From: Joybell
Date: 05 Nov 04 - 05:14 PM

My father's mother was born on the Central Victorian (Aus) goldfields in 1876. Her father was a miner, son of a Cornish miner. Her mother was the daughter of a runaway Irish servant.
Mar we called her. A contraction of the name she gave herself - Madam Adair from her first name "Ada". Mar became a preacher, philanthropist, faith-healer, fortune-teller, and a spiritualist. She had her own church called Temple Adair where the Christian service was followed by a "flower reading". Fortune-telling using flowers brought by her congregation. For a while she ran a radio ministry. Her sermons are full of messages about the strength of Women. She owned and drove a car well before most women in Australia. We have just come upon 2 old 78 records made by Madam Adair. 2 sermons and 2 songs. I hope they are not too badly damaged to let me hear how she sounded. I haven't heard her speak since I was 5, and I never heard her sing. Do I sound like her, I wonder.
Joy

Subject: RE: What Did Your Granny do?
From: MBSLynne
Date: 05 Nov 04 - 06:00 PM

My grandmother sang music hall stuff on the stage.....both my grandmothers came through two wars. Their lives were interesting and happy and sad and far to complex to put into this small space.

Love Lynne

Subject: RE: What Did Your Granny do?
From: Deckman
Date: 05 Nov 04 - 06:27 PM

My American Grandmother was a Pentecostal Preacher/minister. My Finnish Grandmother was also a Pentecostal Preacher/minister. "Hands on healing" or "speaking in tongues" anyone? CHEERS, Bob(deckman)Nelson

Subject: RE: What Did Your Granny do?
From: Cluin
Date: 05 Nov 04 - 06:46 PM

One of them gave birth to my Dad and his seven brothers and sisters, while running the bed & breakfast on the farm halfway to the lumber camps in the north woods while my Grandpa ran the farm.

The other Grandma defied her parents wishes and married the immigrant Dane from the Roskilde boatyard and had his 4 daughters before succumbing to a heart ailment.

Subject: RE: What Did Your Granny do?
From: Jeri
Date: 05 Nov 04 - 06:57 PM

My father never talked about his mother. I don't think there was a problem...he just didn't talk about her.

My maternal grandmother opened a gift shop in the house in which I grew up. It was called "A Better Mousetrap." The house was at the end of a dead end street.

She also stencilled things. This wasn't like the stencilling done these days. The furniture or whatever was painted black, then there was some sort of varnish or other sticky stuff applied where the color was to go. The color, in the form of fine metallic powder, was sifted onto the tacky substance, and another color was applied when it was dry. After the stencilling was done, she applied 50 coats of varnish, sanding in between each one.

I've got a rocking chair here with a design on it, and a metal cannister with a couple of test designs, and there's a hand painted tray (your basic fountain, flowers and bird-of-paradise).

She died of brain cancer in...I think it was 1949. She'd had surgery prior to that, during which they'd removed her entire 'speech center'. She woke up asking for water.

Subject: RE: What Did Your Granny do?
From: Jeri
Date: 05 Nov 04 - 06:59 PM

...no, I think the powder was blotted on with a brush. Cats, this is a great idea for a thread!

Subject: RE: What Did Your Granny do?
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 05 Nov 04 - 07:16 PM

Well, as far as I can tell, both my grandmothers were just wives and mothers, although one did it on a farm. She died of a heart attack, before the breast cancer got her... I only really remember her as a sick lady in bed, in the front room of my grandfathers' farm. The other I only remember as a fat, smelly old woman who preferred her daughters' girls over us, because she had my dad when she was a teenager, without the benefit of a husband. In those days (1920's) it was still considered a great embarassment and shameful. Consequently I knew nothing of my fathers' uncles and cousins until I started researching my family history 20 years ago.

LTS

Subject: RE: What Did Your Granny do?
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 05 Nov 04 - 07:50 PM

My paternal grandmother was born in Denbury, a little village on the edge of Dartmoor. She grew up in the village bakery, and went into service as a nursery nurse; later as de facto governess with the same family. Her employers moved to Kenley in Surrey, where Kathleen (that was her middle name; her first name was Ethel, but she never used it) met my grandfather, a Scotsman who worked at the garage and ran the local taxi. She died quite young of something that may have been Motor Neurone Disease; I just about remember her. Her main claim to fame was having once been struck by lightning in Italy. To my amazement, I found a school photo with her in it, aged perhaps about 10, on the Denbury website. Her expression (a scowl) was not unlike my own in similar situations.

My maternal grandmother was born in East London; a proper Cockney, by birth and on her mother's side, though her father was from Ramsgate (I think) where he had worked as a photographer. When they moved back to London, he was a stage manager in the music halls; died in the final months of the Great War. Winifred trained as a typist, but met (at a bus stop) a much older man who was a retired sea captain fron New Zealand. They eventually set up house together (he was still married, with a family back in NZ) and had three children. He made quite a lot of money out of a patented system for self-righting ship's lifeboats, but died when my mother was about 4 years old. The NZ family arrived, took all the money, and left my gran and her children to starve. Kind aunts took them in, and after a while she married Jack, widower of one of her cousins and the closest to a real granddad I ever knew. There's plenty more; minor Catherine Cookson material in a way. Winifred lived to about 96, and was only frail and forgetful in the final few years. A lovely person about whom no one ever had a bad word to say.

Subject: RE: What Did Your Granny do?
From: Padre
Date: 05 Nov 04 - 09:16 PM

My maternal grandmother came to the USA at the age of 14 from Swansea, Wales. She married my maternal grandfather, who was a mining engineer, and raised 5 children (4 boys and my mother). She never learned to drive, because my grandfather didn't want the mother of his children to drive, so my mother as the oldest child learned to drive at age 12.

My paternal grandmother was the granddaughter of a Methodist circuit rider in central West Virginia. She raised my father and his older brother on the salary of a B&O railroad engineer.

Padre

Subject: RE: What Did Your Granny do?
From: GUEST
Date: 05 Nov 04 - 09:25 PM

In Padre's posting:

Is there the peculiar pecuniary suggestion that engineers for the B&O lived in abject poverty and suffering? Even greater than that found in Swansea Wales?

Subject: RE: What Did Your Granny do?
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 05 Nov 04 - 09:45 PM

"Grandpa was a tinsmith, the foreman of the shop
Grandma worked for diamonds, she started at the top
And even though the dreams they had, never quite came true
They passed them on to Daddy, and to me when he was through."

My Grandma Rasmussen came to this country from Denmark as a young woman. She met my Grandfather, who also came over from Denmark as a young man, in a Danish Settlement in Northern Wisconsin. I've been told that they met singing in the church choir, although I never heard either of them ever sing. If America is a melting pot, Grandma refused to melt. She was always a lump in the soup. She spoke English with a very strong Danish accent, adn was a hesitant reader.

As the song also says, "Grandma stretched the money just as far as it would go." With eight kids, it took a lot of stretching.

Jerry

Subject: RE: What Did Your Granny do?
From: Ebbie
Date: 05 Nov 04 - 10:02 PM

What great, strong, individualistic women!

My maternal grandmother once told me, when she heard me whistling,

"Whistling girls and crowing hens always come to some bad end."

Hurt my feelings tremendously. Years later I remembered that she herself whistled all the time.

Subject: RE: What Did Your Granny do?
From: GUEST,.Granny
Date: 05 Nov 04 - 10:10 PM

I had coitus without interruptus with your grandsiers.

Subject: RE: What Did Your Granny do?
From: open mike
Date: 05 Nov 04 - 11:00 PM

my maternal grandmother was born on a homestead of parents who had come from Sweden. The family lived in a dug-out (sod house partially built into the hill side). She married my grandpa, and they ahd 3 kids, he
went away when the kids were little. No welfare, foodstamps or assistance. She taught in a one room school house and the community
supported her. She re-married many, many years later when she was nearly 75.
my paternal granmother was from German and Danish ancestry. She also married and had 3 kids. Grandpa died when the kids were young, and she went on to become an insurance sales person and also divided her house up into apartments and rented them out. That house was for sale a couple of years ago and i dreamed of buying it just to keep it in the family...but it was just a dream.

Subject: RE: What Did Your Granny do?
From: Janie
Date: 05 Nov 04 - 11:20 PM

Thanks so much, Cats, for starting this, and Joybell for suggesting it.

Liz, Ain't no such thing as 'just' a wife and mother. How about "A Wife and Mother, by God!"

My paternal grandparents were both born and raised in eastern Kentucky. They met when they were very young children--Cavanaugh (Nannie) was 4 and Henry (Papaw) was 7. Papaw used to say he knew that she was his from the very first time he saw her. Her mother was a spinster school marm who married one of her students. She was 38 and he was 24. when Nannie was about 5, both her parents got typhoid fever and her father died. She and her older brother were mostly raised in a Masonic Orphanage in Paintsville. Her brother died there of TB. Her mother, and other relatives took her when they could, but she was at the Masonic home for several years, all told. She revealed when she was in her early nineties that she preferred the orphanage, and was ashamed of that. The dirt farm up the Franks Creek Hollow at Flat Gap was just too lonely after the hustle-and- bustle of the orphanage.

She married when she was 16, and they lived with her mother for a long time. She raised four children, and worked like a dog to do it. She was sternly beautiful, had the sweetest, most loving smile, and lovely, work-worn hands.

She and Papaw were both serious and excellent gardeners. He grew the veggies and she, the flowers. I feel her presence in my garden, which is named after her, smiling over my shoulder as I tend the good soil. She could be fierce in the garden. Nothing offended her like a sprouting weed, unless it was the unpinched blossom of a petunia about to fade. She pulled and pinched with vigor. She had no tolerance of unadulterated nature in the front yard. She showed her flowers with such pleasure and embarrassed pride.

She made feeding the backyard birds leftover bisquits into a joyous, memorable ritual for her three young granddaughters.

Later in life I came to understand that she was a very sad, depressed woman. In spite of that she was full of unconditional love and caring for her kids and grandkids. She was the kindest person I ever have known.

She lived to age 93. Papaw was 97 when he passed.

I always have thought that I had the best of all worlds in the grandparent department. Nannie and Granny (in the other thread) were very different, and both so very wonderful. I owe them both an awful lot besides my existence.

Blessings on all,

Janie

Subject: RE: What Did Your Granny do?
From: Padre
Date: 05 Nov 04 - 11:24 PM

GUEST: 2145 (I use military time, as it is clearer)

I don't believe that my paternal grandparents lived in "abject poverty" and I'm not sure how you would interpolate that from my post. It is probably true (based on my limited knowledge of events that happened before my birth) that my mother's family was somewhat better off financially than my father's family. But I don't know what your point is, if any. As for your alleged poverty of Swansea, again, I have no idea of what it may have been like in 1900.

Subject: RE: What Did Your Granny do?
From: GUEST
Date: 05 Nov 04 - 11:34 PM

research, Research, RESEARCH....it is all there...if only you have the guts to dig it out.

Subject: RE: What Did Your Granny do?
From: GUEST,.gargoyle
Date: 06 Nov 04 - 12:30 AM

I'm with Guest on this thread.

Granny did do Grandpa....it is substantially factual and actual.

Sincerely,
Gargoyle

Any sons-a-bitches hinding out there waiting to be claimed?

Subject: RE: What Did Your Granny do?
From: Amergin
Date: 06 Nov 04 - 01:04 AM

My gramma had the toughest job of all....she raised me ;)

also she watched many of her inlaws die as she took care of them through their ailments....she also has taken care of many other people friends and whatnot while they lay dying...and gave them comfort in their final moments....the hardest part of all was watching her brother go....

as a young girl she also raised her siblings as her mother died young too...

on the paternal side I have an oma that is a step grandparent...but my oma all the same...as a young girl she and her siblings and mother( her father had died in Russia,) escaped from wartorn Germany during WWII on foot, through snow and ice...to a detention camp with armed guards and little warmth and food in Norway. There was an old man who snuck the kids vegetables and fruit, even though he could have been sent to prison himself for it. to this day she refuses to watch any war movie involving Germany...because of the pain and memories that they bring back.

Subject: RE: What Did Your Granny do?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 06 Nov 04 - 01:18 AM

Subject: RE: What Did Your Granny do?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 06 Nov 04 - 01:37 AM

Thought I'd put a little space in there--the thread was getting stuffy.

My mother's mother was born in the U.S. to Danish immigrant parents. She was educated as a concert pianist and taught master classes. Wasn't much of a housekeeper, according to Mom, who remembered my grandfather, a longshoreman (who was many inches taller than her mother), making much of the dust on top of tall furniture. She dismissed his criticism, but few others in the family managed to do so in later years (he was a brilliant man but a tyrant. He was a son of Norwegian immigrants). She died in 1927 when a car jumped the curb and killed her as she walked on the sidewalk in Seattle; Mom was five at the time. Mom's father lived into his 80s.

My father's mother lived into her late 80s, and had been a wife and mother for many years. They moved around the country, living in many states, because grandfather was a psychiatrist in the Army. He was also a tyrant, the master of passive aggressive (how suitable!) behavior and some say he drove her to drink. I'm not sure about the middle years of her life, when Grandfather lived in Northwestern Washington state and his mistress lived next door. He died in the late 1940s before I was born. Grandmother was back in Baltimore for many years, and worked as an office manager, I think for a doctor or an insurance office.

I never met any of them, and only saw my mother's father in his coffin. Neither of my parents got along with their surviving parent.

SRS

Subject: RE: What Did Your Granny do?
From: Metchosin
Date: 06 Nov 04 - 02:55 AM

My maternal Granny came from Dundee, Scotland to Vernon, BC at age 16 as an indentured servant or governess, depending upon how one views mandatory employment to pay for passage.

Not long after arriving in the Okanagan, she met an older man, with a somewhat mysterious past, who had recently arrived in Canada from the US, with a herd of horses and who had lost all his "papers" and other belongings in the great San Francisco earthquake and fire, while he was away at sea. We believe he was a compatriot of Bill Miner, the legendary Grey Fox.

She saved my grandfather from a life of crime and herself from her indentureship, by becoming pregnant shorly after their meeting. They married, settled on Vancouver Island, where she raised mostly singlehandedly, a surviving family of six , the first dieing in childhood of diptheria and another shortly after birth. My grandfather spent a lot of time away at sea.

I have a recollection of my grandmother, when I was young, bemoaning the fact that everytime my grandfather returned, he would hang his pants on the end of the bed and she would become pregnant again. It did give me an odd take on the concept of human reproduction and I was also confused by her claim that she baked her scones on her girdle. Apparently, on a number of occasions, she jumped off the woodshed roof in a futile attempt to terminate her pregnancies.

Her life was one of considereable toil and few worldly pleasures. On her deathbed she was still wracked with guilt about the premarital conception of her first beloved child, believing his death, had been God's was punishment for her indiscetion.

When I was wee, she sang to me, fed me delicious homemade bread and always managed, despite her poverty, to slip a few pennies into my hand, upon my leaving. I remember most the wonderful smell of her kitchen and I loved her dearly.

Subject: RE: What Did Your Granny do?
From: Mudlark
Date: 06 Nov 04 - 03:39 AM

My paternal grandmother was called Angie by everybody, including me. Born in N. France shortly after the turn of the century to working class parents, she became orphaned at an early age and was sent steerage, all alone with a note pinned to her coat, to Chicago to work for an aunt. It was a nightmare Dickensian existence and she soon escaped to live with a poor but loving Irish family, tinging her learned English forever after with a Gaelic lilt. She had three sons; the youngest--a prodigy by all accounts--died at 7 of childhood diabetes, leaving her with a heart that never quite mended.

She made her living as a seamstress, and later further supported her family as an informal florist, both growing and arranging gorgeous boquets for weddings and the like. She made the best pancakes in the world--thin crepes, really--I'm still trying to imitate them. She gave me her time and entire attention whenever I needed it, spent hours telling me stories and playing "let's pretend" with me; she was the only safe adult in my family of origin. I still miss her.

My maternal grandmother was her exact opposite.

Subject: RE: What Did Your Granny do?
From: dianavan
Date: 06 Nov 04 - 06:27 AM

My maternal grandmother died in South Dakota. I'm not sure if she was Danish or Norwegian. Her name was Sina. Her husband hung himself in the barn and left her with three children. She was 42. She married the young farmer down the road. His first wife died and left him with four children. He was Danish and he was only 26 years old.

After they were married, they had six more children and then she died. I have a picture of her. She looks gentle and strong but very tired. She died when my mother was born.

d

Subject: RE: What Did Your Granny do?
From: Mrs Cobble
Date: 06 Nov 04 - 06:59 AM

My maternal Gran(who raised me) was born in 1880 her dad was a 'gentleman farmer'. She was an only child who brought disgrace on her parents as she eloped with the stable lad! Her father's fortune was left to a nephew. She gave birth to 9 children including 2 sets of twins, 7 lived to adulthood. She was well read, was always interested in new technology(she would have loved thePC lol) played the piano well and her needlework was fantastic. Although money was tight she was always elegantly dressed(she made all the clothes)and always a 'lady'. Granda liked 'A' drink and gran had to walk 5 miles on a Friday to meet Granda from work to get the wages or he would stop in all the ale houses on the way home. She could make a meal from almost nothing . She always told me be" your own person and dont feel you have to follow the flock". she died in 1959. I still miss her!

Subject: RE: What Did Your Granny do?
From: Flash Company
Date: 06 Nov 04 - 09:39 AM

My maternal gran with her grey hair and her round 'specs was there all through my childhood during WW2. Grandad was killed in a road accident by a drunken driver three months before I was born. (it was happening as long ago as 1937)
Gran had been left with a local family when Great Grandad emigrated to Canada with the standard promise 'I'll send for you girls when I've got settled'( Never did)
Her life was domestic service, then a farm labourers wife, then a widow. She died just at the time when I was startihg to earn enough to have made a difference!

FC

Subject: RE: What Did Your Granny do?
From: Rapparee
Date: 06 Nov 04 - 09:58 AM

Ah, okay, time to brag on Grandmas.

My paternal grandmother gave birth to her oldest son, my father, six months after her marriage. He was not premature, but a bouncing 10+ pound baby. She also had four other sons and three daughters, one of them with Down's. My grandfather served 180 days for making his liquor to sell during prohibition, and while the sheriff got his big still, my brother has his personal still still (atfer the old man died my brother saw it in the trash and asked for it; she made Tony promise not to use it as intended and he hasn't broken his word but once -- "I didn't know that the damned old fool still had that," said Grandma). Of here five sons she had three in WW2 -- one was too young and the other had had the tip of one finger amputated.

My maternal grandmother married my grandpa when he came back from Montana, where he and his brother had moved. He wanted to take his bride back with him to the West, she replied "You want me to move WHERE?!?!?" and they stayed in Illinois. She gave birth (both grandmas did this at home) to three sons and a daughter who lived and a pair of twins who didn't. Two out of three sons were in WW2 (the other was medically defered), and her pregnant daughter lived at with her parents while my father was in the South Pacific. While my father was overseas, I was born. He returned, and met one of my mother's brothers at the train station; neither had told them when to expect them and just before Christmas, 1945 they showed up -- it was the only time my Grandmother ever fainted. After my father died in 1950, my G'G' Aunt Tilly moved in to help raise the four kids my mother now had ("If your father had lived we'd probably have had twelve kids," my mother once chuckled) and Grandma moved also moved in after my Grandfather's death in 1953. She lived with us until her own death in 1957.

Both of these Grannies survived the Depression while raising families, suffered while their families went to war, grew gardens, raised and slaughtered their own chickens, and kept the men in the families more or less in line. They made quilts, sometimes from cast-off clothing, were active in their churches, and could turn out a tasty meal from (I swear!) dried corncobs, dirty water, and roadkill rat. They were women of stong opinions, voted the Democratic ticket, and given their menfolk could probably successfully wrassle an alligator in each hand while nursing a baby, fixing a meal, dealing with a striking rattlesnake, and giving you their thoughts about the current political scene all at the same time.

Both drank a glass of beer a day, and would, if VERY ill, have a "hot toddy".

Subject: RE: What Did Your Granny do?
From: Deckman
Date: 06 Nov 04 - 10:13 AM

Just a comment ... Notice just how many tales of our forebearers come with immigration in their backgrounds. We often refer to America as the "melting pot", and here's more proof! Bob.

Subject: RE: What Did Your Granny do?
From: Rapparee
Date: 06 Nov 04 - 10:20 AM

Both of mine were born in the USA. My paternal g'g' grandfather emigrated from Germany (Furstenau, near the Dutch border) and my maternal side emigrated (from Hanover, I think) back around 1830 or a trifle earlier.

Subject: RE: What Did Your Granny do?
From: Janie
Date: 06 Nov 04 - 02:22 PM

Bob, I noticed that too. And a lot of the melting happened AFTER immigration. All four of my grandparents traced their lines back to the earliest European immigrants in North America. As an aunt says, "None of them were on the Mayflower, but they were all sailing close behind." Once they got here they mixed it up with nearly every western European nationality, plus a Cherokee or two. Irish, Welsh, Scots, German, Dutch and French, and one maiden surname that I think is probably Swedish.

As I read through the stories, I am struck by the hardship and the strength. Also by the respect and appreciation expressed by each writer for the generations before them. Our grandparents were very adaptable people. Two world wars, immigration, horse and buggy to space travel. They lived through quite remarkable times. It also underscores the importance of the grandparent relationship to children, where most of us who have posted seemed to find our largest dose of unconditional love.

Janie

Subject: RE: What Did Your Granny do?
From: GUEST
Date: 06 Nov 04 - 02:37 PM

This is tremendous reading! Almost every one of these stories would make a book in itself and I would want to read every one of them.
My maternal grandmother was left at an orphanage as an infant, grew up there and married my Swedish immigrant grandfather. They had just two children, a daughter who died a day or two after her birth and my father. Dad was six when his father was sent to Leavenworth Federal Prison for cocaine dealing. Dad said the local papers called him a "drugkingpin." This would have been about 1918. His father died in prison of tuberculosis. My grandmother was left to earn a living for herself and her son and among other things, made bootleg liquor during prohibition. She was caught and went to jail for a year, leaving her young son to fend for himself. He dropped out of school, 7th grade, and went to work driving a cab.
Later she was a union organizer in Toledo, Ohio, and worked in factories until shortly before she died when she was in her 50's. I loved her. She always had decks of cards for us kids to play with, gave us her pocket change, and let us spend the night with her frequently. (She stopped at her house once on her way home from work. Several co-workers were with her in the car and she bragged as she was leaving, that her grandchildren never asked her for money. And as she said that, my brother and I were running to the car yelling that she had forgotten to give us our money.
Dad never told us anything about their law-breaking until a few years before he died, then in his 0s.
Maternal grandmother was born in Quebec, the oldest of several children. Both of her parents were killed when she was 18, and the younger children went to live with other relatives while she went to Alberta to work for a family who had moved there from Quebec. My grandfather and his brother had a dairy farm in Alberta and met my grandmother when he was delivering milk to her.
She raised seven children, and was the perfect grandmother who baked cookies, and the best doughnuts in the world.
My maternal grandfather's mother was another, and fascinating woman, but I've taken more than enough space so I'll quit.

Subject: RE: What Did Your Granny do?
From: GUEST,Emjay
Date: 06 Nov 04 - 03:12 PM

I don't know what happened to my cookie, but that last was from me--emjay--I'd have signed it if I had noticed.

Subject: RE: What Did Your Granny do?
From: Mudlark
Date: 06 Nov 04 - 04:37 PM

Wonderful stories all...thanks, everyone, for posting.

Subject: RE: What Did Your Granny do?
From: Bill D
Date: 06 Nov 04 - 05:32 PM

my maternal granny raised 4 kids in Missouri, moved to San Diego and did a bit of quilting and became quite deaf and grumpy..after her husband died in 1945, she mostly moped and complained until she died about 1953 at only 63 or so. I wish I had known her well when she was younger.

My father's mother, on the other hand, was on the go constantly--raised 3 boys in Pennsylvania (Western, near Pittsburg) and traveled all over the country in the 1909-1915 era...to Texas, California, Nevada (I have postcards she sent!)... Then in about 1916, the family moved to Oklahoma so my grandfather could try working in the new oil fields. My grandmother had her youngest son still in her lap and kept house in this mansion...see the top part of this picture (my father is on the right)...the oil business didn't work out, so they moved to Lost Springs, Kansas, where Granddad started farming and Grandma ran the local hotel (scroll down to bottom of the picture...Grandma and her boys are on the far right)...One amazing fact is that she had all her teeth pulled when she was in her 20s, and used ONE set of false teeth the rest of her life.

Grandma was a regular in the Methodist church (Rebecca Lodge) and later remarried and ran a boarding house and gardened...and did everything that needed to be done. One time we drove up to visit and found her on the roof of the back porch, fixing shingles. She was 77 at the time. She told stories, kept house, was pillar of her little community, and had a MEAN throwing arm...."Oh?", you ask.....well, once when my father was about 14, she had just baked a cake for her church, and was peeling apples for a pie, when Dad and a couple of his friends came in. One of the boys was a smartalec, and wanted some cake...she said "No...that's off limits"...but as they turned to leave, he reached and grabbed a chunk right out of the middle of the cake and headed for the door ..and grandma saw him!....Without thinking, she turned and THREW the apple corer she had been using (two little prongs on the tip) and stuck it right in the wrist holding the cake! As she gasped at what she had done, the boy slowly put the cake back, plucked the corer from his wrist..(it wasn't too deep) and snuck out....and story of Mrs. Day and her wicked arm became legend in Emporia, Kansas.
She lived to see me graduate from high school, and died at 84 in the early spring of 1958, after a very short illness, right after complaining that she should be home getting her garden ready to win the 'first tomato of the year' award again.....

Subject: RE: What Did Your Granny do?
From: Deckman
Date: 06 Nov 04 - 06:01 PM

Bill D: Your Granny story makes me want to expand a little on "Lottie," my Finnish Grandmother. She immigrated to America when she was 14. She worked as a personal servant to a New York Senator's wife for one year. Being very homesick, she RETURNED to Finland at 15. She sailed AGAIN to America at 16. This time, she went to the silver mines in Butte, Montana and went to work as a street preacher for the American/Suomi Pentecostal Church. Butte was full of Finnish "contract miners" then. She saved the soul of "Roope," (Robert) married him and started her married life.

Her last years were spent as a widow in Eastern Washington, on a large apple orchard. She also raised nanny goats, made goat cheese and "ruisaleippa". I loved her and she me.

As her body failed, and her family pressured her to stop living alone on the farm, she finally agreed to go to town to a "nursing home." She would ONLY go if I drove her. I was 15. All the rest of the family followed in many cars as we caravaned to town. She prayed in Finn for that whole hour's trip.

At the home, she would not leave the car unless I alone, was allowed to escourt her in. She died six weeks later. Bob (Roope)

Subject: RE: What Did Your Granny do?
From: Shanghaiceltic
Date: 06 Nov 04 - 06:48 PM

My Gran on my fathers side as a young lass had a job hand tinting the black and white movies to make them colour movies.

My gran on my mothers side was just an old grumpy gran.

Subject: RE: What Did Your Granny do?
From: Scoville
Date: 06 Nov 04 - 10:35 PM

Mine were pretty ordinary. My maternal grandmother was born in 1914 and was an avid athlete (liked field hockey), as was my mother later. She died of cancer when she was 56, long before I came along.

My paternal grandmother (1916-2003) was mostly a housewife/mother, but when she and my grandfather were first married they spend months at a time in the Boundary Waters region of the U.S./Canada living out of a canoe. My grandfather was a botanist and spent every possible moment in the woods; my aunt is named after Sarah Lake in Quetico Park in Ontario. My uncle has the wood-and-canvas Peterboro Prospector canoe they got in 1937, and we still us some of their old Duluth packs. My father and his siblings spent most summers in the woods, and all of the grandkids have been taught to manage a canoe even if we don't spend as much time outdoors as Grandpa would have wanted.

Subject: RE: What Did Your Granny do?
From: Jim Dixon
Date: 06 Nov 04 - 11:54 PM

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.

Subject: RE: What Did Your Granny do?
From: Bobert
Date: 07 Nov 04 - 12:04 AM

My grandmother worked during prohibition as a hat check lady in a "speak-easy"... Then after it was repealed by the 21st Ammendment, she worked in ont night club after another until she became about 60. The she worked in a plastics factory running all kinds of machines until she was forced to retir at age 79 after a mishap with a band saw that almost took off her hand...

She was boen in 1898 and died at 102 years old some three years ago and...

....sniff. I miss that ol' gal.

I used to stop by and visit her an' split a beer with her every night after I got off work...

The ol' gal would cuss lie a sailor but had some fine stories to tell...

Bobert

Subject: RE: What Did Your Granny do?
From: katlaughing
Date: 07 Nov 04 - 12:29 AM

These stories are just fantastic! I second that they should all be in a book or books. Anyone interested? I'd be willing to work on it with others if there is real interest. Thanks so much for sharing, everybody.

My paternal grandmother died just before i was born, so I didn't know her, but have heard a few stories. I know she was born and raised in Leadville, CO and have pix of her as a beautiful young woman, in tightly-cinched waist, long Victorian dresses. Later on there are pix of her holding my sisters, the twins, when they were babies. She'd put on some weight and by all accounts blamed her pregnancy with my dad for the weight gain. She never had any other children. My grandfather was besotted with her. They had quite a courtship and he wrote her love poems, esp. when my dad was growing up as she spent a lot of time in hospitals. I have only one of those poems as my dad thought they were too personal and destroyed them when they died. She and granddad died within a year of one another. Their parents, both sets, died with weeks of one another, though not all four in the same year. Strong ties to partners there. They lived on a ranch in Colorado, the same one in the book I am working on based on my dad's oral history. She was well-educated and had been a "school-marm." I have some of her teaching certificates. She was also on the schoolboard and a member fo the Eastern Star. My dad says Saturday nights, he and his parents would sit around the table with oil lamps, a big tub of popcorn, fresh apples, and good books. Though he dropped out in 8th grade, he remains one of the most well-read people I have ever known.

I am fortunate in that my maternal grandmother wrote out her memoirs when recovering from a broken arm in her 70's. She also was a schoolmarm, married a widower with one boy, then she had 8 more kids, two of whom were twins. One of them died shortly after birth and the other was killed in an accident just before his high school graduation. Grandma was a superb storyteller and the only grandparent I knew for any length of time. I loved going to visit her. Rather than try to tell you more about her adventures, I'll try to scan some of her own words in, soon, and post them here. That's another book waiting for me to get to...I want to put her story into chapters, add pix, etc. We just found a reel-to-reel tape my brother made of her in the 1950's in which she reads James Whitcomb Riley and other stories to us, though "reading" seems an inadequate word to describe her renditions!

She used to joke about her eastern relatives who came to Boulder, CO to visit her in the early days. When they got off of the train, their eyes were big as they loked around in a rather tremulous manner. Grandma said they asked her where all of the "Indians" were. She replied, in typical deadpan way, "They're all hiding behind the boulders!"

She came to CO as a little girl in a covered wagon from Kansas where her grandparents had homesteaded. Along the way she found a Roman coin on the prairie. The Denver Post did an article about her and her coin...speculation was that someone else who'd owned it had lost it...not that the Romans had actually been over here which is what I thought as a little girl!**bg**

One thing I remember the most about her (she died when I was 13): she had a beautiful dark blue and dark magenta afghan on her sofa, one of those ones with the zipzag pattern. When I'd take a nap there she always let me use it. I wish I had that "comfort" with which it was imbued.

Subject: RE: What Did Your Granny do?
From: Neighmond
Date: 07 Nov 04 - 03:08 AM

One of My Grandmothers has worked for 50 years as a switchboard operator at the state house in DesMoines, scrubbs floors for rich folks, and cleans the synagogue.

The other ran a motel, raised ten children, was married to a cop, drove a UPS truck, worked in the kitchen of a nursing home.

Chaz

Subject: RE: What Did Your Granny do?
From: dianavan
Date: 07 Nov 04 - 03:23 AM

My other grandma, Ma, didn't work outside the home and hardly ever went to town. The only time she ever left her own little space was to visit her family but that wasn't very often because we mostly came to her. She was my hero.

She me told me many stories. She liked to tell this one.

One day a Singer salesman came to the door. After sewing by hand for a husband and seven children, she was very impressed but she had never bought anything without asking for the money from her husband. She bought it anyway. It was a beautiful treadle with an oak cabinet. She hid the machine and swore the children to secrecy until she could find the right time to tell him herself.

When my grandfather came walking down the path, all the kids ran out to greet him, shouting, "Ma bought a machine! Ma bought a machine."

d

Subject: RE: What Did Your Granny do?
From: Cats
Date: 07 Nov 04 - 04:42 AM

Yes, I'll work on the book with you. pm me. I didn't realise what I started when I put this thread up. It was just to show Janie how much support there was amongst Catters and to help her get through singing at her granny's funeral but... thanks to everybody who has contributed, keep them coming. Also thanks to all those catters who have pm'd to say what a great thread this has turned out to be.