In her autobiography, Mary Josephine Squire (KWZV-7RH) wrote about often spending time at her grandparents’ house as a child. She was born in their house and often visited their dairy farm, 1 mile east of Spartensburg, Pennsylvania. “To arrive at this farm from Spartensburg, one had to go up over a hill and cross a high iron bridge over a creek. The farm was just on the other side. To me the bridge looked as if it rose about a mile into the sky.”
“The house was 30 or 40 feet from the road, and this front yard had several huge pine trees between two of which was hung a hammock in summer. On hot summer evenings or Sunday afternoons after Church, dinner and chores, one of the men often took a snooze in this hammock. But the rest of the time my brothers and I could enjoy it.”
Unfortunately, I don’t know who the people in the picture are
“Summers were happy times on the farm. We played with the Collie dog, Shep, or with the Gould children who lived a short distance away, picked four leaf clovers from the big field which came clear up to one side of the house, or sometimes went across the field to visit our great grandfather, Joseph Morse Jenkins.”
“It was quite confusing when my playmates spoke of their different grandfathers and grandmothers as I didn’t know anyone had more than one set. My brothers and I only had one set and wondered how come others had more. My father’s father had married my mother’s mother when my parents were in their teens. They grew up together and were brother and sister as well as husband and wife.”
John Jay Squire married his step-sister Laura May Page three and a half years after their parents married each other. But John was 21 years old and Laura was 19 years old when their parents married, so it is not like they grew up in the same house together.
“In December of 1912, at my grandparents wishes, we left the vicinity of Fredonia, New York, and moved to Corry, Pennsylvania, where my grandfather helped my father to get started in the sand, gravel and cement block business. My grandfather purchased a piece of ground with veins of sand and gravel and a half a dosen Irish shanties, the largest of which we tried to make into a home.”
“All of the buildings were in various stages of disrepair. The house was small with four little rooms on the first floor and a room and a half under the eaves. It was so cold that winder that dad banked the house with straw and manure from the barn to keep us from freezing. We often had to wade up to our hips in snow drifts to get to school.”
“Eventually we tore down and replaced or dispensed with all the little outshanties – the little house over the well, the many chicken coops, tool shed, wood shed, and privy. When mother sold the house after dad died in 1947, it was an entirely different looking place with its additions, improvements, shingled exterior, enclosed porches and a nice double garage. In place of the shanties surrounding the house, there were trees, flowers, a rock garden and big lawns.”
Genealogy Adventures 