Thoughtful Tuesday: Young and Old Grandfather Williams

I love the Geneablogger's wonderful Daily Blogging Prompts because they lend structure to my blog posts and keep me moving through the week. Quite a while back and inspired by them I thought of a new one, called Thoughtful Tuesday. The objective was to contrast the young and the old version of an ancestor and illustrate that with photos. Of course for my many less wealthy ancestors who could not afford the delights of the photographer's parlor, there is no photo record from those years of the last half of the 1800s. This young and old contrasting just doesn't have enough range, so I decided to do it for grandparents only.

I've done three of my grandparents and the only one left is my Grandfather Williams, Cambria Williams (1897 - 1960) named after the Cambria mountains of Wales but always called "Camey". He was a handsome young man and throughout his life had a big luxurious head of hair.

But I'm getting ahead of myself! First let me give you the links to the three other grandparents so you can see how this has been shaping up. And I'm posting the less-elegant form of the full link because some might have trouble with the usual "click here", or so I'm told.

Grandmother Williams
http://nutsfromthefamilytree.blogspot.com/2013/05/thoughtful-tuesday-grandmother-williams.html

Grandpop Kelly:
http://nutsfromthefamilytree.blogspot.com/2013/04/thoughtful-tuesday-young-and-old_30.html

GrandMa Kelly:
http://nutsfromthefamilytree.blogspot.com/2013/04/thoughtful-tuesday-young-and-old.html

All right, we're all caught up. The Williams family, headed by Daniel Williams (1852 - 1920) who was born in Wales, and his wife Jane Price Williams (1862 - 1939) was a large house full of kids and, at times, grand kids. It stood in Ocean, Maryland a small place no where near the actual ocean but in the mountains of Western Maryland and at the heart of the coal mining fields. Daniel was a coal miner and a foreman, so he was a good earner, as they say. With eight boys and one daughter, there were plenty of mouths to feed. But young strong boys could work in the coal mines if they had an "in", and Daniel's boy sure did! Here's what Aunt Betty wrote to me a while back about Daniel:

Daniel worked for the Consolidation Coal Company as a foreman  at mine #16 at Ocean, MD which is about a mile from where he lived. He was chosen to take a large lump of coal from Ocean Mines to the Chicago World's Fair in 1893.

 

When it came time for Camey, the second youngest boy, to take his place in the mines, his father tried him out and then fired him saying that he wasn't cut out for it and was "lazy". Mom remembers clearly her father telling about this and saying he was so claustrophobic down in the mines that he was happy to be fired.

Here are two pictures I'm thrilled to have from Aunt Betty. By the way, Aunt Betty is Camey's younger brother Charles' daughter. The notations on the photos are hers. What a good idea!

 

See in this photo just above, Charlie, Aunt Betty's dad, is the youngest in front on the left, and Camey the next youngest on the right.

Mom has a photo of her father Camey as a handsome young man, but it was in an old dilapidated domed glass frame. When we took it all apart to see what could be done we noticed that the image was also domed but in very poor condition. I took a couple of photographs of it to see if a repaired version could be made and here's what happened, below. That old photo was doomed for destruction but with a little PhotoShop magic at least now future descendants can still enjoy the image.

 

 

Then Camey met and wed Emma Susan Whetstone (1897 - 1956) and they married 2 Sept 1916. Here they are below with their first baby, my Mom, Virginia Mae, born two years after they walked down the aisle.

 



 



But this exercise is all about contrasting the young ancestor with the old. I can see the ravages of time in my father's parents, plain in photographic form, but Mom's parents seem much the same even though they obviously did age. Look at that photo above. She's serious but gentle and he's smiling and having a good time. That's pretty much how I remember them too, even in old age.

 

This photo above is one of my favorites of Grandfather Williams. He was a very active guy and loved nothing better than being out in the woods hunting or fishing. There he is with a dandy rainbow trout, and a really large one.

Bottom line and my thoughts on Grandfather Williams is that he was his own person. He didn't remain working in a job he didn't like even though it was easy to come by and insured an good income. He took the road less traveled and became a tobacco route salesman with a vehicle to get him down back roads up in the mountains so he could fish or hunt. He did what he loved and it showed in every fiber of his being. May we all be so lucky.

Camey and Emma enjoying the great outdoors in Western Maryland!

The URL for this post is: http://nutsfromthefamilytree.blogspot.com/2013/07/thoughtful-tuesday-young-and-old.html