Friday thoughts . . .

This is a scrapbook page thingie that I did yesterday afternoon. The picture is an old one of my mother and her older sister Thelma. Thelma passed away several years ago now. My mother is the one on the right. This was during the depression. I think my mother may have been 4 or 5 years old in this photo. I am pretty sure that the dresses would have been sewn from either flour sacks or cut down from a larger garment. Relatives in America often sent my mother's family parcels of used clothing that my grandmother would remake into clothes for her girls. I coloured bits of the photograph, like they used to do in the olden days. I think it needs something else, but I'm not sure what that something else is!

I was going to frame this and send it to my mother for her 80th birthday in July, but I'm not sure yet.



My mother was one of three girls in her family. (In this picture she is about 18 or 19)They said my grandmother could never carry a boy to full term, and indeed everytime she was pregnant and miscarried it was a boy. My mother also had another sister Freda who was younger than her. She passed away several years ago as well. She was only just 65.

They had a hard life when they were growing up. It as the depression and my grandfather only ever got seasonal work. He would work sometimes for the railroad and sometimes as a house painter. Work was very seasonal if you could get it at all.

My mother was born at home in her Grandparent's house on their farm up on the South Mountain in a place called Inglesville. I am not sure how long they lived there, but my mother talks about her father pulling them down the mountain on a sled in the wintertime to take them to school, and about him walking back down again with the sled to pick them up when school finished to bring them back home again, so she was still living with her grandparents when she started school. Looking at it now, and knowing how very far the old family farm is from the town where the school is, I know how very difficult and long a walk that would have been for my grandfather in the winter. It's quite a ways! People worked very hard in those days. I think we are quite spoiled now!

My Great-Grandfather had quite a large farm, with cows, sheep, orchards and a large vegetable garden. They had plenty to eat and were not starving, which was a blessing. My mother has a lot of happy memories of growing up on the farm and her grandparents. My grandfather did not live to be very old though, and once he passed away, the farm went to some relatives and my mother's family went to live down in the valley in a town called Lawrencetown. My Great Grandmother also lived with them.



This is an old family picture taken just before my mother brought me overseas to join my father in Germany where he was posted. I am the baby of course and it's my late Aunt Freda who is holding me. I think she was around 14 in this picture, then there is my mother and finally my Great Grandmother. This would have been in 1956. I love looking at old photographs, don't you?



This is one of the only pictures I have of my Grandmother. She is the woman, holding her head down in the back of this photograph and that is my Aunt Freda to her right, leaning her head on my Grandmother's shoulder and the little boy nestled into the front of her dress is my cousin/uncle Ronnie. Ronnie was from the children's aid and had been brought to my Gran when he was only an infant. My Gran and their family were the only family he ever knew. They say that when he came to live with them, although he was over a year old, he was unable to sit up and you could stand the little sweater he was wearing up all on it's own, it was so filthy. My Grandmother raised him as her own son and we all love him as one of our own family. He is family. When my Grandmother passed away he went to live with my Aunt Freda and her husband. My Grandmother was a very shy woman, who hated to have her photograph taken, so there are not very many photos of her at all. I remind myself of that everytime I balk at having my own photograph taken. Someday my progeny will be happy for my photographs, even if right now I am not!



This is a very old photograph of my Grandfather with his sisters and one brother. He is the little boy on the right sitting down and his one brother, Arnold, is the baby on his sister's lap. The girls names are Meda, Melva, Vera and Blanche. I don't know which is which, but only Melva, who is the little girl sitting down in the front in the white dress. She is the only one of all of them that I remember, next to my Grandfather of course. When I knew her she lived in America. She had moved down there during the depression I believe and married a man from there. I can remember visiting her with my parents in the 1960's and marveling at their home and lovely New England accents. Our Amanda looks like the sister standing up at the far left in the back. I think it's so amazing how family looks get passed on down through the generations. Quite, quite fascinating.



This is my Great Great Grandmother, Ida McNayr Smith. She was my Great Grandmother's mother. I don't know an awful lot about her, except that when I look at her photograph I see the eyes of a lot of my cousins.



There is a really strong family resemblance in the eyes. I do remember my mother telling me at one time that she lived with some relatives when she was very old and that they were not very nice to her. That they kept her locked in her room, but I am not entirely sure about that, so I will have to ask her again.



This is a photograph of old Aunt Janet and Uncle Darius. Darius was my Great Grandfather Best's brother I believe and they lived in a house up on the North Mountain overlooking the Bay of Fundy. My Aunt Freda told me that Aunt Janet always kept her money pinned inside her apron. I don't know anything else about them.

My Aunt Freda was the family historian and a lot of the old photographs etc. disappeared after she passed away. We used to talk about geneology a lot together when she was alive. I loved to hear the stories about the old days and people. I wish I had written them all down now, because I am getting old now and my memory is not like it used to be either!

Anyways, I started off this morning showing you the scrapbook page I did of my mom and her sister and look where that took me! I'm sure you're quite, quite bored of all this by now!

Source: crosswalk.com via Richard on Pinterest

It is Good Friday today. I hope we will all give pause and think about all that the Saviour did for us on this day. I am ever greatful for all He did for us, does for us and will do for us in the future. I will leave you today with this thought . . .

“Brothers and sisters, one of the great consolations of this Easter season is that because Jesus walked such a long, lonely path utterly alone, we do not have to do so. His solitary journey brought great company for our little version of that path—the merciful care of our Father in Heaven, the unfailing companionship of this Beloved Son, the consummate gift of the Holy Ghost, angels in heaven family members on both sides of the veil, prophets and apostles, teachers, leaders, friends. All of these and more have been given as companions for our mortal journey because of the Atonement of Jesus Christ and the Restoration of His gospel. Trumpeted from the summit of Calvary is the truth that we will never be left alone nor unaided, even sometimes we may feel that we are. Truly the Redeemer of us all said: “I will not leave you comfortless: [My Father and] I will come to you [and abide with you].”
― Jeffrey R. Holland