Grandparents

Kathy asked me to write a bit about my grandparents for her kids to have. I wrote the following and am attempting to paste it as a blog. I do not guarantee the accuracy but I think I'm close. Hope it works! Looks like the photos didn't make it.


MY GRANDPARENTS

BY: GRAMMA SALLY WILLIAMS

May, 2011


My mother, Enid Anne Heberlein, was born on April 4, 1904 (4/4/4 !!) to Fredrick William Heberlein and Sarah Susanna Peterson, in Hamilton, Missouri. She was the third child and second daughter.

(Enid left with younger sister, Hope)

Her parents, Fred and Sadie, as Sarah Susanna was known, grew up in the small Wisconsin farming community of Briggsville. Fred’s family were first generation immigrant farmers and millers from Germany. Sadie’s were first generation immigrant farmers as well, but from Norway.

The Peterson’s had four children; Marcus who became the Postmaster in Briggsville, married to Mildred. They had no children. Ella married John Dean and they had two daughters, Inez and Dora. Sadie married Fred and they had Harold (we called him Uncle Hal), Lois Ellen, Enid and baby Hope. Youngest of the Peterson’s was Inez. She became a Registered Nurse and lived in California for many years.

The senior Heberleins had many children; so many I cannot remember exactly. The one I knew the best was Uncle Will because he had a large dairy farm in Briggsville and I visited them often.

The unusual thing about Fred and Sadie was that they went off to college; to Ripon College in Ripon, Wisconsin. 
(Fred is the first seated on the left with an “X” on his shoulder)
They were each the first of their families to have a college education. Sadie was a gifted artist and musician and in that is what she received her degree. Although she had fallen some distance from a log box as a young girl and badly damaged one leg so that it was always shorter than the other which caused her to limp, she was an active student, then wife and mother. In addition to playing the music in her husband’s many churches she found the time to create many lovely oil paintings. She painted four special ones, one for each child. I have the one that was left to my mother.

Following his graduation from Ripon, Fred attended Yale University and received a Master of Divinity Degree in 1898. I have the pottery pitcher that has the names of him and all his classmates. There is also a booklet on the occasion of their 50th anniversary of the class with a page from each of the students.

Fred and Sadie spent the next many years ministering to Congregational churches, some in Missouri but mostly in Wisconsin. By the time their daughters were students at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, he was the Superintendent of all the Congregational Churches in the state of Wisconsin. They had a large home and several of the girls’ cousins stayed with them during their college years.

(Fred standing far left, Sadie standing far right, with Enid seated at the left on the occasion of her graduation from the Univ. of Wisconsin, 1928)

Upon his retirement they returned to a lovely home in Briggsville and he spent the rest of his years growing and developing many beautiful fields of gladiolas. His new glads included ones named for each of his daughters. “Enid Anne” was a lovely coral orange flower and we always tried to include it in arrangements for her special occasions.

During World War II we moved to Colorado Springs, CO., where my father was an airplane mechanic at Peterson Field. My grandfather, Fred, would type, single spaced, several page letters to me, telling me all about what was going on at home in Briggsville and asking about our life in Colorado. I was three and then four years old. We have some of the letters and they are very special memories for me.

(Grandmother, Sadie with Sarah in Colorado, 1944)

When my mother found out she was going to have a baby in April of 1945 we moved back to Briggsville. My dear grandfather died that year in July. He was memorialized at the Methodist Church in Briggsville but he was also “viewed” on a tall bier in the living room of their home. One of my earliest real memories is being lifted up by my Dad to see him lying there. I would rather remember him leading me up and down the fields of flowers and there are pictures of that.

My grandmother, Sadie, lived on alone and later with my Aunt Inez at their home in Briggsville until she died in 1951. We did not own a car at that time and were living in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, so my Aunt and Uncle came from Madison to take us to the funeral. We had an accident on slippery roads and were taken to the hospital in an ambulance. That is quite memorable also.

I started school, in the first grade in Briggsville. It was a literal “one-room” school house. One teacher, Miss Dinegan, taught grades one through eight. There were two of us in the first grade, Margaret Clary and me. The teacher would stand in front of each row … each grade, and teach them the day’s lessons and then move to the next row.

Now you know about my Maternal (from my Mother’s side) Grandparents.

I know much less about my Paternal (from my Father’s side) Grandparents.

(Anna Louise and Bayard Ralph Stephenson wedding picture … 1904)

My Father, Lyle Thomas Stephenson, was born on September 26, 1905, in Clark Lake, Michigan, to Bayard Ralph Stephenson and Anna Louise Bartig. His mother, Anna Louise died ten days later from “childbed pneumonia.” So, not only did I not know my grandmother, my father did not know his mother. Instead he was raised for several years by his grandmother and his father. Then his father got married again and they had four children; Veryl, Leola, Bayard Jr. (known as Skeet), and Vivian.

They rarely traveled so we did not see them very often. There are photos of the five generations on a visit when I was a baby.

(My Father with his Father and Stepmother and me, 1940)

The summer that I was ten years old my aunt and uncle came to Wisconsin and took me to visit in Clark Lake, MI, for two weeks. Then my family came to visit and pick me up. I remember two things very clearly from that visit. My little elderly Grandpa Stephenson took me down to the huckleberry bog to pick huckleberries. (That is what they called blueberries in that part of the country) It was so hot and muggy in the bog that I had a heat stroke and he had to carry me back to the house. Later I went to spend a day or two with my Aunt Vivian and Uncle Ross and their three children; Richard, Roxanne and Ruth Ellen, in Jackson, MI, and we went to the stock car races. I loved the races

There is only one family member of my parents’ generation still alive as I write this, my Aunt Vivian is a spry 80-something, living part of the year in Southern Florida and part up in Pennsylvania. We e-mail each other and are Facebook friends. She still bowls twice a week.
My dad would be so pleased to know that his oldest child and his baby sister are in touch.


(Auntie Vivian with her daughter, Roxanne, taken in Clark Lake, Michigan, about 2003)