My father’s family
My
father’s parents did not have a good relationship. They separated when he was a
preschooler. A few years later they tried to get back together (when my father
was in first grade), but it didn’t work out and they then divorced. His mother
raised him and his sister for a few years on her own, then she married again to
a man 30 years her senior. From second grade until his junior year in high
school my father had no contact with his birth-father. He lived with his mother
and step-father for about 6 years, then left and lived with his grandparents.
Meanwhile, his birth-father also remarried – to a woman 10 years older than he
was. So, for this part of the story, I need to include my father’s step-father
and step-mother and their siblings as well as the siblings of his birth-parents.
My father’s mother
My
father’s mother, Vera [Levy] [Russell] Rogers, only had one sibling, a sister
Irene. The two sisters maintained a good relationship through all the turmoil
above and my father often spent his summers on the farm with his Aunt Irene and
Uncle Joe. We’ll pick up their story in part 3.
My
father’s step-father, Charles Rogers, had one brother, James, who had passed
away before I was born. However, since Charles was so much older than Vera, he
probably seemed more like a grandfather than a father to my dad. I recently
acquired an old snapshot of Charles that was labeled “Poppy Rogers” as that is
what my father called him. I had a good relationship with him in my younger
years. Charles went into an “old folks home” (these days we would call it an
independent living unit) in the early 1950s where he lived until he passed away
in his 90s.
My father’s father
Besides
the above circumstances of my father’s parents divorcing and remarrying, my
grandpa, Erskine Russell, came from a family of less than ideal circumstances.
He was the oldest of six children, four boys and two girls. His mother died
when his youngest sister was only a few years old and his father then split up
the family.
The
two youngest boys went to live with relatives in New Milford. One, Allen, died
a few years later. The other, William, remained with that family and never
rejoined his father. I only met him once in about 1960, but essentially he was
not part of our extended family. The final brother, Linus, suffered from
exposure to poison gas in WWI and spent the rest of his long life in various VA
hospitals. Although he was still living when I was born, I never met him. Thus,
for all intents, I had no great-uncles on this side of the family.
My
grandfather’s second wife was an English immigrant. While my father eventually
reconciled with his birth-father and step-mother, and she was still part of our
extended family when I was growing up, the fact that my parents called her “Aunt
Bess” is some indication of her connection to the family. She had no other
relatives in the US. We grandchildren called her “Nana”. While we occasionally
visited them, the fact that my father had been estranged from his father for so
long and only met his step-mother when he was older meant that there was not
the same type of relationship that we had with my mother’s parents. Their small
house was also very formal, with antimacassars on all the chairs, and nothing
that we grandchildren were allowed to touch. Nana was also still very “English”
and somewhat proper and that made it difficult to know how to relate to her.
In
contrast, my grandfather’s two sisters, Pauline and Loretta, were part of our
extended family and we will see them in the final part of this blog.
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