Flipside: Letters & Diaries--What I learned from Grams' Letters

Amy Johnson Crow has a 52 Ancestors Week blog challenge which I have decided to give a try for the second year.

The prompt for week # 7 (February 12-18) is Letters & Diaries.

Unfortunately, I do not have any diaries to share on this blog; however, I do have a couple of the letters my paternal grandmother, Sarah Margaret VanGilder Hughes, sent to me and my parents. My Mom saved bits and bobs for all three of her kids and they were stored in boxes from the various department stores in Pittsburgh. They were called "baby boxes" although Mom saved stuff through our teen years and into adult hood.

My grandmother, nicknamed Grams, typed her letters. Before she married, she was employed in Pittsburgh as a typist/stenographer. She was still typing into her late 70's.

Like all genealogists, it often takes several "looks" or "reads" of the family archival records. These few letters fall into that category.

I have blogged about a letter Grams wrote to me when I was born in 1947. I have decided to highlight a few parts here, although the entire letter is a Treasure Chest Thursday submission--A Letter From Grams.

Grams and Pop Pop were living in Monaca, Beaver County, Pennsylvania when this letter was written. They were living with their daughter, Faith and Pop Pop's mother, Elizabeth Ferdinande Olesen Hughes. When Faith graduated from high school, they all moved back to Bellevue, Allegheny County, Pennsylvania.

This portion deals with laundry day and how women used to hang their clothes outside to dry on warm days. She had a little hiccup one day hanging her clothes on the neighbors side. The Grams I knew rarely/never got upset about these petty disagreements and apparently she didn't at this instance either. Very even tempered.

Grams did love to play cards. When I was in elementary school and spending time at Grams and Pop Pop's for a long weekend, one activity was playing cards. I's hear, "Lynn, go get the cards out of the credenza." She taught me canasta. I taught her Go Fish. One of my proudest moments was during a week long stay with them in Florida over my college spring break. By then I played bridge and sitting down with them and a fourth one night for an evening is a lasting memory.

Before she became Grams 😁

My brother, Ken, was born at Camp Carson, Colorado in 1952. Mom and I traveled west from Pittsburgh by train several months before the birth. These are excerpts from a long typed letter from Grams after the birth.

I guess Ken was a large baby. 😇 I learned that my Dad and Uncle John were large babies when born.

Grams mentions twins without going into any details. In 1977, she mentions twins as being born in her family. The red hair comment comes from Grams' sister Anna Estelle who was a red head.

I found this comment humorous. I was only five years old in 1952 but I do not remember jeans on women. Grams never wore them. And yet....

Look what I found. A picture of Mom and me sitting on the steps of our place at Camp Carson and wearing........JEANS. 😂

Grams was not the seamstress that my maternal grandmother was; however, she did sew. Again, when I was in junior high and taking home economics, I made school clothes with Grams when I stayed overnight. We would walk up to town and purchase a pattern and fabric.

Grams had a somewhat unorthodox method of not pinning the pattern onto the fabric. She always said, "Lynn, never do it this way in class." She also showed me how to customize my outfit by substituting different pattern pieces i.e. different sleeves on a dress.

In December 1977, I had written to Grams and sent her a creche for Christmas. I told her that if my baby was a girl, I intended to name her Sarah after her. Her response had a few interesting details

"Happy thought for the day: **Every other generation in my family, there would be twins. Maybe the Hiser's do not run into such redundancy."

Oddly, the finding of twins was in my paternal grandfather's Hughes line.

"I think Sarah is a horrible name. That's why I've always been called Sally, (at my request). I really was christened Sarah, and there has always been at lest one Sarah in our family since the late 1600. HONEST!!"

Grams was referred to as Sal. She changed her first name to Sara on documents, not legally; however, Sara was how it was written. As to the first name Sarah going back into the late 1600's. It does go back jumping from side to side on Grams family tree missing a generation of two here and there.

During the years I was in college, Grams and I corresponded by letter. I wish I had had the foresight to have saved some of them.

Grams and me in Florida
1964

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