Tag Archives: Grandparent

It boggles the mind!

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Get a load of this ancestor’s family.  My 4th Great Grand Uncle, John Scalf, and his wife, Edeah Carlisle Scalf, had SIXTEEN children.  Their children‘s number of children below:

Nancy = 5 children

Polly = 11 children

John = 14 children

Brittan = 19 children (Count ‘em, NINETEEN!!)

Dicey = 17 children

Lydia =5 children

Berry =8 children

Lee = 7 children

Ira = 7 children

Jesse = 8 children

Peter = 4 children

Betsy = 1 child

Robert = 6 children

Lela = 4 children

Two of John and Edea Scalf’s children died in infancy and had no children.  As far as I can tell.

Edea had their first child in 1788 at the age of 18, their last child in 1823 at the age of 53.

I.

Cannot.

Imagine.

I am 53 NOW!

I’d kill.

No wonder all the women look old for their age in old pictures.  :(   Their grandchildren, assuming all lived, which is probably not likely, would have numbered 116 grandchildren!

I’m thinking of cooking Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter dinner for 132 people at one sitting.  DAYS AND DAYS of cooking.

I am so glad I have an electric stove, crockpot, electricity, gas!  I can’t imagine doing all that cooking without electricity, etc…..I’d give up before I started.

I have some aunts and uncles who married more than once, would have 10 children each marriage, but none of them, that I have seen records on, had that many grandchildren.  WOW.

WOW!

Invents cooking

Invents cooking

Shoot, I can’t even imagine cooking for 14 kids!  Goodness.

I am in AWE!

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Salute

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Howard Dickson Pendergrass, Sr. My grandpa

Howard Dickson Pendergrass, Sr. My grandpa

6 year Pacific Fleet Boxing Champ aboard the U.S.S. Arizona, prior to Pearl Harbor.

6 year Pacific Fleet Boxing Champ aboard the U.S.S. Arizona, prior to Pearl Harbor.

Stationed aboard the U.S.S. Ludlow

Stationed aboard the U.S.S. Ludlow

The Howard Dickson Pendergrass men.. Sr. and Jr.

The Howard Dickson Pendergrass men, Sr. and Jr.

This picture, and those above, are my Grandfather, Howard Dickson Pendergrass, Sr.  Retired Navy.  The picture of him in the tent, I thought was my Uncle, his son, who served during Vietnam.  So young and they look so much like each other, could not believe it.  So amazing.

Uncle, William Clyde Chambers

Uncle, William Clyde Chambers

Uncle, Phil Wesley Tindle, Jr.

Uncle, Phil Wesley Tindle, Jr.

Uncle, Cleo McComas

Uncle, Cleo McComas

The man in the dark sailor uniform is my Uncle, William Clyde Chambers, married to my dad’s sister, Betty Jo Tindle.  (Yeah, named after her)

The next young man, with the young lady, is my dad’s brother, Phil Wesley Tindle, Jr.  With the lady he married.  Aunt Ruth.

The last young man is my Uncle Cleo, married to my Aunt “Pete”, I really gotta find out how she got that nickname, her real name is Lucille.  She is my great-aunt, aunt to my mother.

There are lots more that have served in my family, all of these young men are now gone, including my uncle, in the picture up there with my Grandfather, the two Pendergrass men. He died waiting for a heart transplant, of a massive heart attack, in 1990 at the age of 51.  Shoot, they all died of heart attacks.  :(   Didn’t even think of that.

Anyway, have had cousins in the marines, I heard, while I was in the Air Force that I even had a female cousin in the Air Force while I was in the Air Force.  I think she is from Alabama, I don’t know that I ever met her.  That I recall.  We didn’t live there very long, about one year, when I was a kid, before my brother was born.  He was born there, I must have been young because the two of us are 16 months apart.  I was a baby! :)

I guess we have a long tradition of military members in our family.  On all sides.  As do many others, everywhere.

My hat is off to all in salute.

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About « A Hundred Years Ago

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About « A Hundred Years Ago.

About

Hello, my name is Sheryl Lazarus.  One quarter of my genes come from the woman who wrote this diary. I’m seeking to learn from the past and gain insights that will lead to a better future. I’m posting the entries because friends and relatives might also be interested in the diary.

As I read the diary I find that many of the entries spark questions and that I search for answers.  If I find answers—or even if I’m am just reflecting on an entry—I’ll share them with you.

 Why I Decided to Post the Diary 

In 2009, I compiled a  family cookbook. Some of the recipes had originally been recipes of my mother and grandmothers. I included some family photos in the book. One of them was a photo of me walking through a doorway at my bridal shower. Sitting on the couch in the photo’s foreground was my 82-year-old paternal grandmother.

When I gave the cookbook to my children, my daughter asked who the old lady was. I told her that it was her great-grandmother. But her question jogged my memory about a copy of an old diary I had —

After Grandma Swartz died in 1980, her children went through her belongings. One of the items they found was a diary that Grandma had kept from January 1911 through December 1914.

Her children circulated that diary amongst family members. While I had it, I made a copy before passing it on. The copy laid in a paper bag in the bottom of my hutch for more than 20 years until I pulled it out in January 2010 and started reading.

My memories of Grandma Helen were of a feeble, elderly woman—Helena (the name she used in the diary) was a fun-loving, self-absorbed teen. Helena wasn’t an Anne Frank—and most days she only wrote three or four lines. Some days she wrote that “nothing of importance” had occurred. Yet as I tried to decipher the handwriting a fascinating young woman emerged, and I wanted to learn more about her and how she evolved into the grandmother I remember.

Acknowledgements

Preparing Grandma’s diary entries has provided me with a wonderful opportunity to reconnect with relatives, neighbors, and friends. I would like to thank the many people who have shared information with me about my grandmother. I’d especially like to thank my father  for all of the wonderful stories, and my aunt and uncle  for the photos of Grandma as a young woman.