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Jan 2007 Issue
By LaRae Free Kerr
“I had the perfect childhood,” my sister said. “What a coincidence, I did too,” said I. One of the reasons our childhoods were ideal is that our parents made sure we met and built relationships with our living ancestors. And we were blessed with a plethora of them. Each living ancestor gave us significant memories and some taught us important skills.
When Sis and I were three and four, Mom dressed us in little pleated skirts and drove us to the hospital in Caliente, Nevada. There we walked the long, antiseptic-odored hall to a certain room. Inside, Mom introduced us to our great, great grandmother, Melissa Keziah Rollins Lee Heybourne. She was ninety-eight years old, having been born at Cajon Pass near San Bernardino, California in 1851.
I remember a tiny, thin woman in a tall bed. She took my hand in hers. It was a hand almost skeletal, thinly layered with wrinkled skin. But almost sixty years after that event, I remember her taking my hand, and with that act, crossing a hundred years of history.
The 80th birthday party of Melissa’s daughter, Ida Dionitia Lee Hollingshead, our great grandmother, held in the Panaca social hall, was packed with people. In one clarifying moment, I understood all these people were related to great Grandma Hollingshead. It was earth-shaking to take the next step. If they were related to her, they were related to me!
Grandma Hollingshead’s daughter was my own dear Gram, Dollie Wadsworth. Gram insisted we speak correct English even though many of our teachers – some related – didn’t. It’s at her home that I gathered eggs, milked cows, used an outhouse, hauled wood for the fireplace, washed several million dishes, learned how to make butter and ate divine lemon pies. Gram, Mom, aunts and cousins, Sis and I talked about ideas and experiences and what they meant as we broke beans, shelled corn and drew the bloody skins off beets.
Grandpa Wadsworth wandered in and out of our lives as well. He teased us about our “see-more” night wear and everything else. He took me Christmas tree hunting one year, and it is one of my favorite memories. Once when Mom was very sick with a cold, he asked her to help with some cows. I went along of course and remember an old sick cow taking off after my poor sick mother. Mom reached the fence and safety before the horror was full-blown. But it was mighty close.
Our other Grandma, Rachel Wheeler Free, lived only a block away. Sis and I spent plenty of time there too. Grandma read books to us – Girl of the Limberlost and Tarzan – all through the night sometimes. She taught me to sew on her treadle machine and filled her parlor with magic – rag dolls, puppets, matching dresses - just for us.
Grandpa Free died when I was nine, but Sis and I remember him well. He built us a playhouse out of a huge pipe, the diameter tall enough for all six feet of him to stand up in. Then he decorated it with a little green table and two matching chairs. Near the end, when he was so sick, he played checkers and Chinese checkers with me, letting me win often, but also teaching strategy.
For a short time, Grandma Free’s mom, my great grandmother Rachel Talmage Wheeler, lived with Grandma and Grandpa Free. She was short and exceedingly round. Her memory came and went, and she always had peppermints for us.
Mom and Dad made sure Sis and I knew our living ancestors – one great, great grandmother, two great grandmothers and all four grandparents. Knowing them is part of the reason our childhoods were so great.
On the other hand, there are those like my husband who did not have the chance to interact with their ancestors. Because he missed that in his life, he is making a deliberate effort to become acquainted with his descendants. Hence the grandchildren party he spearheaded last Friday.
If you are a living ancestor, or if your children have living ancestors, please get together and create a chance to love each other.
LaRae Free Kerr, M. ED. can be reached at Itsallrelatives@sfcn.org and history@itsallrelatives.us.
