MY MATERNAL GRANDPARENTS!

My grandmother was born 2-26-1855 and died 1-4-1935. She came from a family that were well off in those times. In those days, they called people that had a little money, people of means. She had gone at least 1 year of college, and this in itself was a rarity in those days. Music was ingrained in their family. Her half sister became a concert pianist/opera singer and married a Judge from the city that I mostly lived as an adult. My grandmother married and had a daughter by her first marriage. Her first husband died very early in her marriage. There weren't antibiotics in those days and people died early from simple illnesses.

My grandmother later met my grandfather (Irish Immigrant). Her parents told her that if she married him, they would disinherit her. She met him and three weeks later she married him.
They thought he was way below her status in life. He must have been a smooth talker or she was just feisty enough to decide on her own. Three children were born by this marriage. A three year older boy, and twins (boy and girl). My mother was the twin girl. My grandfather and grandmother were the couple "(Nebraska Homesteaders)" I wrote about earlier.

My grandmother's daughter from her first marriage, stayed back and was raised by her grandfather and step-grandmother. My great grandfather was married three times (first wife died in childbirth and 2ND died of TB). My mother's half sister was married and had 2 daughters and she died very close after the 2ND child was born. Her husband (mother's half sister husband) married his wife's step-mother's daughter after my mother's half sister died.

My mother's father was born 12-1-1852 and died 10-21-1925 (one year before I was born).
We had always thought he was an Irish immigrant and could not read or write English. After we got the homestead papers, we learned that he was born in Ohio. This might have been what he told them, in order to qualify for the homestead act. He did sign the papers, so this part is quite a puzzle. He later after he homesteaded, bought lots and built a store and three houses on these lots. So we wonder how he could have done this, if he didn't know how to read or write. Kinda makes you wonder what story is correct. For certain we know he built the store and three houses. He surely built the buildings on the homestead as well. These later were inherited and rented to people by the names of --Brown, Red (nickname), Long, Lane. So the properties were known by "Brown's Red Long Lane"! We do know that he had a sister that was deaf at birth and couldn't communicate. After my grandfather married my grandmother, his sister did not want to be a burden to her brother and so she took her own life. How very sad!

I did not know my grandfather because a year before I was born, he got up in the middle of the night and fumbled around in the dark for medicine (before electric lights). He thought he was taking medicine that would help his ailment, but instead took the wrong stuff by mistake and burned his Esophagus. This was really a terrible way to die. My dad liked his father-in-law and got along very well with him.

Thought for the day--Every path has a few puddles. Be thankful for antibiotics of today, many of us would not be around without them.