My mother’s mother’s mother’s mother was pure Ainu. She died before I was born, but we have a picture of her.
My mother’s mother’s mother’s father, whose last name was Siemsen, was the Danish consul in Vladivostok.
Their child, my mother’s mother’s mother was born in 1889, was very ashamed of the fact that she was half Ainu. She moved from Russia to China at the time of the Bolshevik revolution, and from China to America at the time of the Chinese Communist takeover. In America, she lived in a large (but partially unfinished) house on the banks of the Russian River in Rio Nido, California.
I remember her, and the house she lived in, vividly. She doted on her grandkids, especially me. She is buried at Fort Ross in California.
I'm old enough to remember my father's grandmother. Born in Guilford County, North Carolina in 1880. She passed away in 1979. I was five. Many years later it finally dawned on me that I had met someone in my family who knew veterans from the Civil War, and had lived to see not just the first powered air flight but also man on the moon.
"The old days" aren't really that far away from us.
what a interesting story
would love to hear more