Wisteria

Last night I finished reading A Star for Mrs. Blake by April Smith . The novel is set in the 1930s and is a story about five Gold Star Mothers who travel to France to visit the graves of their WWI soldier sons. When I downloaded it to read on my Kindle, I vaguely recalled that Granny Westfall's mother, Anna Coughell Smith, was a Gold Star Mother. After I finished the book, I jumped online and googled Gold Star Mothers to learn more about the history. Interestingly enough, the last Sunday in September was designated as "Gold Star Mother's Day" by a proclamation approved by Congress in June of 1936. Shown here in a postcard pose with Niagara Falls in the background is Anna Coughell and her husband Eliud Smith. According to an inscription on the back of the original photo, this was taken in 1916 on a trip back to their native Niagara Falls, Canada for the funeral of Egerton Detler, Eliud's brother-in-law. Eliud and his family immigrated to the U.S. on 7 ...

For tonight's Saturday Night Genealogical Fun , here's a grandma story: If she were still alive, my maternal grandmother would have been 101 years old a couple of days ago on September 22. She was the fourth of six children born to a native of Friesland, Netherlands and an American-born daughter of emigrants of the Netherlands as well. She married a man also born of Dutch natives in Hudsonville, Michigan on May 15, 1933. Me and my grandma When I was eight years old, my father retired from the Navy and we moved to be near these grandparents. We lived with them for several months before settling on a lot adjacent to the home that my grandfather had built as their retirement cottage right around the time I was born. My grandfather also constructed another building in front of his garage/workshop where my grandmother sold her craft items. She called her shop, Ted’s Treasures, because her nickname was Ted. She sewed, she painted, she knitted, she crocheted, she embroi...