While I was in Spokane, I asked Papa about where his family was from, and we got to talking about the history of the family in Kansas. I was hoping to get some sense of the family's cultural identity, since... well, I don't have one. For starters, Papa has no idea where or when his family immigrated from- but they've been here a long time. His granddad had been a coal miner in Virginia, as his dad before him. At some point, he decided to start homesteading, and the family- the whole family, moved east to homestead. They started out to farm in Iowa, and eventually resettled and claimed land in Kansas to raise wheat. Papa's grandparents, and his grandmother's sisters, were all out in the same area. Papa told me he wished that he knew his grandfather, he sounded like an interesting guy. (Papa did get to know his grandmother.) He was known to say that he would never set foot in a slave-state (which explains Kansas). He was very religious as well. He used to walk around a lot, and collect rocks. The rocks he collected, he used to build a small chapel in Rollins County. There hadn't been a church there, and the little chapel served as a place for visiting ministers to preach. The chapel may still be standing.
By the time his parents were coming up, all the land in the area was spoken for, and they lived in Atwood proper. Because this whole generation had moved out and homesteaded in the same county, they were able to share labor. Papa got to go out to his aunt Lizzie's farm and help as a kid.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment