My Grandmother's Family

In the days when I was just a very little girl, we had company sometimes on Sunday afternoons. Some of the company was very stern looking old men. They were very thin, very tall and all had mustaches. The mustaches were white as well as their hair. They wore black suits with stiff white collars. I think that’s what made them seem so tall and stern, they couldn’t bend. I did not like them and they did not like me. I was a lively little girl full of life and they were old and probably their bones hurt.
Sometimes they brought their wives and they weren’t friendly either. Everybody wore black. Not pretty colors like I did. Once again when they visited, little girls had to disappear so the grownups could visit.
When I was a little girl I can remember going to all of their funerals. I couldn’t be sad because I didn’t like them. But, much to my mother’s relief, I didn’t fidget.
As I grew older, I asked my mother about those people, who they were and why they would come to our house. She told me they were my grandmother’s half brothers. She named them all, Uncle this Uncle that. I didn’t care even when I was grown. She told me that her mother’s father Nathan Hayes had married a woman named Catherine who was a widow woman with six children all boys. The two of them had only one child, her mother. Her name was Lulu whom I am named after. Well that was kind of interesting.
Mother told me that her grandfather spoiled my grandmother to the point that my great grandfather’s wife became jealous of the relationship between father and daughter and would beat my grandmother when he wasn’t around. I couldn’t imagine that. I had had only one spanking in my life and I didn’t want another. Another reason I couldn’t believe it was because my grandmother was the most gentle sweetest person I had ever known. She loved me so much and I her. I couldn’t imagine her ever doing anything that would cause her mother to beat her.
Mother told me that one day he took my grandmother to town when she was sixteen. They of course, took a team of horses and a buggy. They went to the jewelry store and he bought her a locket watch which was engraved with her name on it. Her mother was enraged. Another day he bought her an upright piano. That piano stayed in the family for years and years. You may be able to piece together from these little stories that my great grandfather was wealthy. I think that my great grandmother wanted to keep all the money for her children and herself.
I know little else of my grandmother’s family except they were from Ohio. The ancestry has been traced to the Revolutionary war. There was a man that died in the 1700’s that was my ancestor. You will need to look in the Hayes family Bible to find that information.
The picture above, is a picture of my great grandfather, Nathan Hayes. My mother adored him. He is dressed as Santa Claus in the picture. If you notice the wrinkles around his eyes, my mother and her brother’s all had smile wrinkles around their eyes like their grandfather.