They lived with my grandmother...

St. Francis DeSales Roman Catholic Church from the Library of Congress

"They lived with my grandmother Lilly and grandfather Will.  My mother worked in a candy store and my father worked for a thread company.  Grandad had a gas station near Fairmount Park.

Uncle Frank moved to the Blude Ridge Mountains of Virginia and ran a saw mill.  He and Aunt Fannie lived there until he hurt his leg and had gangrene.  He came home to stay with our family and died when I was eight years old.  Aunt Fannie died a couple of years later in 1933.  She was my best friend.  We played games together and she taught me to embroider and sew.  When I was sick, which was after, she would read to me for hours.

My parents had three children, Margaret, William and me.  I was born in a house on 21st Street in Philadelphia, October 14, 1921.  My brother, who was four years old, had died in July of scarlet fever before I was born.  My mother insisted that I be born at home and due to complications died a few days later, leaving my father with an infant and a five year old daughter, Peggy.

Grandmom took on the chore of raising us.  I twasn't easy at her age but she did not want anyone else to have us.  In November 1922, Peggy in the first grade of school, contracted measles which went into pneumonia and she died.  I had them also but made it through okay.

She was buried with a mass of the Angels from St. Francis Church where she attended school.  A dainty little ballet dancer had gone to join her mother and brother, leaving my heartbroken father with a year old toddler, me, and a shattered life.

My once happy grandfather, Will, heartbroken over the loss of his darling Peggy, locked me out of his heart so he wouldn't be hurt again.  He never acted like a grandfather or paid much attention to me as I grew up.  Thank God for my grandmother who loved me and raised me as her daughter that she never had.  After her boys I was a pleasure for her."