My Great-grandpa was born in 1868, was eight years old when Custer was killed, and lived long enough to see the B-52 come into service. I still remember him.
Wonder how many others have a connection to the past. Today’s youth have never known people from the wild old days.
My grandmother was 6 or 7 when the Wright Brothers flew, lived to see man on the moon as well as the Space Shuttle. She died at age 101. My mother who died last year at 99 saw the Graf Zeppelin fly over her town in New Jersey. I, as a lad had B-36s fly over my elementary school. They shook the earth.
My Great Grandpa was a Great Lakes ore freighter captain. I do not remember him but I remember his yellkkkkow brick house full of nautical stuff and massive furniture with a widow’s walk on the roof from which I could see Lake Erie when I was four.
My grandfather moved from one state up another in a covered wagon in the late 1880s. He was about five years old then. My grandmother about the same age lived long enough to see men walk on the moon.
My mothers grandmother was born in the mid 60’s, that’s the 1860’s. One time she told me the story of how excited her father was after going to hear Abraham Lincoln speak before his election to president and how he used to love to share the story. She shared this with me in the 1950’s. I always enjoyed knowing I was only one ear away from an ear that heard Lincoln speak.
In the 1950’s feelings were still strong with some people over the Civil War. The country was still reveling in the knowledge that we had won the 2nd World War and were relatively unscathed by the war except for the death of so many soldiers. We were the manufacturing leaders of the world.
People today don’t understand what this country is and why it is. People today are willing to succumb to the Socialism nonsense that floods our airways and schools. It is truly a shame.
My great grandfather was born in 1867 and still had his wits about him until age 99. He watched the Gemini program spacecraft on the tv.
Our mom was born in 1925. Her mom came to the US from Yugoslavia shortly before WW1 broe out. Hard to imagine.
Mom was raised for a few years on a farm in northern Wisconsin by Aunts and Uncles while her mom worked a menial job in Chicago. Mom has lived through the Depression, Pearl Harbor, September 11 and more. In fact she got married rather young and her husband shipped to Europe as crew member of a bomber; he was injured on his first mission and died in hospital in England about a week later.
Still she has much for which to be grateful. By comparison my life has been rather uneventful.
My paternal grandmother Ida at 12 years of age was “farmed out” to a farm down in Maryland, 1880s, where there had been slaves, who stayed there and now worked for wages, living in the slave quarters like always. Ida lived with the former slaves, who taught her to cook and bake, and taught her the Bible. She either knew or knew-of Harriet Tubman. Tubman’s original name was Araminta, nicknamed “Minty”, but changed it to Harriet. When Ida’s first granddaughter arrived, she had her daughter name her Araminta. Other than Tubman, I have never ever heard of another Araminta. I wish I’d learned this stuff while Ida was still living. I would so loved to have gleaned what she’d experienced.
My Great-grandpa was born in 1868, was eight years old when Custer was killed, and lived long enough to see the B-52 come into service. I still remember him.
Cool.
My father served in the US 7th Cavalry in the mid-50’s as a teenager, 17-19, and in later years moved far away from us to coincidentally later be interred at Fort Custer, MI.
P.S. Harriet Tubman’s full maiden name was Araminta Ross. When she married Tubman she apparently ditched Araminta for Harriet. I’ve been all thru her Underground Railroad history around Cambridge, MD. She wound up owning 50 acres of land in Canada with a home for runaway U.S. slaves and a church on it.
Back when I was doing genealogy, I noticed that one of my grandmothers was born in the 1830s and lived until 1917. She had twelve kids, they all reached adulthood, and I used to wonder a lot about her. I was shocked, stunned, while talking to a great-aunt, that she remembered that grandmother from childhood. It was like I made a connection back to her to the 1830s.
My Grandmother (Dad’s Mom) was Born in 1901 and Passed away in 2004, outlived all 3 of Her Son’s. Think about all She saw and did in those 103 years. Cars, Aircraft, WW I, WW II (She worked in a Bomb Factory), Atomic Age, Korea, Vietnam, Space Flight, Moon Landings, Space Shuttle, GW I, GW II. She had 5 Children and Raised them. I can’t even remember how many Grandchildren, Great Grandchildren and Great-Great Grandchildren. She traveled the World with one Aunt that was in the Army. Rode Camels in the sand pit. And I’m sure many other things that I don’t know about. She drank Bloody Mary’s , Screwdrivers, smoked unfiltered Camel cigs daily and ate Hamburgers that were basically raw.
They just don’t make’em like that anymore.