One of the purposes of posting the stories from one’s families is to generate even more. And I’m thrilled to say that has happened.
Months after posting the pictures of my 4th great-grandparents I heard from a woman who had the wagon train story as part of her family lore. Her husband’s ancestor evidently purchased one of Dr. Ball’s farms in Iowa and they had handed down the story of Martha Jane’s rescue.
And after I posted the story of my great-grandmother’s suicide, I heard from my Cousin Kitty, whose mother Katie was one of my grandmother’s little sisters, who’d told Kitty a story about my grandmother’s mother-in-law. Neither Kitty nor I know the amount of truth in the story, as Kitty notes. But here’s the story she tells:
I just read your blog. My mother told me this story of your great-grand mother. My mom was only 11 when she died so I don’t know how accurate this is and may be you have been told this one too. When your grand parents were first married or just before:
Your great grand mother Unruh offered Lide (as a gift) as many chickens as she could kill and clean in a time period – don’t remember for sure but think it was a couple of hours. Thinking Lide was a “prissy” city girl her new mother-in-law was surprised when her chicken population was quite diminished at the end of the day.
For what it is worth that is the story I was told.
I don’t know why great-grandmother Matilda would have thought my grandmother Lida wouldn’t have known how to dress chickens. She was an oldest child of 12 children, was a “hired girl” in a neighborhood family, and her family, ironically enough, lived in a chicken coop–trust me, they were not city folk. They were poorer than church mice.
But the point is this is a story I’d never heard because the suicide overshadowed everthing. I laughed when I heard the story because I remembered the morning in South Dakota when I was probably about 10 or 11 when Grannie dragged me out of bed one morning to help her dress 10 chickens. She had 9 cleaned and dressed by the time I had 1 done. I guess I made a small contribution–I mainly remember the camaraderie and the lessons–we dressed them outside, going inside to heat the galvanized buckets of water and to singe off the pin feathers on her huge old O’Keefe & Merritt range.
But there was never any doubt in my family as to who was the master of the chicken and I guess she knew it at at early age.
