Retracing Grandma’s Childhood: A Family History Journey
Retracing Grandma’s Childhood: A Family History Journey
If you are a regular reader, then you know my Grandma is one of my best friends. Certainly my most enduring!
Since I was a girl, I’ve made her retell stories of her childhood over and over. The pictures of her life have played themselves out in my mind. Always.
It has long been a dream of mine to travel to the place her stories began. This part of the world meant so much to my beloved Gram. I wanted to visit and photograph the locations- to give her tangible pieces of her memories.
Last week brought me an unexpected chance to live this out.
Grandma’s legacy
My friend who I just visited, the one just hit by a drunk driver in the accident? She recently moved across the country to a mere 4 hours from this special place.
One day dawned bright and beautiful, and she felt well enough to travel. So, we did something crazy.
I packed her up and off we went! Oh. my. word. What an adventure!
I’ve decided to break this story into three very different parts. Forgive, this week, my overabundance of photos.
There were hundreds to narrow down from into meaningful, complementary story enhancers that will allow my Grandma to revisit her own history♥.
Today we’ll start with home and family…
Toby and Fred
A little backstory- Gertrude was born in 1896, in England, into a Victorian workhouse to an impoverished young woman. As a preteen, she was shipped with 100,000 children to Canada, to enter a life of service (and for some, adoption and a chance at family).
Eventually, making her way to NYC, she found work as a housekeeper for a college professor. There happened to be a student there, who visited said professor’s home.
Frederick, a handsome young engineering student. They were said to have fallen in love at first sight and soon married.
Both having suffered familial loss at young ages, they placed a high value on family. Patricia, my grandma (below), being one of their four beloved children.
And this happy little family lived content in Watertown.
Grandma’s neighborhood
Now, I had the opportunity to retrace my grandma’s childhood. And she is quite a storyteller… I knew this place…deep inside.
What a beautiful little town! My heart started beating quickly as we reached the street of their first house.
It was fun to imagine my great-grandparents turning down this same street, 100 times during the course of everyday life moments. My grandma walking or riding on the sidewalk, playing.
I was in her stories. Elated.
It was not easy to find, counting down the house numbers…hers was the only one that didn’t exist! We finally stopped and asked the nearest address if they knew what had happened to our location.
This kind woman took us around to the back-her house was actually once two houses. My grandparents lived in back, where there is no longer a separate street number.
How bizarre and wonderful to be right in front of this home!
We then set off to explore the town, searching out what might have been the church she attended, scouting out buildings that were historic, and could have been places her parents frequented.
I couldn’t get over the excitement of crossing THE river I’d heard about so many times. It gave new meaning to the term over the river, through the woods. I have to tell ya’–the power of this river was overwhelming.
I am from the West, rushing rivers are nothing new to me. Rivers swelled from melting winters? I WISH I could properly describe the pitch and speed of this water flow.
It was really, really something. That ice chunk toward the bottom right? It was easily 10 feet across. The picture just can’t do it justice…
Grandma used to tell me how she would ride her bike to the river and lay on her belly for hours watching the water flow by. And, how much trouble she would have been in if her parents had known.
It makes more sense to me why she always had a little more leeway when I’d get in trouble with me…she understood my wandering spirit and was a boundary pusher too!
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