This was a quiet week - some in the garden, cleaned out some cupboards, some housework and I could see myself heading for a deadly boring blog. But I did do quite a lot of genealogy work this week, which I have been ignoring for some time - and thought you might like to hear a bit about some great grand-parents.

John and Mary Davies were my mother's parents. They were married for over 50 years and were only separated once for five days - during which my grandfather wrote a love letter to my grandmother each day. She was a very strong woman and taught me that "if you can walk down the street with one penny in your pocket and owe no man, then no one is better than you". My grandfather was a gardener.
My father's family was very poor - there were 11 children in all and the only person in the family who had meat was my grandfather who needed his strength to provide for the family. My grandmother (Nain Thomas) was a constantly cheerful woman - always singing and laughing even though she led an incredibly poverished and hard life. This photo shows my father with his parents and his sisters up to that point. Taid (grandfather) Thomas was quite a character. He had been widowed many years and on the day he died was living with a woman. He was 75 and came home from work saying he was tired because after working the whole day as a bricklayer, he had also climbed a tree at lunchtime to show the young-uns that he could. He laid down to rest before dinner and never woke up.

Grandma and Grandpa Topper met in Missouri and moved with the family to Oklahoma a short time before the official opening of the State. This made them one of the Sooners (they went there sooner than they should have). In this photo they are loaded up to move to California. Their next to youngest son Charles is at the wheel and Dick's father Lee sits next to him.

Grandma and Grandpa Craig were Lowney's parents (Dicks Mom). They had moved to Oklahoma from Nebraska and before that from Missouri. There home in Oklahoma is still open farm land heavily scattered with a short cedar tree that Grandpa is reputed to have brought with him from Nebraska. They are a pain for farmers as they spread and spread and can take over pasture land. His son (Dick's Uncle Ben)would laugh and tell us how all the farmers around were mad at him.