RICHARD HORNE GRANT

                       RICHARD HORNE GRANT

     I grew up knowing very little about my father, Richard Horne Grant, a Scotchman.  (I believe "Horne was his mother's family name.)  I had seen a few pictures of him that were kept in our house at Almond, but no one ever talked about him.  They knew very little about him.  He had died a few months before I was born, from the wide-spread flu which raged in the country at that time.

     I was about in seventh grade when Aunt Ada told us that authorities in Scotland had contacted her about the names and addresses of any offspring of Richard Horne Grant.  His father, George Grant, a widower, had been killed in a train accident.  According to Scottish law his property would be divided equally among his six children.  The children of his son, Richard, who had preceded his father in death, would inherit a sixth of the estate.  (Richard's two children would each receive a twelfth of the estate.)  According to Scottish law Margaret and I, because of our ages, would not receive our inheritance until we became of "legal age."  The inheritance would be held in escrow by the Scottish government until we were twenty-one.

     For years we heard nothing more about the inheritance.

     In 1944 I was twenty when I married Charlie.  I worked for the summer at Maplewood Hotel, and became twenty-one in August.  Charlie and his brother John bought their father's farm.  The twins were born.  The house burned down.  Charlie bought John's share of the farm.  We struggled to meet expenses.  Charlie was doing the work of two men, trying to stay afloat, and meet expences.  No thought of my father crept into my head.

     But Margaret came in contact with Scottish authorities.  They turned over to me what I had inherited from my grndfather, George Grant.  To me it was unexpected.  It had been converted into American money before sending it to me.  It was somewhat a little over a thousand dollars.  It came at a time when Charley and I were badly in need of something, like a farm machine.  We used my inheritance to pay for it.

    
But my sister Margaret remembered seeing our father before he died, and she was curious about our relatives, and had inquired about the family.

     George Grant, my father's father, and his wife had lived in or near Aberdeen Shire.  They had decided, like many others in their time and place, to move to Canada.  After living there for a year or so, they became very home-sick for the place they had left.  They decided to go back to Scotland.  When they got back to Aberdeen they began to realize that they had forgotten the persistent fog in Scotland, and how much better living conditions in Canada had been.  They decided to go back to Canada in the spring, and to live there the rest of their lives.

     That winter my grandmother Grant died.  I don't know the cause, but suspect it was a maternity problem, either with the birth of David, or of a child who had not survived.  My grandfather then said he would not leave the country where his wife was buried.  They had four sons and two daughters.  Of their six children, the two oldest continued to live in Scotland, the two youngest migrated to Canada, and the two middle-born children came to live in the United States.

     The two eldest children of George Grant, were a boy and a girl, and I don't know which of these two was the oldest,  but both lived their entire lives in or near Aberdeen Shire.

     George, the son, married and had children (including Ethyl and others.)

     I have forgotten the daughter's name, but she never married.  She "kept house" and lived in the manse of the Presbyterian minister in Aberdeen.

     The two middle-aged children of George Grant were Richard and Frank.

     Richard herded sheep to earn money to go to the University of Aberdeen.  Ranches and fences were unknown in Scotland.  Woolen cloth was needed to make tartans for the clans. The sheep that produced the wool roamed the hills and crannies.  Someone had to watch the sheep, to keep them in their allotted area and to protect them against any danger from the stones and crannies, or from rival clans who might cause problems.

     Richard graduated from Aberdeen University some time around the very beginning of the 1900s.  He became a machinist, a lathe expert.  He helped create the motors used in building the S. S. Lusitania.

     England, Queen of the Ocean before the first World War, had commissioned Aberdeen shipyards to build three great ocean-going pleasure ships.  The first one built was the Titanic.  On its maiden voyage it ran into unusual ice and sank, carrying many prominent people down into the ocean. The second great ocean-going pleasure ship was the Lusitania, the one whose motors my father, Richard, helped build.  This ship was torpedoed and sunk by the Germans as it was returning to the British Isles.

     Sailors tend to be suspicious people.  Some sailors had considered the Titanic sinking as a warning against large luxury ships.  It had been harder to employ sailors to man the Lusitania than it had been to man the Titanic.  Now with the sinking of the Lusitania, they were confirmed in their minds about the danger of such ships.  The British authorities, who had asked for three great luxury ships to be built, now cancelled their order for the third one to be built.  With no big demand for building more luxury liners, my father looked around for other work related activity.

     My father traveled to Canada to visit his relatives there.  He went to Saskatchewan to visit his sister, Margaret.  From there he traveled southward into Montana.  It was in Montana that he met my mother.  She had gone there to teach school.

     He traveled back through Canada to Scotland, probably to clear up any loose ends there, and then left for the United States.  (I once had a list of the people riding on the ship he sailed on.  It stated that Richard had once before entered the United States, but it left blank the question about which U. S. port he had previously entered.  This was probably because he had previously entered the United States through Canada, instead of coming through a United States Port.)

     My father started working in Milwaukee operating a lathe.  He played a violin and the bagpipes.  He belonged to a large Scottish band in Milwaukee.

      Where and when my parents married I do not know, probably some time around 1916.  Mother had a son, Robert, born before she married.  I do not know who Robert's father was, but Margaret once mentioned to me that Robert's father had been killed in the first World War.

     Margaret was born August 29, 1919.

     Our father died (March?) 1923, before I was born.

     Our father's brother, Frank, worked as a stone cutter in Scotland, which has many low stony hills or mountains.  He heard about a stone quarry in New Hampshire which was looking for help.  He sailed to the United States but had a very rough voyage.  After that experience, he declared that he would never, ever, go back to Scotland, (and he didn't until very much later when airplanes became a common means of travel, and he flew back to visit his relatives several times.)  He worked for awhile in New Hampshire, then heard about the stone quarry in Montello, Wisconsin.  After coming west and working in Montello for awhile, he took a job as a railroad conductor on a railroad passing close to Green Lake.  He became acquainted with towns along the railroad.  He once spoke to me about visiting the Sherwood Hotel.  Sherwood Hotel was a summer pleasure resort built on the Green Lake Shore, south of what was later called "Kelm's Garage."  This was long before I came to work at Maplewood, or had ever visited, or even heard about, my Grant relatives.

     Uncle Frank later lived in Kenosha and worked for Simmon's, a company making bedding materials (like mattresses.)  He had married a woman who had passed away before I ever knew or met Uncle Frank.  They had had no children.

     The last two children of my grandfather, George Grant, were Margaret and David.

     Margaret married in Scotland, but both she and her husband left almost immediately after their marriage for Canada.  They settled in Saskatchewan and lived there the rest of their lives.  {Though Margaret was one of the youngest children of my grandfather George Grant, she was the first to marry.}  Some other members of her family visited her while she was living in Saskatchewan.

     When David visited her, he, like his brother Richard, traveled down into Montana.  One year he helped harvest the gigantic wheat harvest there.  As they were working in a wheat field a huge prairie fire came sweeping toward them.  When they first noticed it, the nearest river flowing near the wheat field was too far away for them to be able to reach it before the fire would reach  them.  The men hastened to build a "back-fire."  As the wild fire came closer, and closer, the heat became intense.  Uncle Dave said he had began to think that he would not survive, but then suddenly the fire, reaching the back-fire area, flew up and sailed over their heads.  Immediately the heat dropped somewhat.  Eventually it cooled enough so that they were able to follow in the blackened field, behind the fire, to the river.

     Uncle Dave returned from Montana to Canada and later became an engineer, driving a railroad train across the plains of Canada.  On the same day as the great Chicago fire started when a cow kicked over a lantern, another larger fire began in the wilds of Canada.  There was a prolonged tinder season, both in Canada and in the north central United States.  Very little rain had fallen either in the Chicago area or on the wide Canadian prairie.  As Uncle Dave drove the train engine he could feel the heat and smell the smoke.  Many animals, usually afraid of the train, now ignored it, running madly away from the smoke, on to the track ahead of the train.  He saw animals whose fur was on fire run wildly around.  Uncle Dave was the last one to engineer a train over that track.  The track, destroyed by the fire, was abandoned.  Little became widely known about that fire because of the Chicago fire which was so much more widely newsworthy.

     Uncle Dave had married Belle.  They had one daughter, Bessie.  Belle had never wanted to travel, so Uncle David had not come to visit in Wisconsin until after Belle's death.

     Uncle Dave visited us several times.  He built several wooden lawn chairs for us. 

     But Margaret came in contact with Scottish authorities.  They turned over to me what I had inherited from my grandfather, George Grant.  To me it was unexpected.  It had been converted into American money before sending it to me.  It was somewhat a little over a thousand dollars.  It had come when at a time when Charley badly needed something, (like a farm machine), and we used my inheritance to pay for it.  I had not seen or heard much about my Scottish relatives.

     But my sister Margaret had inquired about them.  She remembered seeing our father before he died, and she was curious about our relatives.  Our Uncle Frank was living in Kenosha.  His wife had died, but he had some very good friends, Mr. and Mrs. Hughs.

     Uncle Frank became acquainted with Margaret, and one Sunday she had brought him to our farm to visit.  Charley did not stick around.  It was Sunday, his of rest, and he was having a hard time doing all the necessary work on the farm which previously had kept two men busy.

     When it was time to leave uncle Frank requested to meet my husband.  Margaret went to the barn to look for him but couldn't find him.  Uncle Frank suggested he might be out in a field working, but I said he would never be out in a field on Sunday unless the cattle were in trouble and needed him.  Uncle Frank acted like I was "covering up" for Charley.  I left them and went out myself to the barn to look for him.  I did see him until I walked on the hay lying under the hay chute.  Charley rose up out of the hay.  He had laid down to rest, but the flies had bothered him, so he had pulled hay over himself to keep the flies away.  He thought I kicked him because I was mad at him, but I was just so startled to see him rise up out of the hay.

     I received a letter from Uncle Dave in Canada.  It seemed to me that in his letter he was hinting that he would like to come visit us.  I answered his letter, inviting him to come visit us, mailing it late in the week.

     Monday morning two things were on my mind; the vegetable garden needed much work, and Uncle Dave would need a place to sleep if he came to visit us.

     We had built a house, and had a bedroom downstairs that was finished.  We did not knowif Uncle Dave was agile enough to climb stairs.  Anyway, the bedroom upstairs was unfinished, and used only for storage.  We did have a bed set up in it.  I decided to let Uncle Dave, (if he came) sleep in our bedroom, and Charlee and I sleepin the unused bed upstairs in the unfinished bedroom.

     I had mailed the invitation to Uncle Dave late in the week and figured if he did accept our invitation, he would not get to our place before Tuesday at the earliest.  Monday I would work in the garden to have that work done before he arrived.

     I gardened every morning