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My Indian Grandmother
My Grandmother, Bessie (also known as Bettie) Ross Miller Bates Wolf, was born June 19, 1889 in Locust Grove, Oklahoma. Her father was George Lowery Ross, and her mother was Ruth Belle Springston Ross Evans. Grandmother had an older brother, Commodore Wade Ross, and two half-brothers, Albert Lee Evans and Henry Evans, along with a half-sister, Mattie Evans Barnes. Mattie’s husband, John Barnes, was a sheriff. Bessie Ross married my Grandfather, an oilfield worker, Charles Howard Miller, on the 29th of June 1907 in Sperry, Oklahoma. They had three children, Fred Albert Miller, born December 30, 1908 in Kiefer, Oklahoma, Gladys Ruth Miller, born February 7, 1915 in Locust Grove, Oklahoma, and Robert E. Miller, January 4, 1918 in Healdton, Oklahoma. My grandmother and her children moved to Long Beach, California in 1923, to join her husband who was working in the oil fields there, constructing oil derricks. My Grandmother found work, too, outside the home. She worked in a tailor shop from 1925 to 1928. Sometime in 1926, she and Charles divorced. She married Archie L. Bates in 1928 and moved to Redondo Beach, California. I remember that they had chickens, ducks, a frog pond, and a large vegetable garden. I also remember having Sunday dinners at Grandmother’s house; she had fried chicken, mash potatoes, milk gravy, and fresh corn and lima beans. One of those Sundays, I remember my brother, Warren Lee (Bud) and I running behind the garage where my Grandfather had bee […]
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MY IRISH-GERMAN GRANDMOTHER
MY IRISH-GERMAN GRANDMOTHER Catherine Marie Nolan Horlacher My grandmother, Catherine Marie Nolan Horlacher, was born on June 2, 1894. Her father was William Nolan, and her mother was Mary Mertz Nolan, both born in Ireland. Grandma’s husband, George Washington Horlacher, always called her “Kate Nolan, the Irish Mick!” Grandma had two brothers and one sister, William Francis Nolan (possibly, Jr.), born in 1887, Stella (who later became Mrs. George Worth), born in 1890, and a younger brother, Edward Nolan, born in 1899. When I was growing up, Grandma used to tell me stories about her Father wrestling with her brothers. She also told me a story about William and Buffalo Bill Cody. She told me that they used to pal around together during the time of Cody’s Wild West shows! Dates, however, show that this isn’t true. William and Cody could not have been “pals.” William was born in 1887, and Cody’s shows were in Europe, mostly in England, most of the last half of the 1880s. Cody was in Philadelphia before William was born, and again, in 1916, when William was 29 years old and Cody was 76! Cody died the following year. It’s possible that William was a fan of Buffalo Bill, and Grandma, being seven years younger than William, somehow translated that into some kind of special friendship between the two. Grandma and Grandpa were married in Washington, Delaware, on May 23, 1912. They had two children, my father, George William Horlacher, in 1913, and my aunt […]
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MY FATHER’S PARENTS
CORRECTION! See the correction, in red, about my Grandfather’s Mother. Father’s Parents My grandparents, George and Catherine Horlacher, were born in Germantown, Philadelphia, Pa. in the late 1800s. My grandfather was born April 23, 1892 in a house at the corner of Orianna and Lehigh. My grandmother was born June 20, 1894. I don’t have the exact location of her birthplace. My grandfather worked for his father, Harry Horlacher, in the stables where he kept the horses he used in his dairy business. Later, my grandfather delivered milk by horse and wagon and the horse was so familiar with the route that my grandfather would walk the sidewalks while the horse pulled the wagon down the street. When they reached a customer’s home, my grandfather would get the milk from the wagon, put it on the porch, and whistle to let the horse know that he was off to his next customer! Faithfully, the horse was always there, too! My grandmother worked, at this same time, for my grandfather’s uncle who owned an Ice Cream and Butter Shop. She and my grandfather were married in 1912, and they had two children, my father, George William, in 1913, and my Aunt Catherine in 1915. In 1917, the whole family traveled by train to Los Angeles, California. My grandfather worked at many different jobs, oil field worker, survey crew member, street car repairman, and he also ran the kilns that fired ceramic tiles for the Matlock Tile Company. My grandmother […]
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GOOD OL’ DAYS
GOOD OL’ DAYS I remember our neighbor’s 1927 Diana, made by the Moon Motor Car Company. Work or play, it made our days exciting. My Grandmother and the neighbor loaded the Diana with eggs from my Grandparents’ egg ranch in La Sierra, California, and hauled them to the market. I can remember finding a place to sit in among the dozens of eggs, very carefully finding a seat, and then having to make sure I stayed put! One little slide could mean disaster to our cargo, AND to the Diana! And when we weren’t hauling eggs, we used the Diana to pull a two-wheeled box trailer to haul hay. Hauling hay was a lot more fun than hauling eggs! We would put the Diana in low gear, point the car in the direction we needed to go, and it would just idle up and down the field while we walked along side loading the trailer. Every once in awhile, one of us would have to jump on the running board and correct the steering. We used the Diana for fun, too, playing car tag! Something we could never do, today! And actually, our car tag was more like a game of hide-and-seek. Several of my friends and I would drive up one of the small hills in our rural area, or down to the very bottom of a hill, and try to find a place that had a little bend in the road where we could hide a car. We’d […]