I had good grandparents. My parental grandmother would play checkers, and Chinse checkers with me. Old grandma was easy to beat, till the time she looked at the board, and cleaned me out in nothin' flat.

She must have thought I was old enough to learn to lose.

They drank a lot of beer and smoked a lot of cigarettes. That’s about all I remember about them.

I pulled a well pump and fixed it last weekend with my soon to be 87 year old Grandad. He’s still going strong and works around the ranch almost every day. Hasn’t missed a year in elk and deer camp in CO since 1955. Didn’t get his bull last year but went up the mountain and hunted every day.
Grandmom will be 85 in Feb. She’s slowing down but still writes the historical column for the newspaper every week, quilts at the church, and is secretary and treasurer for the local historical society and museum. She has lots of great stories about growing up in the depression.

I’m a blessed man to have them and get to spend time with them.

One side, never really knew my grandma. Died when I was 2. Grandpa took care of my aunt who had MD until she got to be too much and put her in a home. Other side, wish I didnt know. Was proud of him and looked up to him, until I got old enough to know all he gave a schit about was money. Honestly, they all really didnt feel like relatives. Got to know the ones I wish I didnt, and didnt the ones I wish I would.

Never knew either of my Granddads, both were gone by the time I was born.
I got vague memories of my Mom's Mom. She died when I was 6 or 7.
Paternal grandmother died my senior year. She was somewhat of a tomboy, sled riding and outdoor stuff into her late 70s.
She had a really nice house in Hornerstown, and I'd spend a week or two there every summer gardening and cutting grass.
Nice neighborhood back then. Now it's a near ghetto. I wonder what that house is like now.
7mm

I had some good ones. I thought as much of my paternal grandparents as if they'd been my parents. My paternal grandfather was probably the best man I've ever known, and my paternal grandmother was the best granny anyone could ever have. They've been dead since 1978 and 1985, but I still miss them.

My maternal grandparents were very good people as well, he was a Baptist preacher. But they lived some distance away, and I didn't see them as often as I did the other set.

All but 1 grandmother died before I was old enough to remember them. My dad's dad was a blacksmith, a heavy drinker, and a child beater. He had 2 hobbies: drinking and fighting, and fighting and drinking. The day after Dad graduated from high school, he left home and didn't return for 4 years.
After a miserable childhood, Dad could have gone 2 ways. He could have become like his father or he could decide to be everything he dad wasn't. He chose the latter.

Mine used to fight and scrap everyday.
Get all wound up with a series of "you go to hell"...."no you go to hell"......"no bitch, I dont wanna go to your home".....usually over something stupid like the way the canteloupe was sliced.

Constant digs, mind fuggin each other, ....one settin up the other to be embarrassed or made to look like a fool in front of other relatives.

That what I remember most, lol

My Great Grandfather started a Brethren country church where all the relatives and friends on my Dad's side went. My grandfather had an Indian in the 30's doing 90 when most cars were doing 30. My Grandma on Dad's side was incapacitated by strokes and diabetes but was a funny lady. You never knew what she might say next. We all got a kick out of her. She made the best of things as she could. They were and are a fun group. 8 sisters and brothers on that side and lots of cousins.

On Mom's side there were 7 brothers and sisters. Smaller families, but still fun. Grandma would usually have homemade pies on Sundays, and Grampa spent lots of time outside chewing Redman. They had a tree I liked climbing and was up in it most of the time or across the street at the gas station getting a strawberry Crush. They lived in a small town, having moved off the farm that my uncle bought from them. Their was a car dealer, grocery store, hardware, and a drug store with an old fashioned soda fountain in it. Even a furniture store. Those stores phased out over the years. Now there's just bars.

Lots of color in the family. My grandfather went to prison for killing a guy by stabbing him while playing poker in a saloon. My dad always said the guy wouldn't have died if he had gotten proper medical treatment. I had to remind dad that the guy wouldn't have needed proper medical treatment if Grampa hadn't stabbed him...

Was subjugated to watching Lawrence Welk at one set of em.
Gawd I hated having to go over their......
Scars that dont heal type of schitt.....

The other set lived in Delaware while in the AirForce, Maine, and retired in Florida.
And Gramp Morrison had cool things like 2 Chinese type 56 AK,s he brought back from Vietnam that I got to shoot when I was 9.

Lawrence Welk?? and youre complaining?

That's a pretty big deal here on the campfire MISTER.

The type 56,s had more influence in my life , than fugging Lawrence Welk....




Alex, I will take cool Gramp Morrison with the type 56,s in trunk of his lead sled for 1000 please.

Do know who sang Rawhide?

My great grandmother and her daughter ambushed a man, pulled him off a wagon as he passed by, and literally beat him in unconsciousness.

Henry just old enough to get drafted in WWI. He was a very large man, and he spent the entirety of the war being carted up to the line, being fitted for a gas mask, found to have too large a head to fit in one, and being carted back to the rear. After the War, he married and survived the Great Crash by scavenging. He would set off every day with a rucksack and return every night with it full. No one questioned him. Once he returned home with a 300 lb sow pig on his back. In 1923 he brought the family to America and settled in Cincinnati. His first job was as a landscaper for D.J. O'Connor, the founder of Formica. By 1926, Henry was a millionaire, having introduced a system of home and apartment building previously unseen in the city. He was building a home inside Music Hall for the Home Show-- completely wired, plumbed, and landscaped. By 1949 we were responsible for just under 50% of all new home starts in Cincinnati. I remember him as this man-mountain in his big easy chair. All the other grandkids were scared to death of him, but I used to climb up on his belly and bump heads with him and let him teach me German. He died when I was 3.

One story pretty well summed up what I know of him. Dad said he and his Dad were sharing a beer at a bar over in Westwood. The town bully showed up and started pestering a nebbish little man that was trying to mind his own business. The bully was being particulaly mean and obnoxious. Grandpa went over to the bully.

"You are a bad man," he said to the bully in his thick accent. "Und I vill kill you." Henry then gripped the man by the throat and lifted him off the floor at arm's length and held him there until the other patrons were able to pry him off, but not before he'd succeeded in rendering the man unconscious. The bully eventually revived and left in a hurry. Grandpa went back to drinking his beer.

"Pop, you almost killed that man!" My Dad exclaimed.

"I knew you would pull me off." said Grandpa. "He won't be back."

Sure enough the bully was never seen on the hill again.


Whitey was born in Brecksville, Ohio at the turn of the last century. They paid the doctor by giving him a pig. At age 4, he went for a walk in the cornfield during a family picnic and got lost. They had to go up in the top floor of the house, and direct the rescue party to him. It was from that second-story window that Whitey was able to sled after the 1910 blizzard. At age 10, he dove off a bridge on a dare into an icy creek. I've seen the bridge. He should have died. At age 12, he contracted appendicitis from eating green apples. The doc did an emergency appendectomy on the dining room table and saved him. The appendix ruptured in the doctor's hand.

Whitey nearly made WWI. He was in camp when the war ended. He attended Ohio State University and earned a degree in Electrical Engineering. He and Curtis LeMay were good friend and frat brothers. Whitey became a consulting engineer, traveling all over Ohio and the surrounding states. Mom attended more than one school a year until she was in high school. In 1939, he took a permanent position working for D. J. O'Connor at Formica and became an Executive Vice President in 1949.

When Whitey's only daughter decided to marry my Dad, Whitey mentioned it to his boss. D.J. O'Connor's eyes brightened and he pronounced Grandpa Henry as the best man who had ever worked for him.

Grandpa Whitey was my main man growing up. About his biggest disappoint in life was that I did not take up golf. He was an avid golfer, but we did all sorts of other stuff together. My favorite was fishing. Grandpa was the most universally beloved man I've ever known. He could make anyone laugh. He always knew the right thing to say.

One day, well after he retired, he said something strange to me.

"I have to say that of all the things I've done in life," he began. "Firing people was probably the most rewarding."

WT?. . .

"When anyone came to me for dismissal," he went on "They were usually as sad as anyone could be. Their soul was wholly corrupt. They were broken. They knew it was coming and they could not avoid it. All they could feel was shame and self-loathing. I always took it upon myself to make them know that what I was doing was only ending that misery. They had the rest of their life ahead of them, and they could now do whatever it was that made them happy." He then went on to say that many of these men had come back to him later and told him this had been the turning point in their lives, and they owed their subsequent success to Grandpa's intervention. I've met a couple of these guys. Sure enough, everybody loved Whitey. I also have to say that even though Whitey died when I was 18, his strange admission has done me a lot of good over the years. I've had to change jobs a number of times over the years, and most of them were layoffs. Whitey's words have stuck with me, and they have saved me a lot of unnecessary heartache.

My grandfather is on the right with his hat by his leg. It is 1941 and he is at Quantico standing next to the target he shot that qualified him for the FBI's "Possible Club". He was an FBI special agent from the late 30's thru the mid 60's.
I've got that target and the revolver he shot it with along with the "Possible" medal and letter from Hoover congratulating him.

His wife, my grandmother was more like a mother to me than my own mother and is the one who pretty much raised me. She was an amazing woman. She passed away last year at the age of 99.

Growing up (after he retired from FBI), they would take me and my cousin on a 2 month trip every summer to go fishing in NM, CO and AZ. We did that through most of elementary and junior high. One year, they took us to Six Flags in Dallas and I remember thinking that it was so cool that my 76 yr old grandfather rode every roller coaster there and the "Cliffhanger".

He taught me how to drive, how to shoot, how to be a man and how to be a husband. What I would give for a 5 minute conversation with him now. Gotta stop, allergies are messing up my eyes now.

No......
But I did hear the blues brothers sing it in the movie.

Sorry Slumlord, I can sympathize to a degree as my parents were pretty much the same way. thus one of the reasons why I was pretty much raised by my grandparents. I had some family members that could be described as "colorful personalities" and some that were just plain pieces of [bleep]. I was fortunate to have my grandparents though.

Cool story Shaman, thanks for sharing

My father's parents immigrated from Sweden. He went to the Alaskan Gold rush, she went to Seattle, where they met.
When WWI broke out, my grandfather was drafted, but my grandmother got him out, because my aunt was already born.
My father was born when my grandmother was 48.

My mother's parents met in Bristol Tennessee and married when she was 12. She found a better farm in Bristol VA that went taxes, for only $200, so they moved.
When I was 5 years old in 1956, they put me to work hoeing weeds in the tobacco patch on their $200 farm.

To find out about your own grandparents, read the 1940 census.
https://1940census.archives.gov/index.asp

Paternal grandfather died before I was born - came over from Germany himself at 17 and eventually served in the state legislature.
Maternal grandfather took off for parts unknown, also before I was born.
Paternal grandmother was the only one I ever knew. Didn't see her much but remember onion sandwiches and playing a card game with some small cards with numbers in different-colored quadrants.
Maternal grandmother died before I was born.

Haaa, that happened to me one time. I had to spend the night at my Grandmother's house one time and I wanted to watch something cool like Gun Smoke or Star Trek, but we had to watch Lawrence Welk. It was the only time I ever watched it. I thought it was weird as schit with the bubble machine. I'll never forget it.

Frankie Lane...

I never knew my mom's folks. They were both gone before I was born. My dad's dad was gone before I was born too. Dad's folks were farmers, and had homesteaded a beautiful creek bottom near the town of Washingtonville, Ohio. Grampa was also a carpenter. Grandma was very envolved in getting women the right to vote in Ohio. We have a box full of badges and campaign ribbons from her foray into politics. Mom's mom and dad were German, which was a source of consternation for my Dad's french parents. Mom's mom was actually related to a pilot who flew with Baron Von Richtofen. He was a confirmed ace and killed in action.

Saturday evenings
Bout a 2 yr period
Late 60,s early 70,s
Dinner and Lawrence Welk at Grammy and grampy,s

It was torture......

Grammy also had a prick male siamese cat named "Tara" of all things.
More like terror to me at times.
I did get even with that fugger one time when I yanked the fugg outta the lenght of his kinked vertebra tail.
Cat would go away when he seen me after that.

Mutha fugga.....

Thanks.

And then there was Great-Grandpa Claude.

Claude came from largely Alsatian stock, but they'd been here for quite some time, so he was All-American by most ways of looking at things. He was a young itinerant accountant when he came into Meadville, PA back around 1900. A buddy of his tried to get him to go to the Klondike with him. Claude played it safe and stayed home. The buddy came back a few years later without much to show for it. I've got the gold nugget tie bar he brought to Claude.

Agnes was the belle of Meadville. She was of Mayflower stock and was also a Shreve. Henry Miller Shreve, a great uncle had run the first steamboat up the Mississippi. Shreves went all the way back to the court of Queen Elizabeth. Anges was prime A1 DAR/WASP breeding material, and every man in Meadville wanted her. She was also drop-dead gorgeous by the standards of the time.

Claude came to town before the Spring Cotillion and by fall he was leaving with Agnes on his arm. The moved to Cleveland, where they bought a lot in Cleveland Heights. Grandpa immediately built a garage and they lived in the garage for a time until he could finish the house. By then, he'd decided he didn't like being an accountant and decided to take work as a carpenter with the May Company, a big department store in Cleveland. He spent the next 50 years doing the woodwork for all their window displays at the downtown store. Claude became an expert Musky fisherman on the Cuyahoga River.

When Claude welcomed Whitey as a son-in-law, marrying his youngest daughter, he found that he had the closest he was ever going to having a son. Grandpa Whitey had grown up with an aging and infirm father, it had left a definite hole in his life that Claude filled. Great Grandpa Elmer lived to be just shy of 99, but he was crushed in a steel foundry accident and pronounced dead at one point when he was 40. That was just about the time Whitey was born. Whitey and Claude latched onto each other and spent the next 30-some years hunting and fishing together.

Great Grandpa Elmer slowly recovered from the steel mill accident. Sometime in the 1940's he was entertaining the bevy of maiden aunts he'd collected around him when he retired to the bathroom after supper and did not come out for quite some time. After a half-hour, he called for a pair of slip-joint pliers to be passed under the door, and he emerged another half-hour later with a piece of his own rib that he'd removed with the pliers from his own anus. He was covered in his own blood, but he was triumphant. He lived another 20 years in relatively good health. They finally had to put him in a home after they found him in his 99'th year up a tree, sawing off a dead limb. The only problem was he was sitting on the wrong side of the limb.

I could write a book about 'em if I were the literary type. Good people; all of them. Paternal grandfather born in Scotland; came here in 1914, age 21, and in 1917 crossed into Canada with a few others & joined the Canadian Army. Did 17 months in the trenches with the Canadian Machine Gun Corps. Stopped off in Scotland on the way home after the war and married my grandmother. They both grew up poor as most working class Scots did and enjoyed stuff in the USA they would have never known otherwise...... Like owning a home, and even a car ! Maternal grandparents both born here to German immigrants. Grandmothers family from Bavaria. Grandfathers folks from the Alsace- Lorraine region of Germany. My German great-grand parents all showed up in the early 1880's when there was a big wave of folks from Germany. I've traced down a lot of other stuff about all of them since I retired and joined Ancestry.com. I knew all the basics but now I'm filling in details.

Paternal grandpaw died when I was 3, barely remember him. Grandma lived into her 90's. Remember her well, but wasn't around her much and glad I wasn't. Nice to visit but I could only take her in 'small doses'.

Maternal grandparents I knew well. Grandmother was the 'salt of the earth'. Granddad was of the 'old school'. He grew up farming and what ever it took to raise a family during the depression. He called things the way he saw them and didn't care where he was or who was around. Family came first, no if's and's or but's. He had me in my first bar fight when I was 6 yrs. old. I didn't actually participate, but I was there. He loved to hunt and fish and knew more ways to illegally catch fish than I thought was possible. He mellowed some in his old age, but I suspect there were some folks that were glad to see him go. He asked for and gave no quarter.

I would imagine there is more to that story likely ending with a "good for them".

I bet he never thought the disintegration of the FBI to this degree was ever "possible". But it is.

Just started filling in names and dates on Ancestry this past weekend. Had a head start thanks to some relatives writing some of the info down and preserving it. Now to fill in some details. Pretty interesting so far.

My paternal grand parents - They had 10 children, one died early (1941), my Dad (the oldest) died 12 years ago, the rest are still with us.
Grandma was a saint. Even tempered and a good mother and wife. She was a teacher. She passed in 1983.
Grandpa was an alcoholic and was a mean drunk. He did work hard his whole life. Worked on the AlCan highway. He passed in 1988.

My maternal grand parents - They had 5 children, as far as I know there is only one still alive. My Mom died in 2011.
Grandma was full-blood Dane and ran the family as such. Grew up on a farm in south-central NE. Boy, could she cook . . . and cheat at cribbage. She passed in 1992.
Grandpa was in WWI and got mustard gassed in France. Had health problems after that, Crotchety, gruff old man but did nice leather work. He passed in 1960.

great grand ma rogers blasted a groid with a double barrel and buried him out in the pasture, way back in the early 1900s. She was on the farm alone up by Sudan Tx..

Both sets of grandparents were born in the 1880s. Never actually met either of my granddads. Paternal grandad was born on Feb 29th in a leap year so his actual birthdays were four years apart. Said he used to joke with folks saying he'd fathered his first child before he was 5 and had 6 kids total before he was in his teens. He was a blacksmith and died when my dad was still pretty young himself. Dad was the youngest of his six siblings (that lived). Dad said his dad was fond of motorcycles and kept one at his blacksmith shop all the time.

Strongest memories of my paternal grandmother was her babysitting me as a tyke and trying to chase me down with a keen switch in her hand to whip me with for doing something mean. One of her big pleasures was a fresh new can of Copenhagen snuff, sitting in a rocking and watching or listening to a Billy Graham show. Her hair was snow white and kept it in a bun but when she let it down to brush it reached below her waist.

Only memory I have of my maternal granddad I couldn't have been more than 3 years old at the time and was at his funeral. Was told he drove a horse pulled "dead wagon" back during the big flu epidemic and never quite got over it.

Maternal grandmother was a simple, salt-of- the-earth type woman. Out of bed well before sunup, worked all day and in bed soon after sundown. Never had indoor plumbing, slept on a feather bed, covered in homemade quilts, never cooked on anything but a wood burning stove, heated her house with a coal grate and a big cast iron coal stove. Never wore shoes unless it was freezing cold or she was going somewhere that shoes were required, Her husband was disabled and hospitalized before half of their 6 living kids were in their teens (my mom was the youngest). She walked to a town a few miles from where they lived out in the boondocks and cleaned houses for rich folks, sold or traded eggs, cream and home cured pork for staples, raised a big garden,with the help of the oldest kids and finished raising their kids. She was still out of bed before sunup feeding hogs, cow, chickens and cooking and working around her little place all day up until just a short while before she died in her mid 90s. Nothing she liked better than having a house full of company. Always fixed me blackberry cobbler when I'd sleep over and was always kind. God only knows how many squirrel, rabbits, racoon and quail that woman cooked in her life.

When I was five years old, they would sit me next to my grandfather while he ran the outboard. Often he would say he was having trouble with the motor, and ask me to hold his rod. Odd how many fish I landed while he puttered on the motor.

My Maternal Grandparents were the only ones I knew. Grandmother was great full of personality.
Grandaddy was orphaned at 12. Died a millionaire. He was a hunting legend. Larger than life. He died when I was 6. I was with him one summer on an Island riding in the back of his scout. He stopped and asked me if I'd ever had a hawks foot. I said no. He pulls his 22 pistol leaned out the window shoots once at a hawk circling. It folded up and fell dead in the back of that scout. He put the pistol away and acted like he expected it to happen that way. Celebrities asked him to take them duck and turkey hunting. In my mind John Wayne was trying to act like him. I wish he would have lived longer.

I have a neat story about my grandpa Herb. My dad was at a funeral and this really old lady came up to him and says, "are you Herb's son?" . Dad says, uh, yes? She says I have a story for you. I was there the day Herb was born. Oct 18, 1918. We went over to their house to see the new baby. But when we got there, the baby was laying in a box on the wood pile on the porch. This was in Minnesota and it was cold! We went into the house and my mama asked Herb's mama, "Why is your baby on the wood pile on the porch?". Herb's mama said, "Because he was born dead". My mama told her, "the hell he is! He is crying out there. You go get your baby!".

I would kinda like to thank that old lady myself cuz if my grandpa wouldn't have made it.....no me!

All my grandparents were great people.

In about 1920 or so, my grandfather Arthur Richardson was the track maintenance foreman on the railroad that ran between Arapahoe and Lander WY, this was in the days when almost all of this work was still done by hand, he had a handpowered cart to run up and down the track with, I still have a photo of him on that cart.

One day while working the track bed, he came across a Colt 1903 automatic, caliber 38 ACP. It was in good shape with a little pitting on one side, must have lain there a while. He brought it home and it has been in the family ever since, I have it and still take it out and shoot it every so often.

my grandfather had a construction biz in the teens and 20's and built whole coal mining towns. for any of you western PA people familiar with Colver and Revloc, he built most of the mine house in those towns. he was doing good until the depression hit and never really recovered from what my mom told me. he died in the 40's.

My maternal grandparents both lived long lives. Grandpa passed at 84 and Grandma at 94. He started out working road crews with his team of white Belgians. He was especially proud of those horses and loved to tell of how they worked in unison. He often used them on the farm to haul firewood and could hook them up to a skid of logs, throw the reins up over their backs and they'd go to the farm yard where Grandma would unhook them and send them back to the woods. Grandpa said they'd do that all day long. They both grew up and married during the depression. Grandma was fond of saying, "if you've ate beans, you've ate." There were times when some families were thankful to have beans. They fared okay during those years as they had the farm, milked enough cows to sell milk and always had a big garden. Grandma canned on a wood cook stove until the day they moved off the farm in their 80's. Grandpa suffered a knee injury when working the road crews. Apparently a careless rock wagon driver with a green team let them get away from him. Grandpa tried to scramble up the cut bank to get away from the team and wagon and ended up slipping and going under the wagon. It was partially loaded and the back wheel rolled over both his knees. He was back at work the next day but he limped the rest of his life. I never heard him complain. Ever. He dairy farmed and drove school bus into his 70's and I never knew him to be sick.

My paternal grandfather passed at 77. I never knew my paternal grandmother as she passed when Dad was a teenager. Grandpa was of the same ilk as my mom's Dad. A dairy farmer, tough as nails and a good man. He had a tremendous sweet tooth but had all his teeth, in good shape, to the day he died. I remember watching him turn a jar of honey up and take a couple of gulps. He was never fat. I guess you can get away with that when you do physically hard work every day. He too loved his horses and farmed with them up into the 50's. At that point he bought an 8n Ford and farmed the rest of his days with it. He was especially noted for his fancy poultry. Dad always had a lot of chickens but he was a pragmatist about them. Eggs or meat. He didn't care about show chickens. Grandpa sure loved them though and always had a bunch. He was hell on hawks and owls. Even after it became a legal faux paux to manage raptors for the protection of one's property. I remember him using his few remaining 25 rimfire rounds to finish off owls and hawks he caught in foot traps near the chicken coop. He would set them on top of a tall post and wait for the marauders to land. Before anyone blows a gasket, I'm not condoning what he did. But I'm also not condemning it. He was born of another time and raptors were to be killed if they took an interest in his chickens.

I miss my grandparents. They were wonderful people and a positive influence in my life.

My grandfather was born in 1905. Went to Seminary College in the 20's. He bought his first new car in '29, grabbed a few friends, and drove from Maine to California then down to Mexico before heading home. I've got some pictures from his trip as well as his sales contract on his car. He passed away in '95. That man saw some changes in his lifetime.

always heard different stories, finally tracked down the death certificate of my grandfather who died when my dad was very young. Took several days of digging around.

died of consumption.

found out where he was buried. Been meaning to go there and visit the grave, but its several hours away. Haven't found the time.

no idea what kind of man he was.

My great Grandad killed the last bear on record in Western Oklahoma back in 1919. Saw something up a tree while they were picnicking by the creek, retrieved a single shot shotgun out of the wagon and toppled him with a load of birdshot.

He was a great man, kind, fair, smart, and adventurous. He literally came from nothing, born in a Soddy in SW OK in 1903 to emigrant parents, and died a wealthy successful man in 2001. Never met a person who knew him that had a bad word to say. He loved to hunt, fish, and camp. Could build or fix anything, he used to charge $.50 to overhaul a tractor engine back in the 30’s when times were tough. He outlived 2 of his 6 children as well as his wife, lost his house in a tornado among other farming disasters. But nobody ever saw him without a smile. Anytime things went wrong he’d grin and say, “ Ah it’ll be alright” as he’d get started making whatever it was right.

I had the privilege of knowing and spending time with him until I was 14.

To All,

My maternal grandfather was born sometime in 1883 & was a "survivor" of the LAST Comanche raid into Eastern Texas, as a "babe in arms".
(As I've found no certificate of his birth, he was well under one year old at that time but I'm not sure exactly when he was born..)

His mother, who the family always called "Little Grandmother" (She was about 4 foot 10 inches tall & about 75 pounds. She also spoke LITTLE English, as she was a "mail-order bride" from about 100 miles east of Berlin & until her death at 94YO spoke mostly German.), saw the Comanches coming, grabbed the 4 children, a double barrel 14-gauge shotgun & a .44 BP revolver & hid in the outside fruit cellar.

When the Comanches broke the door open, she started shooting up at them, as she was in the dark & shooting up the narrow stairs into the daylight. = Not wanting to look like cowards, the Comanches continued to try to rush my great-grandmother, down those narrow/steep stairs but never succeeded in reaching her or the children.

According to an article that I found in THE FRANKLIN WEEKLY MESSENGER from the next Friday, when neighbors arrived to see what was happening, they found numerous "- - - - - dead & dying Comanches littering the family door-yard and on a stairway".
(I had always assumed that the story that my grandfather told us as children was a "made up story for children's enjoyment" but it evidently happened just as he said. = My grandfather was an excellent & spellbinding story-teller.)

Note: My 2nd cousin, Mary Leigh Fox-Parker, inherited & still owns the Model of 1860 Army revolver; she won't even talk to me about selling it.
Also the old fruit cellar has collapsed long ago but the sand-stone stairs still exist & in 2009, I measured the width.= 22 inches wide & evidently very steep.
ADDENDA: My grandfather was one of 11 brothers & had 10 sisters & 5 step brothers/sisters

yours, tex

Dad's side,
Grandfather was born in Missouri very near St Louis in 1871, was a jockey as a young man. his father owned horse racing stables.
Went to and homesteaded in New Mexico near the White Sands taking his sister for her health, I think she had TB. He Died when my father was 11, early 1930's.
My Aunt did an ancestry search that found his family had landed in Jamestown VA in 1732.

Grandmother was born 1890 in Texas, was named "Arta" after Buffalo Bill's daughter, went by wagon train to New Mexico where her father homesteaded in Lincoln County.
The man she was married to when I was young had been born in Prussia? and had escaped by swimming a river at the changing of the guard when he was 19.
I recall him telling the story but it was 1970's, I wish I recalled more with more detail.

Mom's side
I wish I knew more about my Grandfather, mostly that he was from Arkansas
Grandmothers maiden name was Newton, from Newton County Arkansas.
They went to California in the 1920's prior to the crash that caused the great depression, crossing the Colorado River on a ferry, then on to Idaho in 1940's

I was told a story as a young man by an Uncle that some of our blood relatives had been killed at Mountain Meadows Massacre Southern Utah in 1857.
He was young and was told by older relatives that said they had known some of the Children that had been returned from that incident.
I never told anyone about that until one-day searching Ancestry. com I found it to be true that we indeed had family slain there.
As a side note and we can't prove this but there are claims the wife's family was there that day on the other side.
Interesting history that would have happened over 160 years ago.

My maternal grandfather was born in 1858. Family legends have him one hell of character. It seems he loved the 'sporting' life and his whiskey more than life itself.
According to legend he would walk 6 miles (each way) to town at least twice a week to visit the local cat house...until his death at the age of 94! Not real sure he remembered why he was there or could still do what he was there for. Perhaps just reliving fond mammaries.
At any rate my mom swore he died with a smile on is face!

To All,

I guess that I should tell you what little that I know about my father's father, my paternal grandfather.

He was born in Jay, Indian Territory (now: Jay,OK) at Christmastime in 1888. - He attended the local school for Indian boys in Jay until he completed "4th Reader", when he was needed to work on the family farm.
When he turned 16YO, he went to work as a manual laborer for the KATY RR, worked his way up to Freight Conductor, met & married my grandmother in 1909.
The RR transferred him to Parsons, KS in that same year.

In late 1913, the IWW insisted that he resign from the Federated Railway Brotherhood, of the AFL & join the IWW. He refused & on 11JAN1914, he was shot in the head & shoved under a moving train by 4 men. - Two other "refusers" were murdered in that manner on that same day, for failure to join the Union.
(The 4 men were arrested & tried but well over 20 witnesses, who were all IWW members, testified that the 4 men could NOT have killed my grandfather & the other 2 murdered men, as they were all in Ft. Smith Arkansas that week. - The jury "hung" & the 4 defendants were not retried.)

My father was born about 2 weeks after his father's death.- My grandmother took the 3 children to her FIL's farm, to take care of & went to Tulsa to teach school. - My father generally only saw her during the Christmas Holidays.
My dad lived on the family farm near Grove, OK until he went to LSU to play football, then played tackle in the NFL until he joined the USAAC on 08DEC41.
(He met/married my mother while playing pro football in Dallas.)

yours, tex

grandpa on my dads side he passed in 1983 blood clot got him after surgery at va hospital in Phoenix. From I been told he joined the Army in 1937 breaking horses in ft bliss Texas, when they got rid of horses and went to tanks they were asking for volunteers for the Army air Corp so he went that route. He was in a B24 flew missions in North Africa. Again can't confirm the breaking horses at ft bliss but being part of b24 crew is true. My grandpa on my mom side last I saw him was 1982 when he went back Texas for treatment of Alzheimer's his kids from his first marriage came and got him. He passed a couple yrs later.

Funny story on my grandpa on my dads side after world war 2 he got back to the states. They were in New York City, him and his buddies who were from Arizona, said heck with this stuff let's get home. So the 5 pf the, hopped a train and made it all the way to Arizona. Few months later, some fella from Army showed up looking for him. He told the guy he was no longer in, the guy told he was still in because him and his buds never were properly discharged lol. So that's what he was there for..

My step grandpa was the one I knew the best, he was from point, tx. Joined army air Corp/Air Force at the age 16 was shipped off to Germany after the war was over. He was shot by another Airforce guy that went bat chit crazy shot up the barracks. his best days in the service were his time being stationed Ladd Army airfield at Ft Wainwright in the 50's. He told my wife before he passed last year. His biggest mistake was not staying in Alaska after his time in the service. He always talked about the land The territory of Alaska was giving folks to entice them to stay. He was a tough ol Texan, he was a gentleman, knew how to treat a lady. My wife was in Arizona for training I found out he had cancer, his time was short. So her and her sister went over visited him. He was very happy to see her. As sick as he was when her and her sister were leaving he walked them too the door and too there car. They don't make them like that anymore. Oh and he dropped the N word like it was nothing lol.

My paternal grandfather was born of a halfbreed woman on a reservation in Oklahoma in 1920. After she died when he was about 3 years old His white father left him with an uncle whom my grandfather (Pocka) described as a mean bastard. Said he'd feed his kids beans for dinner then go cut down a side of pork out of the smokehouse and give it to his hound dogs. They were sharecroppers during the depression and Pocka remembered how when they moved to a new farm it was good hunting with lots of squirrels and rabbits living in the rock fences close to the house, after living there for awhile the game got further and further away. They didn't have a gun but used the dogs to help catch food. Said when it was raining too hard to work the fields his uncle would say "Buck, get your pencil and go to school." Pocka said he'd go hide in the brush down by the creek till about time for school to be out.
He was drafted in WWII in what he described as "a rich mans war" where he learned to drive a car. Landed at Normandy D+1 and said a lot of the guys from the day before we're still laying on the beach. He was in a reconnaissance unit and didn't think much of Patton. Didn't think much of the Army Air Corps either, said they killed a lot of our own men. Said he bent his spoon on a can of frozen meat for Christmas dinner during the Battle of the Bulge. He ended up the highest ranking guy (seargent) in his group by the end of the war after the leadership had been killed or taken prisoner. Said Germans were lobbing artillery rounds that weren't detonating into town at night and said you could hear them skipping down the cobblestone streets. One hit the brick wall of the church they were sleeping in and my grandfather was saved by the piano he was sleeping under. His Leutenant was buried under the bricks but alive and ended up ordering the men to leave him as the Germans were right on them. He was taken prisoner but survived the war. Said they were pretty hard on SS troops when they took them prisoner.
Said a Colonel offered him an officers commission after the war but he wanted out. Told me when he was an old man "I sure hope I didn't hurt any of them fellers over there but I sure shot at a lot of them!"
After the war he came out to California and became a timber faller which he did for 33 years. Back then the strength of your back determined how well your family lived. Shot a lot of big bucks over the years and had a severe dislike for government or authority till the day he died.