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My Father’s Family
My father was born Ernest William Jones, in Saskatchewan, Canada, in a town called Moosmin, on March 26, 1885. His mother died at his birth. His aunt (his mother’s sister Hetty Hughes) took him to raise with her own two boys David and Hugh. Even though the family did not adopt him, he called himself Ernest William Jones Hughes. He died August 13, 1963 at the age of 77.
When we were children growing up, my dad would decide on the spur of the moment to go see my uncle David and his family (we never knew Hugh well), who lived on the North side of Chicago — we lived on the South side until 1920. When we’d get there it would be early afternoon and they would always be sound asleep. My dad would send out for food, as there never seemed to be any. I often wondered why, and wondered why we went, as they never were that glad to see us, and my mother was always embarrassed. But we kids enjoyed their children — our cousins Robert, Ted, and Natalie.
My Mother’s Family
I remember that my great grandparents (my mother’s grand parents) — Isaiah Marston and his wife Sarah — lived in Lowell, Massachusetts and had two daughters, Emma Jane (my grandmother) and Etta. Emma Jane was 5 years older than her sister. When she was 16, Emma had had typhoid fever and lost all of her hair. It continued to be thin all her life.
In the 1880’s Emma Jane met and married Horace W. Cromwell, who came from upstate New York. He was two years old at the time of the Civil War and his father was in an internment camp because of his sympathies with the South. Horace and his sister Anna were put in an orphanage. I wonder if his mother was also sent to the camp with his father? I don’t think I ever heard, which all goes to prove as the book I’ve been reading on biographies and auto-biographies says: ASK ASK ASK anyone who might know what they might remember — now — because at some point it will be too late.
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Horace and Emma Cromwell (my grandparents) had two daughters — Alta, born about 1883, and Edna — my mother — born on May 16, 1885. Edna married my father, Ernest Williams Jones Hughes in August 1906. Their first child, Ellen Gwendolyn was born June 29, 1907 and Edythe Bronwyn (me), September 30, 1908. Edna Ruth was born September 15, 1913; Ernest Llewellyn was born May 15, 1915; Emma Marilyn (later changed to Marilyn Joan) was born nine years later, on November 13, 1924. Alta Cromwell Johnson, my mother’s sister, who was two years older, had 6 children, all a bit younger than our family. The six children were: Horace, Alice, Donald, Laura, Phyllis and Walter. |
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