The Saturday Morning Post: Mary Louise Broadhurst

She was born in Swansea on the south coast of Wales in 1888, her father was a brickmaker, her mother was listed as a housewife. She married George in her late teens, she was 20 years old when she had her second child, my Grandmother - my father's mother.  

She seldom talked about growing up in Swansea.  One day she told me her father rode a train from a station at the end of the street to and from his work.  He was late one morning, chased the train down the platform and was pulled onto the train by his mates. 

When we visited Swansea, I took along a copy of her birth certificate that my grandmother had obtained when she became a US citizen.  I went into the local tourist office and showed them the records I had.  The lady at the counter searched a couple of maps, and couldn't find the street.   She said hang on for a second, and disappeared into the back room.  When she came back a much older volunteer was with her, a sweet lady who was probably 90 years old.  She looked at the birth certificate and said, "oh I remember that neighborhood, it was bombed into ruins in the war. When the neighborhood was rebuilt, the eliminated that street, she took a pen a marked an X on the map, saying, "it was right there."   

We walked over, passing the remains of the train platform, a couple of blocks away.  There was a retirement home where the house she was born in had been.  A couple of blocks away was the parish church.  It was locked tight.  We stopped a local pub for a diet coke, the locals perched on stools asked where I was from and what brought me off the beaten path in Wales.  I explained, he pulled out his phone and called the Vicar, who unfortunately was unable to come to the church before we needed to leave town.  Odds are her baptismal records are in the books. 

She married a tunnel digger.  In search of better work, and getting out of Europe on the eve of World War I, he took a job in New York.  After the Great War, he took a job in Mexico City for a couple of years, sending the wife and kids back to live with family in London.  They returned to New York, then moved around as new jobs opened.  

My earliest memory of Mary, was when I was about 10.  She was widowed, living in an apartment on the top floor of her youngest daughter's home in Detroit.  She had some health problems, and surgery. Then racism took over Detroit, her daughter sold in a panic, and Mary came to live with my grandparents on the farm.  Just around the corner from where I grew up.  She lived with them for several important years, in my formative years.  Her eyesight was very poor, she would sit for hours listening to the radio, or conversing with whoever was available.  I loved it.  I think she did also.  When I was about 15 she had another illness, was hospitalized, then cared for in a nursing home. When I was 16 she broke a hip. My grandmother was in Florida, I flew to Florida to help her drive home (to drive her home.)  She died the fall I turned 19.  

Lots of great memories.