I was lucky, my grandmother who lived with us died when I was 11. I fondly remember her telling me about her father hitching up the team to take the buggy to church on Sundays and about her older brothers death at age 17 fom “drinking bad well water.” She clearly remembered him laid out in a coffin her family parlor. He died in 1897.
My grandfather came to this country three years before the Wright brothers flew their first plane...and went straight into the PA coalmines.