08 February 2018

Childhood




This is a photo of my mother, Mary Allen, when she was about five years old. She was born in Rock Hill, S.C., which was her father's home town, in 1930. He, my grandmother, Mary Allen, and her little sister moved to Morehead City, N.C., my grandmother's home town, when Mary Allen was six years old. The photo must date back to 1935 or 1936.




And here's a photo of my grandfather, Joseph Allen Miller, who was born in 1899, and his sister Annie Ray. I knew Aunt Ray, as we called her, but I never knew Joe Miller. He died in 1939. Aunt Ray passed away in the 1990s at the age of about 95. She lived in Rock Hill (near Charlotte, N.C.) and we drove down there to visit many times while I was growing up in the 1960s. It was like another world compared to coastal North Carolina. People in each place had a distinctive accent, for example, and the two ways of talking  were completely different from each other. We actually had trouble understanding each other. And in S.C. they lived on a farm, while in N.C. we lived in town.

10 comments:

  1. Old photos are always interesting. Your mother was a lovely child with beautiful eyes.

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  2. Going through all of my mom's childhood photos, and our own family photos from while I was growing up, was very soothing for me. I hope it is for you, too. A life lived.
    I find it really interesting that NC and SC language and life seemed so different to you, growing up.

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    1. The South Carolina accent was a definite Southern drawl, slow and drawn out. Sho'nuff and y'aaallll. Coastal North Carolina had and still has what is called a brogue, and a lot of people think it sounds British (but very old-fashioned) — a survivor from Elizabethan times, when Sir Walter Raleigh established the first English colony in North America (1585) in what is now N.C.).

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  3. Your mom and her dad resemble one another. Your grandfather was born a year after my father. My father's house burned down when he was a child, his mother was already a widow when six children then. They lived in the barn until an unmarried Uncle built them a house. My grandmother paid her brother in law twenty dollars which was all the money she had then. So much for the good ole days!

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    1. My grandfather Joe Miller must not have inherited anything out there in Rock Hill SC. That's why, I imagine, he ended up working 300 miles away to develop and improve the infrastructure in Morehead City NC in the 1920s and met my grandmother Mary D. here. Then he died in 1939, leaving behind two daughters, one 9 and one 3 years old. Fortunately, the daughters were taken in by my grandmother's Uncle Gene and Aunt Ethel. They had a decent life despite everything. Uncle Gene left each of them a house when he died in 1961. My grandmother had never recovered from the shock of the love of her life's early death, they say, and died herself at the age of 46 after a long illness.

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    2. Being a widow in those days must have been so difficult. I'm glad your Uncle and Aunt took in your mom and her sister, but you know that must have been tough on your mom, losing her father and having her mother so sick. Getting a house was such a good thing for your mom and sister.

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  4. Ken, you're a born storyteller.

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  5. The 1930s...the depression years...were a time when many families moved in with relatives. My grandparents had to leave New York and move back to her parents farm in Vermont to survive.

    So interesting that the regional accents with that different, when the distance not so far.

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  6. Ken, I know this is not on your priority list, but your site is acting strangely. Maybe some malware? It did this once before and you said that when you scanned it, it did contain some virus/malware. Just letting you know.

    I have been following your post and want to add my condolences.

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