I’d like you to meet my paternal grandparents. A smart looking bunch, wouldn’t you say? Let me introduce them:
Top left is my great grandfather, Thomas Alfred Peters. His son, my grandfather, was Alfred Thomas Peters. The Peters line goes back to Cornwall, England. I assume they were probably miners. I did not know my great grandfather. My grandfather, though, was a cheerful old man who would likely kiss you square on the mouth if you didn’t forcefully turn your head to the side when he leaned in for a kiss (LOL!). He was born and raised in Iron Mountain, Michigan and worked for Wisconsin Electric his whole life (I believe). He was born during WWI, but I do not know if he ever served in WWII. My father was born at the early onset of WWII so my grandfather was probably exempt from going to war.
My great grandma was the only great grandparent that I ever had the pleasure of knowing. I distinctly remember one store that she liked to tell. On her first day of school she got lost and she could not ask for directions because she only spoke German. I never, in the time that I knew her, heard her speak of a word of German. However, her family must have retained their native language even though several generations were born in America.
My great grandparents on my grandma’s side were from Finland. Sadly, Henrik was not happy in America and he abandoned his family to go back to his native country. This created a feeling of hostility between him, his wife and their daughter that never died. Even when he wrote to them asking them to join him in Finland when my grandmother was 12, those hard feelings still existed and they stayed here in America. Grandma even took on the last name of her mother’s first husband, Oscar Pollar. This is why in my family tree I have her listed as Ruth Arlene Pollar Niemi.
Oscar was Emma’s first husband. They had 4 children together: 2 boys and 2 girls. Oscar worked on the railroad and one day he was squashed between two uncoupled train cards and died from his injuries.
After her second husband, Henrik, left, she never remarried.
Not all family trees are perfect, but all family trees are important to those to whom they belong.