Have you ever wondered what life must have been like for settlers as they landed in American and tried create a new life for themselves? I’m sure it was exactly like it was depicted in all of those fun-loving episodes of Little House on the Prairie right? Wrong! I bet life on the frontier was a good thousand times more difficult then Hollywood has ever led us to believe. If we just had time machines we could go back and check, but since we don’t, we have to rely of the next best thing. Letters, stories, and memories from our ancestors.
So where do we start?
Well, the other day I was thinking about it, and I remembered that in my giant folder of genealogy documentation, I have a half dozen letters written from one of my distant cousins (Mary Lee Parker) to her cousin (Hazel Bolton), which is also a distant cousin of mine. The letters were written back in 1943 and contain many references of life on the farm, as Mary Lee Parker recalls stories that were passed along to her by her Grandmother (Clementine Desmond Richardson) as well as her mother (Mary Lee Smith). I transcribed the letter as it was written, including the spelling and grammar errors. Enjoy…
Wichita, Kansas
Jan. 25, 1943
Dear Hazel,
The sun is shining brightly and the cold wind has abated so I can be warm enough in here to use my typewriter. So here is another annal of one Clementine Desmond Smith, nee Richardson; your Great Grandmother and my Grandmother. I suspect that your Mother and I knew her better then all her other grandchildren. Your mother, in her middle-age and myself in her old, old age : she lived with us from her eightieth to her eighty-ninth year. For a nimber(sp) of years before that she had spent about two months of every year wiht(sp) us.
Continue reading →
If you haven’t done so already, start now and convert your chainsaw into a lean, mean, green, machine. Not only will your garden thank you, but so will the environment.