Grandparents Love Story (Episode One)

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From 1939, a scene of downtown Billings, Montana. This is the eventual home for a young couple moving to Billings about 20 years earlier. (courtesy of Pinterest)

Grandparents Herman and Annie experienced a most unusual courtship.  Little did they know where life planned to take them in the years to come.

Herman was born in 1890 in Brainerd, Minnesota.  He moved to North Dakota in 1911, then to Forsyth in eastern Montana.  In 1916, as Europe filled with the winds of war, he arrived in Billings, Montana.  He had been hired to be a mail carrier.

Annie was born in 1895 on a small farm in Harlon County, Nebraska.  Not even a blizzard dared to delay her birth.  Her early schooling was spent in a sod school house.  In 1915, her family moved to Leavenworth, Washington where she finished high school, worked in a photo shop, and was employed as a staff operator by the Great Northern Railroad.

Both of their unassuming lives intersected along the railroad tracks of the Great Northern.  Herman was traveling to Fort Lewis outside of Seattle on a troop train.  He was being trained to serve in the American army which was shipping troops to Europe during World War I. 

Along the rail line, many young ladies passed out slips of paper with their name and address.  Herman received one from Annie.  Later, he sent her a card, and thus began a courtship by correspondence. 

The two of them met briefly at Fort Lewis before Herman shipped out to France.  Upon returning safely from the war, Herman met up with Annie to be married in 1919.

They moved to Billings where Herman still found his mail carrier job waiting.  Together they raised a large family of six sons and two daughters.  Ultimately, the siblings witnessed the blessing of 32 grandchildren.

Taken from the front of the house along Jackson Street, the family home (built in 1920) as it looks today. Nearly all of the large trees have been removed. (courtesy of Pinterest)

This story recalled the start of my father’s family.  Being the youngest child (born in 1935), Jim started a family of his own with the birth of his first child in 1956 (Richard).  Eventually the family would number five sons and one daughter.  My youngest brother became the final grandchild when he was born in 1967.

24 thoughts on “Grandparents Love Story (Episode One)”

  3. Family roots such as you describe give me the same awesome feeling as reading the book of Leviticus or Chronicles in which the genealogy is detailed for the Israelites. God set the example for us to remember and pass down our ancestral records, and I’m fascinated by your story.

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  4. I just love this. Family history is so important. We had a whole box of old photographs of folks we didn’t know, until our flower girl from 58 years ago came to visit us. She was in the process of building a beautiful history of the family into a masterful book. She was able to identify many of the unknowns in that box.

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  9. Pingback: Grandparents Love Story (Episode One) — Big Sky Buckeye – QuietMomentsWithGod

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