Sunday, June 30, 2019

The Sunday Five - Great Grandparents

This is my maternal grandfather's parents, my great grandparents on my mother's father's side.  Don't they look like a happy couple? 

Five questions about family:
1: Did you know your great grandparents? 
2: When was the most recent generation of immigrants in your family history? 
3: Who is the the custodian of your family photos? 
4: What work did your great grandparents do? 
5: Would you trade places with your great grandparents? 

My Answers: 
Five questions about family:
1: Did you know your great grandparents? Only one, my father's mother's mother, lived with my grandparents for a decade, she died when I was 18. 
2: When was the most recent generation of immigrants in your family history? My father's mother was born in London, moved to the States on the eve  of World War I. 
3: Who is the the custodian of your family photos? My sister and I split them up, I have the oldest of the old.  
4: What work did your great grandparents do? On my mother's side, farmers and farmers.  On my father's side a tunnel digger, and - well it is complicated, he was born a trust fund baby - spent it all - and worked in the power plant at Henry Ford's estate for about 30 years.  
5: Would you trade places with your great grandparents? No.  They had relatively hard lives.  

Your answers in the comments, please! 

4 comments:

  1. 1. No. All my great-grandparents were long since dead by the time I came along.
    2. Most recent immigrants? My maternal grandparents emigrated from Switzerland to Canada in 1924. My paternal ancestors from England arrived in the Thirteen Colonies probably in the early 1700s and then came to Upper Canada as United Empire Loyalists after the American Revolution.
    3. I am.
    4. My paternal great-grandfather was a blacksmith, miller and farmer, first in Ontario and then as a homesteader in Manitoba. My great-grandmother and her children (all under 14 years of age) homesteaded on his claim when he dropped dead right after they joined him in Manitoba. My maternal great-grandfather taught mathematics (I believe) in some kind of Swiss school or college and his wife would have been a wife and mother.
    5. Trade places? No way. Their lives and times were much too hard.

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  2. 1: no, all of them were deceased by 1954
    2: all great grandparents - austria, czech republic, UK
    3: my mother
    4: I have no idea
    5: nope

    ReplyDelete
  3. 1: Did you know your great grandparents? Only through stories. The only two in the United States died before I was born.
    2: When was the most recent generation of immigrants in your family history? All four of my grandparents.
    3: Who is the the custodian of your family photos? Fortunately, I have many from my parents and my father had many from his father. A cousin took the photos that my maternal grandparents had and she won't share them with anyone.
    4: What work did your great grandparents do? My maternal grandmother's parents had a dairy farm in Poland, but by the time he applied for citizenship in the USA in 1920, my great-grandfather was listed as a presser in a clothing factory in NYC.
    5: Would you trade places with your great grandparents? Not a chance. Difficult lives, all of them. And my maternal grandfather's parents died/were killed in Warsaw during WWII. I have no idea what happened to my father's grandparents in Russia. I have a photo of two of them from around 1900 before all their kids left for England and the USA.

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  4. 1) I knew one. We lived with my mother's maternal grandmother who was born in 1856. She lived a long life, dying at 95 in 1952. She taught me to read.
    2) I immigrated to the U.S. from England in 1967.
    3) My brother in the U.K. has most of them, I have quite a few too.
    4) Paternal great grandfather was a baker with his own shop. Maternal great grandfather was a farrier.
    5) No. Life was too hard.

    ReplyDelete