This One's for the Family

Yesterday was my uncle's memorial service. As always the family gathered and shared stories. It's a little sad that some of the great stories you don't get to hear until the person is gone but - it's always great to hear family stories whenever you can.

One topic we got on was past family homes. Our grandparent's house is for sale again and one cousin stopped by the pick up the sales information. We all studied it trying to figure out all the angles of the pictures. We had 2 basic problems.
1. The wide angle camera lens was used to causing the front door to be twice as wide as normal and other distortions. The dining room wasn't all that big but the picture made the table of 6 chairs look like you could seat 12 people.
2. The previous homeowner did a great deal of remodeling so things didn't look like we remembered.

We also tried to remember the other house addresses we would hear about as children. Internet to the rescue! I grabbed the US Census records for 1898 thru 1849 and wrote down the family addresses. Today I took a little trip and grabbed a few pictures. Some of the houses are gone and Grandpa's grocery store is gone but here's a couple pictures I found. I left the pictures bigger files so the family members can download if they want to.

Here's the history I found:

1898 - when our Grandpa Bill was a child he lived on Dupont. I've sent all the addresses to some of the cousins and if you're a family member and want the exact address for the places without pictures, let me know. This house is very obviously a newer home so I didn't take a picture.

1900 - he had moved but the address on the US Census is not legible. Note to anyone who ever does a Census - please write carefully so people can read it in the future!!

1905 - yet another house address (and another newer house). Seems Grandpa moved around a lot as a child!

1910 - Yep - new address for Grandpa. Meanwhile, Grandma's family lived in the house on Fremont that would stay in the family for many years. My parents rented from the Aunts during the first few years of their marriage before buying the house I now live in. The house looks like a new window was added to the front but otherwise it looks mostly original.

1920 - Grandma's parents moved to a new house in Robbinsdale but the Aunts still had the Fremont house. Meanwhile, Grandma and grandpa were married and lived in their first house. I forgot to head over to this address so - no picture.


1930 and 1940 Census show Grandma and Grandpa at the house we knew and spent so much time at as kids.

 

 

 

Meanwhile - my Dad's family was living in south Minneapolis where Dad had friends who would sneak over the fence to steal apples from their tree. The apple tree isn't there anymore but the house look much like it would have in the 1920s - 40s. During the middle part of Dad's alzheimers I would ask him about where he lived. He could remember this house and give me details about everything (including the apple tree) but couldn't remember the house he and Mom lived in for over 50 years until he moved to memory care. I guess this house made quite an impression on a little kid growing up!

 

 

Jan's Shawl

 

I'd like to thank everyone who purchased Jan's Shawl so far. If you didn't read about this shawl the post about it is HERE.  I had a few questions about how much will be donated to the fire fighter support group. Right now $4.55 of the $5.00 will be donated. Paypal takes $.45 to process things and a small amount will end up going to Ravelry (unknown amount at the moment) but everything else will go to the support group. I'll be keeping nothing.