With only one living uncle and aunt and a lot of questions about my grandparents, I recently made a trip to Fort Worth, Texas, to visit my uncle Don and aunt Pearl to see what details I could learn about uncle Don’s childhood and my grandparents. My mom talked quite a bit about her dad, but not much about her mother. When I asked Don how he would describe his mother’s personality, he said he wasn’t sure and that it was unusual.She was a sickly lady and died when Don was just 20. My grandfather died when Don was 16. He said I was bringing memories to his mind that he had not thought about in many, many years. He just turned 80, so his mom has been gone 60 years. I wish I would have questioned my mom more about her mother. As far as I know, my grandmother never worked outside the home and was not in good health most of her life.

My grandfather did most of the cooking and was a plumber, electrician and carpenter. He owned a farm, but rented the land out. He was the person that put electricity in the church they attended in Chickasaw, Ohio, and also in the school in Maria Stein, Ohio. He worked as a plumber in Celina, Ohio. Don said when the priest came to their house for dinner, they had fried chicken.

I’m hoping my recent questions will start the process that might bring more memories to mind for my uncle and help me have a better understanding of what my grandparents were like.

Have you talked with your grandchildren about what your parents were like? If these memories are not shared or recorded, they will be lost and there will be parts of your history that will not be known. I want to understand what life was like for a prior generation. On our trip to Texas, I listened to a book on tape that described a young couple coming across letters in the attic that revealed some information about their family from nearly 200 years earlier. What a discovery! In today’s world, that will probably never happen as we are a throw-away world and most people don’t write letters anymore or even keep emails. So how will future generations track the past? We should be working with our young people to keep journals about their lives and spend time telling them about our own.

The museum library is open on Saturdays now and available for you to begin your family research. This would make a great winter outing for you and your family to begin putting a family history together for future generations.

The Freeborn County Genealogical Society will be having its meeting this month at 10 a.m. on Monday in the museum meeting room. Visitors are welcome.

The museum will host another AARP Defensive driving refresher class from noon to 4 p.m. on March 17. Call or stop by the museum to register. The cost is $20 for AARP members and $25 for non members. The cost includes an administrative fee.

The museum is already busy booking school tours for May. If you would be interested in being a tour guide, call the museum at 373-8003 to get your name on the list for our tour guide orientation that will be in April.

 

Pat Mulso is the executive director of the Freeborn County Historical Museum in Albert Lea.