Revision Time for My First Blog Post: 52 Ancestors 2025 Prompt “In the Beginning”

A Clearer Picture of a Pioneer Female Doctor: Harriet Stemen Macbeth

Harriet Stemen Macbeth: 1873-1939 (Maternal Great-Grandaunt by Marriage)

 

When I look back at my first genealogy blog post, I cringe. My little sketch, only three paragraphs in length, was sadly incomplete and in certain respects was downright erroneous. In January 2019 when I first wrote that post, I was just starting my journey in family history research. My limitations and lack of knowledge back then are now painfully obvious. I feel I did a great disservice to the subject of that first blog post, Dr. Harriet Stemen Macbeth. Now, six years later, it is time to correct my errors and provide a more complete picture of this amazing woman’s life.

Harriet Fontanna Stemen was born February 19, 1873 to Dr. Christian Stemen and his wife Lydia Enslen Stemen. She was the sixth of their seven children. Christian Stemen was a doctor and surgeon who first practiced in Ohio where Harriet was born. Around 1875 he was appointed as a professor of the theory and practice of medicine at the Medical College of Fort Wayne, Indiana, so he moved his family there. He was a man ahead of his time, a proponent of women entering medical practice, and the medical college began to admit female students.

The building that house the Medical College of Fort Wayne when Harriet Stemen was a student

Harriet became one of those medical students in 1893. She completed her studies and began practicing as a physician in 1894. She first worked as an assistant to her father, handling anesthesia during his surgeries.

On July 3, 1900, Harriet married Albert Macbeth, another physician in Fort Wayne. She was 27 years old while he was 38. Albert was ambitious, running the city health department and building a hospital. The couple had no children. Census records show them living together in the 1910 and 1920 censuses. Harriet’s parents often resided with them.

Harriet was involved in the community. She was named “grand Martha” by the Grand Matrons of the Eastern Star in the spring of 1907, a charitable fraternal (or in this instance, sororital) Masonic group. She also served as secretary for the group. Harriet was also active in the local Presbyterian Church. The church listings in the Fort Wayne newspaper for May 8, 1909 show Harriet performing two solos, one at the morning service and one at the evening service. Albert is never mentioned in articles about these community groups; it is unclear if he participated.

Harriet faced difficulties in her life. She was sued in 1914 by an obstetrics patient, Nora Ulery, who claimed that Harriet failed to arrive for three hours after Ulery called to say she was in labor. The child was already born when Harriet arrived, and Ulery claimed the doctor failed to bring necessary equipment to help with post-birth issues, and as a result Ulery needed further surgery. She also claimed that Harriet injected her with an unsanitary needle, leading to an infection and abscess that left Ulery unable to use her arm.

The suit finally went to trial a year later, with a verdict coming down January 15, 1915. The jury did not believe Mrs.Ulery, finding for Harriet. I noticed that Mrs. Ulery was suing two other people around the same time period over different issues—perhaps she was one of those people who like to file nuisance lawsuits.

Harriet was also having marital problems that seems to have led to an eventual divorce. It is unclear when she divorced Albert. On the 1920 census form they were still living together and still listed themselves as married. My mother told me that her parents heard rumors that Albert may have been a womanizer, but she didn’t know any details. I am embarrassed to admit that I failed to catch the divorce when I first wrote about Harriet. I wrote admiringly of their long marriage.

At some point in her medical career, Harriet went into practice with her niece-in-law, Bertha Goba Macbeth, another woman doctor who married Albert Macbeth’s nephew Robert Lyle Macbeth. The two physicians were featured in an article on “Fort Wayne’s Women Medical Pioneers”. The author, Peggy Siegel, wrote:

“As family physicians, Dr. Harriet Stemen Macbeth and her niece, by marriage, Dr. Bertha Goba Macbeth called on patients in their homes, often assisting at childbirth. They referred patients to hospitals only when oxygen was needed. Office hours were for follow up care when patients were well enough to get out.”

By the 1930 census, Harriet was living at 419 Wayne Street in Fort Wayne. While she still told the census taker she was married, she was obviously living separately from Albert. She owned the home and had two female boarders, a nurse and a Dictaphone operator. The house was valued at $20,000, which seems like a good sum for that era. I have found no record of Albert in the 1930 census, so I am unsure where he was living.

It is possible that Albert and Harriet never actually legally divorced, but merely permanently separated. When Albert appears on the 1940 census, he lists himself as a widower (Harriet died the year before), and his 1947 death certificate also lists him as a widower.

Harriet died March 18, 1939 at the age of sixty-six. The only obituaries I have found for her were from Indiana newspapers other than her hometown’s, so they were very brief, noting only that she had practiced medicine in Fort Wayne for 44 years, and had retired from her practice in 1937. I have found no death certificate. The obituaries said she “died…after a long illness.”

 

I am sure the Fort Wayne newspaper carried a more detailed obituary. At some point I hope to be able to find a copy of it. Harriet Stemen Macbeth’s courageous life deserves to be properly remembered.

 

Sources:

Information on Harriet’s medical school training and photo of medical college. By Nyttend - Own work, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=19364527 https://www.lostcolleges.com/fort-wayne-medical

Church Solo. Fort Wayne News and Sentinel. Fort Wayne, Indiana. May 8, 1909 issue. https://www.newspapers.com/image/29184004/?match=1&terms=harriet%20stemen%20macbeth

“Mrs. Harriet Stemen Macbeth Honored by Grand Matrons.” Fort Wayne Journal Gazette. Fort Wayne, Indiana. Apr 26, 1907 issue. https://www.newspapers.com/image/29251774/?match=1&terms=harriet%20stemen%20macbeth

Fort Wayne’s Women Medical Pioneers by Peggy Siegel.  https://www.in.gov/history/files/Seigel-for-WEB.pdf

Photo of headstone from Findagrave.com. Photo by Barbara Wolf. https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/89385484/harriet-macbeth

Obituary. “Fort Wayne Doctor Dies.” The Star Press. Muncie, Indiana. March 19, 1939 issues. https://www.newspapers.com/image/252181103/?article=054b117c-d

52 Ancestors 2024 Final Post of the Year: “Resolution”

 

I am so pleased to have finished another year of 52 Weeks, 52 Ancestors. I managed to write 45 blog posts about some really interesting ancestors.

According to Ancestry, in 2024 I added 993 people to my two big trees on Ancestry. I’m amazed that I had that much growth. I attribute it in part to my growing use of DNA matches to build my tree—I’m adding a lot of collateral ancestors, but they are helping to confirm my connection to my direct ancestors.

Here’s where my trees stand as of New Year’s Day 2024:

Aird Family Tree: 2334 people, and 1201 photos.

Peterson Macbeth Family Tree: 8,759 people and 2785 photos.

And here’s where my genealogy blogs stand:

Twigs on the Family Tree: 214 blog posts.

Another Tree to Climb: Researching the Aird, Sheild, Smiths and Jandeseks: 112 blog posts.

My New Year’s Resolution: I will complete at least 45 of the 2025 blog post prompts, and will continue to build both family trees.

I’m excited to see where I will be at the end of 2025. Happy New Year!

Person No. 68: 52 Ancestors 2024 Prompt “Random Number”

 

Picking My Subject By Random: Cousin Myron Ahlness

Myron Gordon Ahlness: 1923-1974 (Paternal Third Cousin)

 

Amy Johnson Crow provided a rather cryptic prompt for me to write about this week: Random Number. Puzzled, I turned to her email about the prompt, which read:

“The theme for Week 47 is "Random Number." This is a fun exercise -- pick a random number between 1 and 100. Then…take a list of everyone in your tree and scroll down to that number. Then write a little bit about that person.”

I decided to use her suggestion. I opened my family tree in Ancestry and chose to look at it in list form. I picked the random number of 68 (my recent MegaMillions lottery ticket included that number), counted down to the 68^th person in the tree list, and came up with my blog post subject: my third cousin Myron Ahlness. I knew very little about him, so enjoyed digging a little deeper.

Myron Gordon Ahlness was born August 14, 1923 to parents Hans Ahlness and Ida Jorgine Vee. Ida was my great-grandmother Ragnhild Syverson’s great-niece. Hans Ahlness’ first wife was Ragnhild’s daughter Jorgine, who died in 1908. Ida married Hans in 1913, and became an instant stepmother to Jorgine’s four surviving children. Ida and Hans had another seven children. Myron was the youngest of all their children.

Myron grew up on the family farm in Linden Township in Brown County, Minnesota. He attended school through the eighth grade and then dropped out to help his father and brothers on the farm (information from the 1940 census).

When World War II broke out, Myron was barely eighteen. His draft card shows he was five foot six inches tall, 130 pounds, had brown hair, hazel eyes and a medium complexion. Interestingly, it also states that his pointer finger on his right hand had been amputated at the first joint—probably a farming accident.

Myron eventually enlisted November 6, 1943, at age twenty, joining the Navy. He served until January 21, 1946. I don’t know if he served aboard a ship, and if so, what type of ship and what theater of war. The only records on Fold3 are very generic, and I can’t find any news articles online that provide any information on his war service. According to his military burial record, his rank was SF-3C, which is a Shipfitter Third Class. According to a navy document I found, shipfitters “laid out and fabricated metal construction. Fit and repaired pipes and tubing. Forged, welded and soldered metals. Maintained tanks and watertight fixtures.”

Like many young men who knew they were heading to war, Myron married just months before he shipped out. His bride was Vernelle Fredrickson, and they married at Lake Hanska Church on July 10, 1943. Vernelle was twenty-three and Myron was twenty. The photo below depicts a beautiful wedding, with a handsome young groom and a lovely bride.

Left to right: Kenneth Frederickson, ?, Virgil Schmiesing, Adeline Longworth, Myron Ahlness, Vernelle Ahlness, Vernon Ahlness, Alpha Thordson, Raymond Thordson, ? Younger ones left to right: Tamara Frederickson, Betty Meyer, ?, Lynn Longworth,

Myron and Vernelle’s only child, daughter Leah Rae Ahlness, was born March 18, 1944 while her father was still serving in the Navy.

When Myron mustered out and returned home in 1946, he returned to farming. The 1950 census shows the young couple and little Leah living with Vernelle’s parents on their farm. From news items I found in the Sleepy Eye Minnesota newspaper from the late 1950s and early 1960s, the couple continued to live on the Ingval Fredrickson farm.

Myron died on May 13, 1974. He was only fifty years old. He apparently was buried at the Lake Hanska Cemetery with a military headstone, but I have been unable to find a Findagrave listing or an obituary.

While I may have picked Myron randomly to write about today, I enjoyed taking a look at his life. He was a reminder of how many men stepped up to serve our country when America needed them, and how they then quietly returned home to build families and careers, and to serve their communities. Men like Myron Ahlness are worth remembering.

Sources:

WWII: Petty Officer Ratings by Branch. https://www.ussmarblehead.com/pdf/WWII__PettyOfficerRatings2.pdf

Draft Record for Myron Ahlness. https://www.ancestry.com/search/collections/2238/records/16296105?tid=46986934&pid=24043755902&ssrc=pt

US Headstone Application for Military Veterans: Myron Ahlness. https://www.ancestry.com/search/collections/2375/records/3460977?tid=46986934&pid=24043755902&ssrc=pt

Pickle on the Christmas Tree: 52 Ancestors 2024 Prompt “Cultural Tradition”

My Late Adoption of a Supposed German Tradition

 

I started thinking about this prompt at about the same time as we started putting up our Christmas tree. When our kids were younger, I bought a blown glass pickle ornament for our tree, intrigued by the supposed connection to German traditions. I always made some special Norwegian Christmas cookies every year, but until then I didn’t do anything Christmassy to celebrate my Grandma Nora’s German ancestry. Hence, the pickle.

According to Wikipedia, the pickle ornaments may not really be a German tradition. The article on the Christmas pickle states:

“There are a number of different origin stories attributed to the tradition, including one originating in Germany. This theory has since been discounted, and it is now thought to be a German-American tradition created in the late 19th century. In fact, the New York Times reported that out of 2,057 Germans polled, YouGov determined 91% were unaware of the legend.”

Whether or not the pickle is truly a German tradition or not, in our family it is meant to remind us of our German heritage. The pickle ornament, or Weihnachtsgurke in German, is supposed to be hidden in the tree, and the child who finds it first will get a special present or will have a wish for the New Year granted. Now that our children are adults, we haven’t been hiding the pickle anymore—we just enjoy hanging it up and chuckling about it.

This year we actually have three pickles on the tree! I thought we’d lost the original one—a cute, tiny gherkin. So I bought a replacement three years ago at Ace Hardware in Mission Viejo, California. It was a larger pickle, about 3 inches long. This year, we found the original buried in a box of ornaments, so I hung both on the tree.

My third pickle ornament...

I belong to a Garden Club and our club Christmas party included a gift exchange with a gardening theme. I received a nice pair of gardening gloves with a third pickle ornament tucked inside a glove! So now I have three reminders of my German heritage on our tree!

Froliche Weihnacten! Und Frohes Neues Jahr! May you all find a lucky pickle in your tree!

Source:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas_pickles:

Seeing Double? 52 Ancestors 2024 Prompt “All Mixed Up”

 

DNA Results Suggest My Third Great Grandfather Was Identical Twin

Tomas Anfinnson Vetti: 1766-1851 (Paternal Third-Great-Grandfather)
Ola Anfinnson Vetti: 1766-1826 (Paternal Third-Great-Uncle)

 

While checking on some new Ancestry DNA matches, I came across one with the “common ancestor” notation. That designation always excites me, because a potential common ancestor can really help me trace the cousin connection and connect the new cousin to my tree. But when I clicked on the common ancestor link for this particular new cousin, who I will refer to as NE, I saw my third great-grandfather. Tomas Anfinnson Vetti,  listed as the common ancestor. Ancestry’s Thruline feature showed him as the father both of my second-great-grandfather Sjur Tommason Hestetun and NE’s third-great-grandfather Peder Olsson Melheim.

That immediately raised a red flag—in 18^th century Norway, sons had their father’s first name as part of their surname. My second great-grandad’s surname was “Tommason”—Tomas Anfinnson Vetti’s son, Sjur. But Peder’s name was Olsson, so he would have been the son of Ole or Ola, not Tomas. Was this what genealogists call a “non-parental event”—in other words, did Tomas fool around with Peder’s mother? Or was there another less titillating explanation? It was time for further research.

I used the tools associated with Ancestry’s Thruline feature, which showed the other Ancestry-based trees that led their algorithm to suggest the relationship between Peder Olsson Melheim and Tomas Anfinnson Vetti. The trees showed Peder was born January 7, 1792 to parents as Ola Anfinnson Vetti and Martha Pedersdatter. Peder’s surname now made sense: his father of record had the first name “Ola”, so he was Peder Olsson.

I also immediately noticed another connection: Peder’s father Ola had the same father as my third-great-grandfather Tomas: Anfinn Anfinnson Vetti, born February 17, 1715 in Vetti, Aardal, Sogn al Fjordane, Norway. Ola and Tomas were brothers.

But that left me with a question: why did the DNA show that Tomas was more closely related to Ola’s son Peder than an uncle should be? Surely Tomas wasn’t sneaking around with his own brother’s wife! Would they have even had the opportunity? Peder’s final surname piece was Melheim, which indicated his parents were living on the Melheim farm in Aardal, while Tomas’ children all had Vetti as part of their name, indicating they were still living on the Vetti farm where Tomas and Ola were born and raised. I am not sure how distant the properties were from one another, but it would have taken more effort to conduct an affair if you needed to travel by horse and wagon. From the map below, which shows Melheim in the Fardal region and Vetti in the Utladal region, they are over an hour apart by car.

I quickly discovered another interesting piece of information: Tomas Anfinnson Vetti and Ola Anfinnson Vetti had the same birthdate: supposedly both men were born January 13, 1766. Of course this could be an error—someone transcribing records incorrectly. Or it could indicate something else: that Tomas and Ola were twins. And given the DNA evidence, probably identical twins! If Tomas and Ola had the same DNA because they split from the same embryo, their children would genetically be half-siblings as well as first cousins, and my relationship to my new cousin NE would make sense.

Proving my hypothesis will be nearly impossible. I have been unable to locate birth records for Tomas and Ola verifying they were born the same day. I will have to investigate further using Norwegian Bygdeboks. For now, I will record Peder Olsson Melheim as the son of Ola Anfinnson Vetti, and the nephew of my third great-grandfather Tomas Anfinnson Vetti. I will make a private note about my hypothesis about the brothers’ twinship.

I am intrigued by the possibilities opened up by my hypothesis about the Anfinnson Vetti brothers—I’d never considered the difficulties presented by identical twins in DNA testing. I am glad that this DNA cousin connection turned out to be less mixed up than it initially appeared.

Sources:

Ancestry.com, DNA Match.

Information on Anfinn Anfinnsson Vetti: https://norwayancestors.com/getperson.php?personID=I1342&tree=tree2

Relationship to NE page on Ancestry. https://www.ancestry.com/discoveryui-geneticfamily/thrulines/tree/991514595:9009:66/for/38B5E694-2D64-4CC7-BEFE-4FE8A7F44961?matchingSampleId=D2063198-2FB9-4C93-9549-D0547D742246&member=322220658093:1030:46986934

 

Flowers and Fruit from the Macbeth Farm Garden: 52 Ancestors 2024 Prompt “Colorful"

 

Green Thumb in a Blue Straw Hat: Grandma Nora and Her Colorful Garden

Nora Elsie Hoffman Macbeth: 1899-1994 (Maternal Grandmother)

 

My Grandma Nora had a green thumb and a true passion for gardening. Her garden lay on the far side of the Macbeth farm driveway, and it was huge. I am a terrible judge of acreage, but I think it must have been half an acre in size, and included some fruit trees at one end. In addition to the main garden, her yard was studded with flower beds and flowering shrubs. Every fall and winter, she pored over garden catalogs. She traded seeds and cuttings with friends, and loved to visit neighbors to see how their gardens were growing and what they had blooming. Grandma had two sisters who lived nearby, and they would call each other nearly every day. I remember that their flowers and vegetable gardens were frequent phone call topics. Best of all, Grandma was generous in sharing her gardening knowledge with her little grandchildren. I have such wonderful memories of hours spent in the garden with her, and of her sharing seeds and advice so I could start my own little garden at my home.

Grandma and Grandpa Macbeth in front of one of Grandma's flower beds--summer 1970

My grandparents’ house was surrounded by flower beds and window boxes filled with petunias, johnny-jump-ups and geraniums, and ground beds filled with roses, daylilies and huge dahlias in brilliant colors. Grandma was very proud of her flower beds, and eagerly awaited their peak bloom times so she could show them off to friends and family. A favorite family story featured a very young me (probably about age four) circling the house while all the adults were distracted and carefully plucking every single bright red geranium flower head. I proudly headed indoors to present Grandma with my “bouquet”. Somehow she kept her composure, pretending to be thrilled with my floral massacre and making a show of getting a pretty vase and giving me a hug before she retreated to the bedroom to cry.

Climbing rose, dahlias and petunias in bed on side of sun porch. Macbeth farm, photo by me at age ten or eleven in June 1970. I had a very cheap compact camera, and was so proud to be "taking pictures" all by myself.

Grandma’s garden started out as a necessity. Nora Hoffman married Ivan Macbeth in 1926. The year after my mother was born in 1928, the stock market crashed, along with farm prices, sending the country into the Great Depression. Money was scarce, so my grandparents had to grow what they ate to survive—they slaughtered their own hogs, ducks and chickens for meat, they ate eggs from the chickens, they caught fish from local creeks and rivers, and they hunted deer and pheasants. In addition to growing field crops like corn and wheat, they grew fruit and vegetables in a large garden. My grandmother canned and pickled her produce so they had fruit and vegetables to eat all winter long, and they kept root vegetables like potatoes and turnips in the cool “root cellar” to keep them fresh as long as possible. It was a hard, labor-intensive life. Photos from that period show the house with no flower beds or flowering shrubs—there was no time or energy for beautifying their surroundings.

One sad trellis was only attempt at landscaping in Depression-era photo of Macbeth family.

However, when their finances improved, my grandparents took pride in their landscaping. My grandmother’s large garden still had numerous rows of vegetables, and Grandma still gathered apples from the fruit trees and picked strawberries from the large berry patch next to the chicken coop. However, the garden also had lush beds of flowers—rows of zinnias, bachelor buttons and four-o-clocks, plus cottage-garden style sections of intermixed hollyhocks, daylilies, phlox, iris, cleome and sunflowers. It was a lovely color palette buzzing with bees, sphinx moths and butterflies.

Rose arbor and bed with dahlias and some white flowers.

My grandfather helped by building and caring for planters, arbors and garden decorations like a little Dutch windmill he built. He turned a tractor tire into a raised bed, and a round metal piece of equipment into a two-level bed for moss roses (portulaca).

Dutch windmill decoration Grandpa built for Grandma. Rex, Ivan, and Nora Macbeth, and my mom Ione Macbeth Peterson.

But Grandma Nora was the true gardener. She spent part of each non-rainy summer day in her garden. She had a woven straw hat painted a bright blue that she would pop on her head to protect her from the sun. She’d often wear her apron to cover her clothes, and had good garden gloves to protect her hands. She carried a stool with her to spare her knees. When I was with her, she’d give me tasks to keep me busy—weeding a row of carrots, pulling radishes for lunch-time munching, or tying up the climbing peas to wooden frames.

My little garden at home--zinnias prominently visible in front, along with bachelor buttons to right and what looks like bush beans against picket fence. A short, child-sized hoe is visible on the ground.

Grandma Nora encouraged me to start my own garden. My dad had removed an old lilac bush from our yard when it died back, leaving a bare spot about 8x8 feet. I started my little garden there, planting zinnias, bachelor buttons, and marigolds: seed gifts from grandma. Someone got me a little trowel and rake. I cared for that little garden area for several years. I carried my love for gardening into my adult life, and now that I am retired, I am still gardening in my retirement community.

Last year, my son and his wife had their second child, and named her Zinnia. The name felt like a little hug from heaven from Grandma Nora—zinnias were one of our mutual favorites. Perhaps Grandma Nora’s and my love for gardening and growing a colorful rainbow of flowers will be passed on to a new generation.

Sources:

Macbeth family photos and my personal photos.

Part 2 of The Macbeth Farm: 52 Ancestors 2024 Prompt “Homestead”

 

My Childhood Memories of My Grandparents’ Farm

Ivan Alfred Macbeth: 1904-1972 (Maternal Grandfather)
Nora Elsie Hoffman: 1899-1994 (Maternal Grandmother)

 

Here is a beautiful aerial shot of my grandparents’ farm, taken in the early 1960s when I was a little girl. This is the farm that lives in my memories.

Whenever I think of my grandparents’ farm, I think of the following old children’s song:

Oh playmate, come out and play with me

And bring your dollies three.

Climb up my apple tree,

Look down my rain barrel

Slide down my cellar door

And we’ll be jolly friends forever more.

My grandparents’ house had the song’s essentials: the apple tree, the rain barrel and the cellar door. The large garden on the far side of the house had a few ancient apple trees. The barrel was used to catch rainwater from the house’s downspout. My grandmother liked to wash her hair in the rainwater from the barrel—it was softer than the well water pumped by their windmill. She also used it to water plants. The cellar had double doors set in concrete on a slant, perfect for a little girl like me to slide down (and run down, although that wasn’t good for the structure of the doors). In my young mind, the song must have been written about the Macbeth farm place—it all fit.

I’ve been looking, unsuccessfully so far, for a photo of that cellar door. I can remember the steps that it covered, leading down into “the root cellar”—the original basement under the oldest section of the house, with cemented fieldstone walls and shelving for canned goods and containers for storage of root vegetables-- and the “basement”, the concrete-walled section under the newer part of the house where the plumbing was laid in. That space contained a toilet, metal washing/soaking sink, and the washing machine.

My mom, Ione, and her little brother Rex play in the snow in 1937. Living room windows visible, along with roof of barn at bottom of the hill.

The old house underwent several changes over the years. When it was originally built, indoor plumbing and electricity weren’t available. My mother, born in 1928, remembered still using the outhouse as a young child, and having to pump water from the windmill to carry into the house for washing and cooking. During her early childhood, her parents had indoor plumbing installed. They converted the smallest upstairs bedroom into a bathroom with tub, toilet, sink and a closet (one of only three closets in the house). In the late 1930s, thanks to FDR’s Rural Electrification Act and Administration, electricity finally reached rural Le Ray Township. My mother told me how magical the moment was when they first turned on the electric lights in the house—the oil lamps were no longer needed. They also added an oil-burning forced air furnace to replace the fireplace.

1934 photo of Ione Macbeth's 6th birthday. Windmill behind her, and old porch on front of house.

The house originally had two open-air porches. There was a small one on the “front” of the house that faced the road. It is visible in the attached photo of my mother in 1934, with a wood floor atop a crawlspace, posts supporting the porch roof, and a low white rail at the right side. In addition, there was a long one that stretched the length of rear of the house where it faced the farmyard. At some point during the 1940s, my grandparents modified both porches. The long rear one was rebuilt with a concrete foundation, the sides covered with windows from waist height upwards, windows which had screens only—no glass. They called this porch, appropriately enough, the screen porch. It was used as a sort of mud room and storage area for garden tools and snow and work boots, as well as a play area for us grandkids in warm weather. The play space contained a wooden toy stove and oven painted in a muted pale green, and a doll buggy and old metal toy tractors and bakelite farm animals.

The front porch received an even bigger makeover, including a new foundation and concrete floor, walls and real windows with glass as well as screens. The new porch is visible in the photo of my mother and her cousins below, circa 1949. My grandparents referred to this as the “sun porch”. By the 1960s, the trees in the front yard were huge, making the porch a shady, comfortable spot in summer, and a warm spot in spring and fall when the leaves were small or fallen. Only in winter was the space too cold to use. My grandfather had a bentwood rocker out there, and he loved to sit there, read a book or the newspaper, do the crossword puzzle, and smoke his pipe or a cigarette. There was a floral couch where the rest of us sat to chat and listen to the birdsong.

Left to right: Joanna Macbeth, Renee Macbeth, Ione Macbeth, Wilfred Macbeth and Dwight "Rex" Macbeth. Windows of Ione's bedroom on top floor above living room bay window. New front "sunporch" at right.

My grandparents put in raised flowerbeds around the exterior of the front of the house. They are visible in the photo below, which shows the bow window in the living room.

My mother’s old bedroom was right above the living room. It featured pale pink walls, filmy white curtains framing two large windows with white frames, and a black and white granite-look linoleum floor that made a sort of crackling noise when I walked on it. The room had a white iron double bed with a pink floral chenille spread. Every summer my brother and I would stay at my grandparents’ house for a couple weeks, and I loved sleeping in that room. I felt like a princess. Someone once told me my great-grandmother died in that bed, which had my vivid imagination conjuring ghosts in that airy bedroom. Leona Hoffman had died long before I was born, so to me she was just a sweet-faced old lady with white hair in a photo on my grandma’s dresser. She didn’t seem quite real to me as a young child, so I quickly got past my fear and slept easily in the bed.

My brother stayed in the adjoining room, which used to be my Uncle Rex’s room. The two large windows looked out at the windmill and down the hill to the barn and the fields beyond. It was a marvelous view. That bedroom also contained a bookcase filled with children’s books—mostly chunky Big Little Books from my mom’s 1930s childhood, still marked with their ten-cent price. I loved their squat size (about 4 x 4 inches) that fit nicely in my hands, and the musty smell of the cheap, thick paper they were printed on.

A Big Little Book from the 1930s

The upstairs bedrooms were reached via a narrow wood staircase. The risers were painted in the palest gray with rubber stair treads tacked on them to prevent slips and falls. The steep steps were perfect for sending the old Slinky toy down—I loved the odd little whisk noise the Slinky made as it uncoiled and recoiled down the steps.

At the top of the staircase was my grandmother’s Singer sewing machine—a newer electric machine mounted in the old wooden stand that used to hold her treadle machine. She had an old piano stool tucked beneath it to sit on when she sewed—both the stool and Singer cabinet were painted white, and were bathed in the light from the window just to the right.

My brother and me with our grandparents Ivan and Nora Macbeth--Grandpa's 60th birthday in 1964. Taken in Macbeth kitchen--window to left looked out on sunporch. Door on right was sunporch door.

My grandparents used the bedroom downstairs which was entered from the living room. It had a lovely, dark hardwood bedroom set, and had pale walls (blue I think) and two windows—one facing the garden and the other looking onto the screen porch.

I have wonderful memories of playing on the concrete platform that supported the windmill, the source of the well water on the farm. I also liked to dance on the round concrete top of the water cistern. When we were little and Grandpa Ivan still had cattle and hogs, we’d run down to the pig pen to feed them potato and apple peels, and we would watch the cows being milked in the big barn and would play with the barn cats and kittens. I’d scare myself by sneaking into the old outhouse, home to spiders and wasps, and I’d pick strawberries from my Grandma Nora’s berry patch.

Me with farm cats--age 4. Round cistern to my rear right. Corn crib behind me. Photographer (grandpa) was standing by cellar door and back door entry to screen porch. Clothesline post next to the electric pole. Windmill out of photo on right.

And then there was the marvelous hill from the house down to the barn. In the summer, my brother and I would roll down the hill over and over—the grass stains on our clothes probably drove our mother crazy. All Grandma asked was that we avoid her peony bushes at the bottom of the hill.

Closeup of aerial photo showing windmill, cistern, screen porch all along back of house, sloping cellar door just to left of car's front bumper. Windows to Rex's bedroom facing windmill. Hill leading down to barnyard at front left, with grandma's beloved peony bushes at bottom left. I believe that's Grandpa Ivan getting out of the car.

While the old Macbeth farmhouse still exists, the outbuildings are gone and the house is changed—it no longer looks like my grandparents’ farm place. But the Macbeth farm still lives in my memory, in old family photographs, and a 1960s aerial photograph. Grandma and Grandpa, I love you and miss you.