It turns out my mother’s stories were true
My mother was an excellent writer. She was also a good storyteller—that is, an entertaining one—although she sometimes embellished things for the sake of the story. I know this for a fact because I sometimes heard her stories about me and used to chafe at the fact that certain things were exaggerated.
Most of the stories I know about my mother’s family and my father’s family came from my mother. My father said hardly a word about any of it, but my mother was a talker. There were even some family secrets, held for a century, that she divulged to me.
But I took her stories with a substantial grain of salt, knowing that she wasn’t above taking a bit of poetic license with her tales. But you know what? I’ve developed increasing respect for her, because every single story of hers about the families’ past that I’ve been able to research and find any evidence about—sometimes through archives (such as the census), sometimes through Googling, and sometimes through old newspaper stories—has been true.
I now see her as a paragon of accuracy, at least for the past, if not for her amusing and entertaining stories about me.
Not only that, but she did something else that was extraordinarily helpful: for many of our old photos, she wrote on the back the names of who was in the picture or her best guess about who was in the picture. She wasn’t always right, nor did she write on the back of all of them since I doubt she even had a guess as to the identity of some of them. But boy, do I appreciate seeing her characteristic slanted handwriting when I turn those photos over.
Neo…you could have been describing my own mother! One of the family stories she was fond of telling was of her paternal grandfather. Her story went as such: Her grandfather who lived in Brooklyn, was coming home from work and as he stepped off of the trolley car he was run down by a beer wagon (this was 1915) and died. She was also prone to embellishment so I never actually believed the beer wagon part. A few years after she passed away, I was doing some poking around on Ancestry and happened upon a probate pertaining to her grandfather, and lo and behold he was run over by a beer wagon! The funny thing is, his wife was listed as Amy. My mother never knew he had a “third” wife and she was no longer there for me to tell her. She would have had a field day with that information! She lived to 95 and there isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t miss her…and her stories!
My wife is an archivist. Undated photos of unidentified people make her gnash her teeth. On her behalf I praise your mother.
I am reminded of my sister’s sending me an enormous photo – I would estimate 18″X 12″ – of our great-grandmother and our grandmother when she was 6 years old. I found a relative who would take the photo- a second cousin for whom the relatives in the photo were his great-grandmother and great-aunt. My cousin and his wife had a good story about an exhausting cross-country drive with a newborn baby on the way to a postdoc fellowship in Europe, where they rested up for several days at my grandmother’s- their great aunt.
In the photo I was struck at how attractive my great-grandmother was at age 40, and the determined look in the 6 year old who became my grandmother. Even then it was obvious she got her way.
In my 20s and 30s I heard a lot of family stories from my grandmother, who lived to 95.
I love to hear stories with a happy ending! A tip, Neo: if you have not done so, immortalize those photos but copying them in electronic format, including copying the handwritten documentation on the back. Your descendants will thank you!
I’ve started going through old photos with my own mother, not only to label them but to start conversations. Like many elderly she remembers 50 years ago better than yesterday.
Unfortunately my niece, at 18 the only “child” in the family, doesn’t seem interested. Maybe some day.
A shiver and a sigh.
Godspeed, Mom.
Dad, too.
When my mother died in 1986 at 79 and my dad was 84 years old we thought we would be gone within six months yet the lived to be 93 years old. He had lost most of his eyesight however he had 24 hour care in his home for six more years until he was 92 and he dictated and had printed out his memories for us, four of us children and children and now grandchildren.
His was an interesting story for an extremely poor kid who traveled by covered wagon from Arkansas when he was five years old taking 30 days to cross Oklahoma in 1908 and settle in Western Oklahoma. He went on to work him self through college on an athletic scholarship, and ROTC which called him up in 1942, achieved a Masters and part of a Doctorate degree at that time in Education.
We treasure his stories about riding to school on a one eyed horse with his two older sisters. His ability to run well enough that his little Oklahoma town sent him to Chicago to run in a national track meet and his winning big eight records in the mile and cross country while he was also captain of the Oklahoma University wrestling team.
Our father went on to become a civic leader in his town and a Chairman of the Board of a Mult-istate Insurance company in the 1950’s. He was a fine decent man who tried to help every person he ever met. We, who knew him, both friends and family loved him ever so much.
Neo- Your mother sounds exact like my mother. She was an excellent story teller who loved to write, and often the stories she told were embellished with details which although not exactly accurate, made the stories much more interesting and colorful.
To our surprise, one day she got one of her novels published! The young adult novel “Oren Bell” was actually praised by Kirkus Reviews, Publishers Weekly and others. She had a couple of others published later, but to be honest they were pretty bad. She continued to write however, until the day she died. Even in hospice dying of cancer, knowing that she would never finish the book she was working on, she kept writing until the day she died. She was a sweet kind woman and we all miss her.
“All My Mother’s Stories Were True” sounds like a great book title. Darn, you’ve already dibsed it!
Wisdom truly comes with age. As a teen I would blow off my mother’s observations about my naive view of the world only to admit as an adult that she was virtually always right. We are the product not only of our parents genes but the values they inculcated in us.
My mother lived to 103 and lived in three centuries. Born in 1898 and died in 2001, two weeks before 9/11 so she was considerate to the end. After 9/11, none of her children and grandchildren could have attended her funeral. I took her to see “Titanic” when it came out. She remembered it as it sank when she was 14. She had lots of stories and my kids would fly from CA to Chicago to spend a week with her.
Mike K:
Three centuries! That’s impressive.
My grandfather on my mother’s side was the story teller in our family. And, yes, he did embellish his stories, but they were based on facts. Born in 1876 in Joplin, Missouri, he was the son of a master carpenter and a (supposedly) part Pawnee mother. His father was, as he said, “a rolling stone” who never settled in one place for very long. The family Bible has the dates and places of birth for each of the seven children – each in a different place. Five of the seven survived – they were hardy people. They traveled by wagon from place to place in Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota and Oklahoma. His father could easily find work as a carpenter wherever they stopped for a year two. In about 1900 his father decided to quit moving around and start farming near Enid, Oklahoma. That didn’t last. He eventually moved to Portland, Oregon for spell and then homesteaded a place in Eastern Colorado where he died in 1934. His wife, my great grandmother, moved in with my grandparents until she died in 1937.
My grandfather did not want to be a farmer. He left the farm in Enid and began working as a carpenter. He married a local Enid girl and moved to Denver, Colorado where there was a lot of building going on. It was there that he decided he wanted to learn to be an electrician. After getting his electrician’s card, he worked on the Daniel’s and Fisher’s Tower, at that time the highest building in Denver.
In 1907 he was hired, along with many other tradesmen, to go to Estes Park, Colorado and build the Stanley Hotel. F. O. Stanley had built a hydro-electric plant to provide electricity to his hotel. It would be the first resort in the area with electricity. My grandfather helped wire the Stanley. After the hotel was completed, my grandfather was hired to run the power plant and to help with running power lines to other businesses in the area. Asa result, my grandparents stayed in Estes Park, eventually opening the hardware store there.
During WWII, there were no men between ages 18 and 40 in Estes Park. My grandfather was one of the few electricians around. So, at the age of 66 he would do wiring jobs around the area. I was his gofer. I could run and get tools or materials and save a lot of wear and tear for him. He told me many stories as we worked together and afterward. I wish now I had written them down. They were very much tales of how to live while traveling by wagon from place to place. It took know how, an enterprising spirit, and hard work. I’ve always prized those stories as a part of my heritage.
My favorite story was about him seeing a band of Sioux hostiles that were brought into a camp near Pierre, South Dakota. He snuck out to the camp hoping to see these fierce and noble savages. What he saw was a bedraggled bunch of humans with raggedy clothes, matted hair, and dirty bodies. They had been on the run from the cavalry for several weeks and were in bad shape. He told me that he never felt sorrier for anyone than he did for those Indians. They were in a bad spot and were losing their way of life. But he told me further that through out history people had been subject to being conquered by more advanced nations or civilizations and he came to realize it was not going to be different for the Indians. He was a man with a fifth grade education, but he read widely. I’ve seldom met anyone wiser than he.
“He told me many stories as we worked together and afterward. I wish now I had written them down.” – J. J.
One of the triumvirate of genealogists’ complaints, along with “why didn’t someone put names on the back of this picture?” and “why did they only put initials on the tombstone?”
Our family camps near Estes Park every year, but so far we haven’t gotten inside the Stanley to take a look, although it’s in all the Colorado guidebooks, more for the Stephen King connection than its far more interesting heritage.
We have been to the top of the D&F Tower, and thought it was worth booking a tour for our Welsh friends when they came to town.
Remember that the stories you are telling your grandchildren now are the ones they will wish they had written down, so do it for them, instead of spending all your spare time reading blogs.
😉
AesopFan: “Remember that the stories you are telling your grandchildren now are the ones they will wish they had written down, so do it for them, instead of spending all your spare time reading blogs.”
Good advice. Amazingly, I actually did just that. Several of my nieces and nephews (I have no grand children 🙁 ) expressed interest in our family story some years ago. At the time I had ambitions of becoming a published author. I was writing a lot. So, it wasn’t a huge chore to sit down and relate many of the stories my grandfather told me. Plus many more about my father’s parents and my mother and father. Not only that, but I have written my autobiography up to my retirement in 1993. At one time I thought I had a lot of stories to tell, but they’ve mostly been told now. I’ve done my duty, ma’am. 🙂
OldTexan , where in Western Oklahoma did your grandfather settle?