Post 720: going native…

My Grandmother McKenzie came from East Kilbride, Scotland. Though it is difficult thinking of her as young, these two post cards, sent to her by a sister, are from that time Gram was a woman of 21 and 22. The scenes would have been typical and familiar to her in early 20th Century Scotland, and their messages are the day-to-day things a couple of sisters might write each other to keep in touch.

old postcards

Gram came from a large family of mostly girls. Eleven kids, I think it was, and only one was a boy. I’m sure he wasn’t spoiled rotten!

Her entire family first came to America in the early 1890s but returned after a short stay when the economy tanked. They’d sail back to America again shortly after these postcards were written. Unfortunately, anyone who can verify specific details is dead, so keep that in mind when you try to compile your own family histories.

The family landed in Nova Scotia. My Gram and her parents moved to Denver, Colorado on the urging of Margaret, her sister, who’d already moved there. Most of the rest of the family moved to Colorado as well, and my mother was born in Denver.

Oh, yeah, “in the meantime, prior to that”: I should mention that my Grandfather McKenzie and my Grandmother McKenzie met at a Scottish picnic in Denver by some accounts or Nova Scotia by others. Importantly, though, they did meet, then they married after Grampa secured employment with the railroad in Western Nebraska-Wyoming-South Dakota.

Before that, however, two of the sisters went out of their way to reassure relatives back in Scotland that they hadn’t been affected by the move to the New World, that they were still the same lovely girls the family remembered. They had this photo taken and made into a post card:

cowgirl

Remembering Gram and her family members I did meet, though, they had wonderful senses of humor so I’m sure the family in Scotland thought it was a hoot! (Or, at least, they hoped it was a joke! 🙂 )

Post 622: my paternal great-grandmother

Many years ago, Uncle Max, my father’s brother, worked up a start of a family genealogy. To this day, it is the most comprehensive look at a side of the family that includes 13 children in my father’s generation, and lots of mysteries in earlier ones.

Until recently, I didn’t even know what my great-grandmother looked like until I stumbled across her photo in a distant family member’s genealogy of her branch of my family, that of another uncle.

honey

She was my paternal grandmother’s mother. My paternal grandfather’s mother…? I don’t know if there is an image of her. Anyway, of this great-grandmother, Uncle Max learned this:

great grandma

This typed account, with all of Uncle Max’s eccentric spellings and typos, now is a treasured family document. It was a basis for Uncle John and Uncle Milt’s quest to Salem, Missouri, and Cambridge, Nebraska, (where their father first moved to find a job on the railroad) to find family graves and information about the family in local museums and libraries.

To the best of my knowledge, they never found family graves in Salem, and a flood of the Republican River in May 1935 wiped out many graves and public records in Cambridge.

On the other hand, the local paper (The Cambridge Kaleidoscope when Grandpa Thomas’ sister’s husband owned and ran it) still exists as the Cambridge Clarion.

If you want a copy at the office, you help yourself, and there’s a box by the stack where, on your honor, you put the price of the paper! It is a small town, but, clearly, a very nice one, too, one it’s nice to know I have some small connection with!

Post 616: family resemblances, family quirks

I never met all of my father’s siblings, and I barely met my Grandfather Thomas, who died when I was very young. I knew Grandma Thomas a bit better, but my family only made the arduous trip to Englewood, CO, from Nebraska once a year. I think we probably spent only a weekend there each time.

I had many favorites among the aunts and uncles. Hell, all of them I knew were favorites, fun people to know!

Once, when Aunt Susie (front row, far right) greeted me at the door when I came home from work, I announced she was my favorite aunt and gave her a big hug, probably a kiss. Then a hurt voice from elsewhere in the kitchen piped up, “But I thought I was your favorite aunt!” Oops! “But you are my other favorite aunt, Aunt Mim!” And I gave her a big hug and kiss to prove it. Aunt Mim (Miriam) is on the far left in the front row. She lived in Pocatello, so we saw her less often than Aunt Susie, who lived in Denver, but she always was a favorite, too! So kind and sweet, my aunts, funny, thoughtful, great people to be around.

They were all over the place politically. Some followed strange religions (purportedly Christian), others were mainstream Methodists and Presbyterians. They were argumentative, stubborn, funny, very entertaining people! My uncles Milt (top row, far left) and Max (top row, third from left) were especially argumentative, though Uncle John (middle row, second from right), a lawyer, could present a formidable argument himself. Of course! He always used to say, “All lawyers are crooks!” “But Uncle,” I’d protest, “you are a lawyer!” “I repeat: all lawyers are crooks!”

May 23, 1934. Thomas family reunion photo on the occasion of Doug Thomas’ graduation from high school. No other photo of the whole family together exists. Dad is second from the left in the top row.

I liked my aunts and uncles! My mother did, too. She was an only child, so the give and take, hustle and bustle of a large family was like candy for her. She used to say it was one reason she married my Dad, though there surely were more reasons than that. Their marriage lasted 71 years, till Dad died.

Uncle Simeon (“Sim”, who is in the middle row, far right) was so funny! He always had a joke or a story to tell. He worked for the Burlington as a tour coordinator, setting up train tours for groups. When the big shots came to Alliance in the fancy private railroad car reserved for the top officials of the railroad, Uncle Sim rode with them. He was someone of substance on the railroad.

I never told my Dad this, but when Uncle Sim and Aunt Vonnie (his wife) brought me home from Lincoln my last year at the University of Nebraska, they showed up in a new Ford Galaxy. It was loaded and had the biggest engine Ford put into that car. “Do you want to drive it!?” he asked, all excited about sharing this magnificent ride with his nephew. I wasn’t totally convinced I should, but he insisted. It’s about eight hours drive from Lincoln to Alliance. If you drive the speed limit…! “Take it up to 85 mph,” Uncle Sim said, a speed that his car handled with aplomb. I broke the law clear across the state. It was a magnificent car!

With so many aunts and uncles, you’d expect me to have lots of cousins, too. I do, but most of them I’ve never met. My favorite is Sharon, daughter of Uncle Milt. We’ve always hit it off. We can confide in each other, and we both went through many of the same travails and vicissitudes handling the affairs of elderly relatives. Curiously, sadly, her brother Bob just died November 23rd. I barely met him, barely knew him. After an acrimonious divorce and separation, the then-infant Bob went with their mother, and Sharon lived for some time with the Thomas families in Denver, particularly the Pucketts (Aunt Susie and Uncle Bob, a very proper Virginian who always had a neatly trimmed and dyed Errol Flynn moustache). I think she looks a lot like our Grandma Thomas, Mary, third in from the right in the photo. That’s Grandpa Thomas next to her.

Of family resemblances, I note that last summer I was on Ancestry, the genealogy website, and came across a photo posted by some other cousin (whom I’ve never met…!) It still knocks me back, is very emotional to see. Till then, this person was only a name, not someone I’d ever seen a photo of, and someone I wondered if there even was a photo anywhere of her to be seen: My Great Grandma Honey, Grandma Thomas’ mother!

My great grandmother, as mythical as unicorns…! The way it appeared in the Ancestry website. I was stunned.

At first, I thought I was staring at a photo of my Grandma Thomas. Then it registered. Her personal history is longish, but, thanks to Uncle Max, we do know a few details about her life. I think I should post those separately, perhaps tomorrow.