To the Midwest

My 6th Great Grandfather left Guilford, England and settled in Guilford, CT. He was one of the signers of the Guilford Covenant. Later in 1790 part of the family settled in Chenango Bridge, NY and the built the first house in that area. Generations later my Grandfather was born there in 1855 but as a young man moved west to homestead in Hendley, Nebraska. He married my Grandmother in 1885 and seven children were born. One daughter died in infancy and one son died at the age of sixteen. The children are buried in the Lynden Cemetery along side my Grandmother's parents Marie and Magnus Larson. My Grandmother came to this country with her parents and four siblings from Sweden in 1871 when she was five years of age. Great Grandfather Magnus Larson brought his family from Sweden and traveled to Nebraska via Illinois. He was naturalized as a citizen of the United States in Jacksonville, Illinois in 1878.

My Grandfather farmed, not too successfully, and when he heard of the many trees and better farm land in Missouri was eager to move. They moved to a farm and apple orchard near Humansville, MO. Here was a more productive farm and they soon began selling apples, tomatoes and produce to the local store. They even had a small canning factory for tomatoes and hired several people to help out. Grandma picked wild blackberries to sell. She was always so prim and proper in her ankle length dress, except when she was picking blackberries. One day as she was picking blackberries wearing Grandpa's overalls, a neighbor happened to see her and stopped to visit. Grandma was so embarrassed. She visited, but kept herself hidden in the brambles until he was gone and well out of sight.

The farm was soon too much for them and they moved into town. They celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary with a family picnic in the park. Grandpa was 80 years old. He had never gone down a sliding board and thought it looked like fun. Before anyone knew it, there he was up the ladder and ready to slide down. Fortunately there were no broken bones. This anniversary was a few days before I was born so I didn't have many years with them. I remember how Grandpa's mustache tickled. I think I remember the floor plan of the house in town but I certainly remember the sounds and smells. The cooing of the mourning doves and the sounds of the ice plant are very real. I remember the smell of morning coffee and the frying of pancakes from the wood cookstove. There was a "smoke house" just outside the back door over a cellar, a small barn and a garden. Grandma raised goats with the help of little dog Andy.

In 1921 they owned a bakery in Humansville.

When ill health got in the way they were moved to Springfield and lived two houses from us. I remember Grandpa sitting with his ear on the radio trying to hear the Cardinal baseball game through all the static. Grandma did lots of sewing, made beautiful button holes by hand and mended the hated brown cotton stockings I was forced to wear. It seems I was constantly falling down and tearing out the knees of the stockings and I can hear Grandma saying, "Your knees will heal but these stockings won't!"

Grandpa died in January 1944 of pneumonia. Grandma was not well and would eat very little. When asked if she had eaten, it was always the same, "Oh, yes, I had bread and butter and applesauce." Grandma died in December of that same year.

A red hat before it was a society

It was always fun to visit Grandma and Grandpa M. on the farm. I would stay a week or two each summer. They put in very busy days as both were up long before I climbed out of bed. Grandpa, farming with mules, was in the fields early, or tending to the livestock and Grandma probably would be out in the garden picking what needed to be canned that day. She canned nearly everything they didn't eat fresh, plus wild blackberries and gooseberries. She canned vegetable soup, stews and even chicken. After she got a freezer her life became a little easier. I remember going with her in the early spring to gather "greens", polk, dandelions, etc.

Lunch was really dinner with meat, potatoes, vegetables and desserts. Supper was usually left overs from lunch or milk and cornbread. Grandma made biscuits or cornbread for every dinner. After lunch Grandpa would lie down for a brief nap before returning to the field. If there was no canning to be done Grandma was free to sit down and do her sewing. She made most of her clothes, especially her "everyday" dresses, aprons and even Grandpa's shirts. She quilted, made tatted and crocheted lace for pillowcases, handkerchiefs and even underwear and did lots of embroidery. She made stuffed dolls and animals and baby clothes anytime a new baby was on the way. I have booties, bibs and sweaters she made for our oldest son. One time she made a child size doll dressed in blue jeans we all named "George".

Grandma didn't go many places other than to town on Saturday afternoon for groceries and to the "dime store" for more crochet thread. She didn't get to church very often because there was no help on the farm but she always had her radio preachers she listened to regularly. The main reading material in the house was the Bible and the Cappers Weekly. I loved the stories in the Cappers Weekly newspaper.

Anytime she went someplace, even if it was to our house for the day, she always wore a hat. It was mostly black because that was what Grandpa wanted her to wear. She always wanted a red hat but he thought it might make her look like a "hussey"! One of the yearly events they didn't miss was decoration day at Hopewell cemetery, where relatives on both sides of their family were buried. It was an all day event of taking care of the graves, visiting and a pot luck dinner. Grandma cooked for a week getting ready for the first Saturday in May. Not long before she died she got her red hat and wore it proudly on decoration day.

"I see Grandpa's house, I see Grandpa's house"

Grandpa and Grandma moved many times. I know my Dad and his brothers and sister were born in Polk County, MO, and Dad in Halfway, MO, halfway between Bolivar and Buffalo. Dad went to high school in Humansville and spent his last year of high school there while his folks moved to a dairy farm in Chandler, AZ.

The first Missouri farm I remember was a fieldstone house just south of Bolivar that Grandpa built himself. The farm was on rolling hills and had a pond with a spring where cream, butter, eggs and milk were kept. He had cows, chickens, turkeys and farmed with mules. I remember spending time with them in the summer time and helping Grandma feed the thrashing crew. The table would be loaded with home grown vegetables, fried chicken and always pie for desert. I didn't venture far from the house after a turkey chased me out of the yard one day.

We always loved to go to the farm and the three of us watched carefully as we got nearer because we wanted to be the first to espy the house and the first to sing out, "I see Grandpa's house!" The house was near the road on a rise of the rolling countryside and we could spot it from a couple of miles away. You can still see it from that distance and it still looks like "Grandpa's house" but the present owners have enlarged and improved it.

Grandma was a good cook and everything was seasoned with butter and cream and always fat meat. Grandpa always butchered the fattest calf, hog and even chickens. Grandma loved to bake angelfood cakes and always fed Grandpa two or three eggs every morning plus a couple of egg yolks. She saved the whites of the eggs until a dozen were saved, enough for an angelfood cake. Grandpa worked hard on the farm and there never seemed to be a worry about cholesterol in those days.

The next move was an apple orchard. We three loved to play hide and go seek among the trees about dusk. I still have a long scar from the barbed wire that got in the way of the game. I loved to watch them make apple cider.

He continued to farm a place, refinish the house and then sell it. Even after he sold his large farms he would still have a large truck garden selling strawberries, grapes, raspberries and tomatoes. He wouldn't sell the size strawberries in the store today - his baskets were always filled with huge ripe strawberries. On one place I used to pick strawberries for .25 cents a basket. My brothers couldn't see the strawberries until they were in a dish with cream but I made some spending money that way. I would pick strawberries until I happened to see a snake and then the days picking was over.

After Grandma died in 1964, Grandpa couldn't stand the stay in the house so sold it, bought another lot and built a new house. There, too, he had a large truck garden and people came from all over the county for his produce.

In early 1975 at the age of 89, Grandpa suffered a slight stroke but continued to live alone and take care of his garden. He decided to sell and suggested he might like to find a place in Springfield, near my Dad. He put his place up for sale and it sold right away. One day he called Dad and told him the papers were signed for the place and he was ready to move to Springfield. Later that week a neighbor found him in his back yard where he had died of a heart attack. He had lived a good, hard working 89 years doing what he loved. He is fondly remembered.

Family

Several years my very creative,technology savvy son tried to get his mom out of the hunt and peck era and into computers with a Mac laptop. With it I learned to get and send e-mail and do a bit of searching on the web. Mostly I did genealogy and have spent a lot of time and fun researching both sides of the family. Over time the laptop and the mom grew older and slower and that led to a desktop PC. Yes, I know I was told that since I learned on a Mac I should never try the PC, but with a bit of use on a PC from a summertime job, I soon was able to not master, but use, both of them. I enjoy being able to communicate with family and friends with the computer and now------who knows! This same son has me trying my hand at cyber space in the form of a "blog!" I saw in the morning paper that there were 12 million bloggers now in the United States - wow! I still have so much to learn about this "cyber age" and wish I lived nearer both sons so they could help be out of some of the tangles I get myself in with this miraculous machine.

After medical reports in January that hinted of the big "C" word, and was later confirmed, I began a journal to help me through the rough parts of thinking ahead of a life without my dearest partner in life. With chemo that time is put on hold for now. I know this will not be a cure but perhaps will give us more wonderful years than I had dared hoped for in January. This "blog" perhaps will be therapeutic as well.

With the genealogy searches I have done I have found some interesting stories of our families histories and would like to record them for our two sons to know and perhaps keep in their memories. Who knows maybe this old dog can learn new tricks!

Dad: Milk and Frisco

Dad worked for the Okino Dairy at the time of my birth. I had never known anything about the dairy or even if that was the correct spelling so I sent an email to The Ozarks Mountaineer and asked if they knew anything about the dairy. They sent my request to the Springfield-Greene County Library and I received a mailing from them giving a bit of history. I should have known to ask them for an answer in the first place!

The Okino Dairy was started in the early 1900s and went out of business about 1960. Mr. Okino was of Japanese descent and did have problems at the beginning of World War II when people boycotted the dairy. It was a very prosperous dairy and delivered milk door to door. Dad hand delivered milk from a truck down in the Branson, Forsyth area for 10 cents a quart. During one of his routes he fell and cut his hand quite badly on the broken glass. It was a bit misshapen but did not hinder him from his activities. The Okino Farm was located on the old Danforth Farm 5-6 miles east of Springfield near the old Danforth Cemetary. The two story brick home, (the oldest in Greene County) was built by Mr. Danforth in 1849. The place was called the Danforth Plantation and was farmed with slave labor. During the war Union soldiers camped there and burned the slave quarter for firewood. After a skirmish in which several Union soldiers were killed, the bodies were buried in the cellar of the home and as far as anyone knows are still there today. We lived in a little house on the dairy farm and Mom used to tell how drafty and cold it was. We moved then into Springfield when Dad started work for the Frisco not long after I was born. Dad worked for the Frisco Railway until 1963 when he retired with a medical disability.

I asked, too, if anyone could find a bottle from the dairy and got word today that there are some available. I have since collected two of the bottles, well used.

My oldest son convinced me to try my hand at recording some family stories --