Good-morning, kittens & dawgs. June is nearly half way gone and so is the year. Last week, you met my maternal grandma’s parents in Meet my grandparents Part III. Today, I want to share a photo gallery of my grandpa’s parents and siblings.
Meet my great-grandparents: William Riley and Mary Jane Pruitt Hagerman.
According to my finds on ancestry.com Will (25) & Mary (18) married April 18, 1898 and had 11 (9 boys and 2 girls) children. It appears they depended on farming as a way of life. I imagine like many families of that time, they peddled their crops for pay to buy things they couldn’t grow. There are many mouths to feed in a large family, but the kids labored along side Ma and Pa in the fields.
I don’t know the year of these photos, but I just love the photograph on the left of Grandma Mary-Jane with the churn. I think this was either for churning butter or making buttermilk or maybe both. Do you know? Life was simple in those days. Simple as in no modern conveniences and material possessions. It was a harsh life. I wouldn’t like living in those times. Visiting is okay, if time travel was possible, but only for a day. My great-grandparents died 2-years apart. Grandma Mary-Jane passed in 1954, and Grandpa Will in 1956. They never knew me because I wasn’t born until 1961.
For years I wondered why I didn’t know or remember my Grandpa’s brothers and sisters. I certainly spent a lot of time with them when I was kid and yet I have no memory of them. Now, I know why. There’s 24 years between oldest and the youngest. Grandpa was the baby. Mose(1902-1932) & Vester (1906-1943) died before my birth and John R. (1908-1961) passed the year I was born.
Did you notice the strong resemblance between Grandpa and his older brother Shade? They could pass for twins, except there is a huge age gap between them.
ATTENTION FAMILY MEMEBERS, if you’re reading this, my photo records lack pics of Grandpa Will & Grandma Mary-Jane’s daughters ~ Myrtle Victoria Hagerman-Vance (1915-2012) and Clara Hagerman-Green-Hawks-Woody(1922-1981). Yep, dear ole auntie Clary (another name given to her) married three times. Good grief one husband is hard enough to break in, but three? I suppose remarrying was all a woman could do to survive in those days. Also, I need pictures of Mose, Vester, Jim (1912-2004), & Mitch(1917-2003). Your help is needed to make this complete!
Now to celebrate the small things in my life.
I celebrate
- you’re in my heart, you’re in my soul
- you’ll be my breath should I grow old
- you are my lover, you’re my best friend
- you’re in my soul
- 36 years of marriage with DH!
What are you celebrating?
Let’s celebrate making new friends together and we can begin by joining Friendship Friday and Follow Who? Social-Weekend blog hops. Thanks for visiting. Don’t forget to stop by tomorrow for a little boogie session with Saturday Songsuasion!
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What a fabulous family history you have, Cathy! My sister is the keeper of ours, I helped her once with it, but haven’t a clue what she may have found since. Enjoyed your Celebrate the Small Things… happy anniversary 🙂
Nine children! My uterus just ached.
My grandmother had 12 kids on one side of my family, and my other grandmother had 8. In south america, this was pretty common in that generation for similar reasons — they needed kids to work for the family. Kids played outside all the time because… let’s face it… who’d want to be stuck inside with a dozen screaming kids? My mom was the first of the 12-kid family, and in those days the older kids took care of the younger kids. All her siblings, to this day, call her “The General”. I used to laugh at this, but now that I have my own two kids I can imagine how tough she had to be to raise 11 siblings.
-T
Tanya Miranda – Writer, Dreamer, Intergalactic Superhero
Tanya, I know what you mean! I cannot imagine having that many kids. I remember my maternal grandma telling me how she had to take care of the younger ones. She was the oldest of 10 and she said when she was younger that she wouldn’t have babies every two years like her mom, but instead she wound up having her own babies about every year. lol She had 7 children. Can you imagine being pregnant that long? Just as soon as one baby is born, then another one is conceived. Fertility wasn’t an issue! lol
Wow, you’re not kidding about your grandpa and his brother looking like twins!! And I love the name Mary Jane! How sweet that that was your grandma’s name. I was very luck to know all my grandparents, and be very close with my maternal grandparents. I miss them everyday 🙂 I actually had a dream with my grandmother in it last night…she was with my dog, Emmie!
Happy Anniversary! I hope you find a special way to celebrate with eachother!
~Katie
Katie, I like the old names. Grandpa named his youngest daughter, Mary Lou. Both names belonged to other women in the family, so I would imagine they just put the names together for my aunt. I like that they used family names alot. It gets confusing, but it’s still nice. I wish we had done this with our kids. Our son, we named after his paternal grandpa and gave him his dad’s middle name.
Boy, we’re really spoiled these days, aren’t we? No plowing the fields, just flipping through the thousands of TV stations from the comfort of our couch in our air-conditioned house. I loved the pics and the bios of your family. Happy Anniversary!!!
Lexa, yes we are spoiled and I will take it that way any ole day over my grandma’s life. 😀
Congrats on your anniversary!
I love the pics and info on your family. I’ve been digging into ancestry.com of late, and it’s fascinating, and sort of sad. I can trace one branch of my family quite far back, though the others (and the one I’m most curious about) I am stuck. One puzzle piece at a time, I suppose.
Best to you!
Kelley, doing the whole ancestry dig is interesting. I don’t know what I’m going to do when I get to my daddy’s dad side because that’s like a black hole. My daddy was born out of wedlock, so all I know is grandma told him who his father is and he was a married man. That being said, his half-kin acknowledge him as their half-brother. It could’ve gone the other way, but I guess they knew that their daddy was a rascal. I feel bad for my grandma (I think she was naive) and my grandpa’s wife. Can you imagine the embarrassment both women had to live with and the man got off scot-free. His reputation was never spoiled.
Thanks for visiting me on the A/Z road trip 😉 So neat to read about your great grandparents here. Love the pictures you have of them too to share. I hope you can get other pictures that you are lacking 🙂
You are right, life was so much more simpler back then, but so much harder with how much had to be done for just basic survival. I’m always glad I’m right where I am here. I don’t think I could last long if I had to do the chores my grandmother did.
My mom came from a family of 10; 6 girls, 4 boys. I have so many cousins and now 2nd and 3rd cousins, hardly know a 10th of them I think 🙂
Congrats on 36 years of marriage!! Definitely an accomplishment (we are right behind you, 35 in October 🙂
betty
Wonderful old photos of your family, Cathy. 🙂 Congratulations to you and DH for 38 years of wedded bliss!! That’s something to be proud of in this day and age. We’re working up to 42 years and can’t believe how quickly the time as passed. Have a great weekend!
Hi Cathy,
Thanks for introducing me to your blog and your family! I love hearing stories like the one you shared.
Have a great weekend.
Thanks for stopping by Deanie! It’s always a joy to have return visits. Here’s hoping we’ll bump into one another more often in Blogosphere!
Congratulations to your anniversary!
Those pictures remind me a lot of my grandparents. The 11 kid thing too. As a child, I always wondered why they never smiled on the photos and thought they were always grumpy. Now, that I know better, I love to look at the old pictures, especially when my mother is around to give some old stories with them. Good luck in coming up with the rest of the pictures!
Tonja, thanks for stopping by. Yeah, I know what you mean about the long faces in the old photographs. Technology sure has changed, since those early days. I hope I am able to fill in the blanks on missing family members. Pictures are the hardest to come up with, though.
Great to have old photos like that. My mother didn’t have too many but I guess one of my cousins now still has some ancestral photos that his mother had.
The churn was used for making buttermilk into butter if I’m not mistaken. I remember some butter being made like this when I was in kindergarten or first grade. I forget the process, but I think the buttermilk is separated from the cow’s milk and then churned until it thickens into butter. Something like that.
Arlee Bird
A to Z Challenge Co-host
Wrote By Rote
Lee, I do remember grandma using a cheese cloth to catch the milk fat, but I’m not sure if this was before or after churning. Speaking of butter, I do remember having some fresh made sweet cream butter that she made once and that was the best stuff ever. I haven’t had anything like that since that time, too. It sure would be nice to have some delicious home-made butter with some fresh baked biscuits.
I know exactly what you’re saying. In my young boy school experience I vividly remember them putting some of the creamy soft fresh butter on a cracker for each of us. Best butter I ever tasted! One of my few memories from those early schools so that butter must have been really special.
Arlee Bird
A to Z Challenge Co-host
Wrote By Rote