My father had three sisters and his brother Harry who he has mentioned. I believe Hortense (Aunt Horty) and Blanche were the oldest and Harry was older than he by several years. Aunt Beth (Elizabeth, after whom I was named) was the youngest but I don’t know whether she was born before or after they moved to Kansas. It must have been in 1875 that they moved to Kansas. He told us of hearing about Indians still raiding in the territories when he was a child and of tornados striking near by farms.
Aunt Horty was married at sixteen. She was a grandmother while still in her thirties and a great grand mother while still in her fifties. I only remember meeting her once also on the trip in 1929. She was a tiny wiry person. Aunt Blanche I think must have been a beautiful girl. She was more like my father, a calm person. She and her husband lived on Whidby Island when he retired and I had seen more of them. He was an Englishman, the younger son in the family, who could not inherit but he had a small inheritance and he came to America to learn how to be a cowboy. From things my father has said I think he must have been quite a romantic hero for him and a catch for Aunt Blanche.
Uncle Harry stayed on the farm and inherited it from Grandfather. He and Aunt Carrie had two sons, Gerald and Charles and when we visited them on the farm at Blue Rapids in 1929 the boys were in college at Manhattan, Kansas.
No comments:
Post a Comment