Grandmother's Birth Anniversary was Yesterday...

My Father's Mother had an unusual first name: Aeleta (later spelled Aleta); it seems to be an ancient first name that makes the rounds every few centuries. The name means "Gift of God": and I can understand why my great-grand parents chose that name. Born in 1890 in either Kittaning or Bradford PA, she was a very late, last or near last baby in a family; older sister was 20 when she was born.

In the photo above, she is a young Mom (about 30, since my Dad is about 1- likely it's Spring or Summer, 1920.) The location would likely be either Chicago where they lived or maybe Kittaning PA where they visited her family. It's nearly 100 years ago.

Her upbringing in Kittaning was rather idyllic: family reasonably well off, she had a pony and spent a lot of time in the horse barn with the "hostler"--man hired to see to the horses and buggies. Dad said she terrorized the town as a little girl by riding too fast in her little buggy with her pony on the streets.

She moved to Chicago about 1913 to seek her future (as many people did in those day; Chicago was the place to be). Between the wars and the depression, life could have been easier for her, I guess. Much as it was for many in those days.  My Grandfather was born in Sicily; came to Chicago as a baby. He was a conductor on the Chicago "L" and he was really handsome; I guess I can understand what happened there.

I wonder whose shadow we see in the lower right.

Aelita's actual birthday was February 22. So she always got a day off school for her birthday (if it fell on a weekday) because in those days, GW birthday was celebrated on the actual day. The joke was, instead of George Washington's Birthday, they called it "George Birthington's Wash Day". She said that all the time. She's been gone a long time, passed away suddenly on Easter Day in 1961--she had just turned 71.