My four Grandmothers Turn the Hearts of the Children IV (preview)

You have to have all the family names to make a family tree.

Just like a real tree needs all its leaves and branches.


LoLyn 1995
Posted by LoLyn at 5:01 AM 0 comments
My Four Grandmothers
Four Gramdmothers

As I was growing up, and as my children were growing up, we liked to read stories together of the pioneers and early days, to get to know how things were done and how people acted. I always thought as I read them, how lucky they were to have lived in times so different from ours so they could write about them and have interesting things to say.

Through the years, I began to see that the changes in our lifetimes have been interesting, and the differences between my mother's world, and my world, compared to my children's world and their children's world are wonderful and indeed worth writing about.

In my family, our ancestors came to North America as early as l570 from the Canary Islands, near Spain, and early l600's my fathers family came with the early pilgram fathers. One of our earlies anscestors to live in the new Americas was George Jacobs, who lived in the Massachusetts colony of Salam and was actually hung for witch craft during the Salem Witch craft trials (see internet and there is a movie , The Crucible,about that time. That is another story and is recorded in history (and on this website). From there the Jacobs spread across the territories and into the west where my father was born in South Dakota in l907. His father and mother were ranchers as their parents had been, and they had helped to settle the territories. From Dakota to Texas came my father and his father and from there to Arizona.

My grandmother brought with her from Dakota a wooden chest that had been made for her mother from her mother's wooden dining room table. That chest was given to my Aunt and she gave it to me and I gave it to Jenny. It is a symbol to me of the sacrifices and the courage of my forefatahers.

I have nothing of my Mother's parents. They died when she was a baby. Mother has her mother’s baby picture with her triplet siblings and a wedding picture of her parents. But I bestow upon Lynae, my youngest daughter, the momentus title of "the youngest daughter, of the youngest daughter, of the youngest daughter, or the youngest daughter, who was born a triplet at birth.

Mother's people were among the very earliest settlers of the New Mexico territories, and were citizens of Spain until their lands came to be in the United States territories. Their influence through out the history of the west is great and it is a great heritage as is my fathers'.

I do not have as some the stories of emigrants from other countries, but of western settlers the earliest of citizens of the United States of America.

All I have of my grandmothers' is what my uncles and aunts have told me over the years. I want to leave something for my grandchildren and so I am writing this book as a letter to my grand children. Maybe someday they will give it to their children and their children's children, and know that although our lives might be very different, there is a courage and a pioneer spirit that runs strong among our family

So my dear grandchildren, this is for you from your Grandma Lynda.

See Turn the Hearts of the CHildren Volumes I and II, and also the blog "Lickin' and groomin' for a DNA genealogy of our family.
Posted by LoLyn at 4:34 AM 0 comments
This generation: Turn the Hearts of the Children IV (preview)
What's in a name?

Lynae sat quietly, lookng at the collection of rubber address stamp reading each different address aloud to no one in particular.

"Our names are so much alike Lynae == Lynda
Brent Jacobs" she observed to the same audience

"Names seem to run in the family--I mean certain names." Mom observed. "You have two cousins named after Uncle David Duane, who is named after our Uncle Duane David, and the name David Jacobs goes back.
The Jacobs name has been traced directly back to George Jacobs
but, with all those generations there are only really a few that carried on the name from Grandpa Frank Elmers Father."
"He was the only son?"
"Frank and Grace had four sons and three daughters."
Exactly like you mom, only opposite!"
"Two of them didn't have sons, Uncle Caton had two sons, but one died (Timer) young, and the other didn't have ay sons to carry on the name, so it was left to my brothers Frank Glenn and David Duane. Uncle Glenn has has only one son, Ford Glenn, and only granddaughters so far.
"Uncle Duane had four sons, but so far only one grandson with the last name Jacobs so in your children's generation there only one Jacobs boy." (2000, his four sons now have a dozen Jacobs' boys, so the name is safe)
"Well, all Uncle Duane's married kids are having babies this summer --but the sonograms say they are all girls. So we run a little light in the name area."
Lynae campaigned, "But we are as much Jacobs as we are--one fourth."

"Maybe it only counts if you carry the name." Brent offered.
"But you need all the names to make a family tree, just like you need all the leaves and branches in a real tree."

"I would have named my girls Cheryse Marie, Lucy Emilia, and Doug's name would have been Charles--butyour dad said that made his initials awkward so we called him Carl instead? Inever figured out that line of reasoning."


The cousins travel back in time,to become acquainted with family. "These aren't Jacobs--they are Hoblits--"


Texas star quilt of Grace's found at UIcle Emits, cut up and gave a square to each of four siblings, is used as a steady link through time travel. No need for Universal translators in this ancestry, all speek some version of English.




KEvin, CC, Lynae and Brent go to Camp Verde and meet Marie, Erica and Lynda==same age, hear louella's stories ask Glenn again.


Monte gives his wrestling medals to Lynae for safe keeping, his other valuables to Brent. Wrestling shorts and ASU Dean's list parchment to Mom who puts them in the suitcase with her own Scottsdale High School mementos.

"You want to talk about changes?--after this, things will never be the same; when Monte comes back after two years he'll go away to college again. By then there might even be some more grand kids, and another year later, Bret will graduate and be thinking of his mission. But you my dear, you're not getting married until your
25!"
"Mom!"
"You're wedding doll is 25."
"Is she?"
"Yes, just ask her. She went on a mission when she was 21, then went on to graduate school and then got married and she is very happy. Just remember that when you see her.”
“So is Jenny's 25 too?”
"Yup. but Jenny didn't listen to her doll’s advice."


"OK, Mom, whatever you say."
Posted by LoLyn at 3:49 AM 0 comments
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Frank Elmer and Grace Jacobs: Turn the Hearts of the Children IV (preview)
Lynae paraded across the living room in the long white dress. "Was this your wedding dress, Mom?" she asked, already knowing full well that it was.
"It's so pretty. ;You were this skinny when you got married?"
Yep, 121 pounds. Hard to believe with these fifty extra pounds I've been carrying around. I am heaver now that when I was full term with any of my babies! And I've already lost about 25 pounds since last summer."
“Did you ever see your mother's wedding dress?”
“No she didn't really have one. She and Daddy were married at a justice of the peace in August, 1940.”
“Lot's of things seem to happen in August. We always have to go back to Dad's, school starts, Indians rebel and colonists return to Santa Fe twelve years later. "
Brent pretended to count casually on his fingers.
“School used to start after Labor Day and end before Memorial day the last of May. I don't know when they started beginning in August. I think when I was about your age, eighth or ninth grade.”
“You and Dad had a nice wedding didn’t you?”
“Yeah, simple but nice, in Mesa Arizona.”
“So Your parents were married in New Mexico, our parents in Arizona, and where was Grandpa Glen married?”
“Which time?”
“He was married more than once?”
“Three times, Mother was the third.”
“Oh, yeah, I remember you had a half sister and a half niece so you and
Aunt Marie together made a whole aunt.”
“And before Grandpa Jacobs, where were his parents married.
“I'd have to get out the genealogy books for any further back--they lived in San Antonio Texas, but that was after Daddy was born, so they came from South Dakota. Maybe they were married there. Let's look it up in Grandma Jacobs’ '"black book."
*********
[Monte's here with the two teen agers during an interaction with history and ancestors at Grace and Frank's wedding starting with story of her stamping her foot]
Posted by LoLyn at 3:48 AM 0 comments
George Jacobs I trial:Turn the Hearts of the Children IV (preview)
Besides all the other changes Lynae had been equipped with braces before returning to school in the fall. "Well, at least when I meet kids at my new school, they won't all be saying "When did you get braces? And my gaps aren't so big now. I get so embarrassed when people would say, “You should get braces!” or “Why are your teeth so far apart?”
"Well, what I was more concerned with was your big old under bite."
`"Yeah, I can put my top and bottom teeth together now; I couldn't do that before look." Lynae demonstrated her new found skill.
“My favorite change is having a place to unpack my books that have been in boxes for five years and getting my wooden chest back--thank you for taking care of it.” (Mom tells the story of chest made from Great Grandma’s dining table brought west in wagon.)


Mom left the room to change the laundry as Monte entered from his bedroom with his purple McDonald shirt on and cap in his hand, ready to leave for a day’s work.. "Oh, hello Ronald--I mean Monte--where's your big old shoes?"
Monte gritted his teeth but his face turned red betraying his annoyance and Brent knew she had him going. She continued to push his buttons until Monte threatened to use his national wrestling tournament skills to settle the dispute. Mom walked in on the budding argument.
"Take it outside" she said--I'm not going to interfere,-but if you have to fight don't do it in the house.”
Brent raced for the stairs with Monte close behind. Lynae watched out the widow and cried, "Mom Monte will hurt him."
"I don't think so, I think they are just wrestling and having some fun. Boys do that instead of hugging sometimes."
The weather had changed suddenly as was so often the case during this El Nino anomalies year and it began to snow. Lynae put her hand out feeling the flakes as she watched her brothers. Feeling left out and rather bold she leaped on top of the two boys and recognized the familiar spinning sensation as the wet grass gave way to an opening into the past.
"Young man, there can be no wrestling in the streets of Salem. Why aren't you in the court house like everyone else listening to the witch craft trials. It is old George Jacobs that is on trial today, and he will surely be hung. That will be more entertaining than a wrestling match in the dusty street.

[The three siblings witness the witch craft trial and hanging first hand.}
*******
Posted by LoLyn at 3:48 AM 0 comments
John Hoblit: Turn the Hearts of the Children IV (preview)
The December afternoon was unseasonably warm due to the El Niño phenomenon, and Monte had taken Brent's hammock and strung it up on the swing set. The hammock actually had been given to Brent by their oldest brother Doug, who had served a church mission in Brazil some years before. He was married and lived near their home in Las Vegas.
Monte was enjoying the warm sun, reading as was his usual pastime, the story of the life of Abraham Lincoln
"Come on Monte," Lynae whined, tugging at Monte's hand and pushing his book away with the other. All you have done on this Christmas vacation is read that book. What's so interesting in that book?"

"Leave me alone, Lynae." Monte gripped. "I said I'd come play with you later, but I didn't say I would entertain you the whole time. I just want to read and get some rest."

You could come on an adventure with us. You are always away when Brent and I go on adventures. You do know that we have been traveling through time and meeting our ancestors, don't you."

"Yeah, right." Monte said, pulling the book closer to his face to block out the sight of anything else.

"Abraham Lincoln, Volume 2 of 3, The War Years." Lynae read the title, "by Carl Sandberg," she continued, determined to get attention from this big brother she so seldom saw. "Brent! Help me get Monte out of the hammock. Let's take him on a family adventure with us."

Brent glanced at the cover of the book Monte was holding very tightly and very close to his face. Behind the book, Brent could see the grimace that he knew so well. Monte was not to be disturbed.

"Oh, Lynae, leave him alone. He probably doesn't even know that he is holding onto an element of our time travel." Brent lowered his voice to a conspiratorial tone, and said, as if only to Lynae, "He doesn't know that we could take that book and go right back to John Hoblit, l861."

Brent caught a movement from Monte in his peripheral vision, and noticed a loosening in his grip on the book. As if at a signal the two younger teens leaped on Monte in the hammock, the ropes holding it up broke and the three fell to a pile on the ground, which opened up and in a spinning whooshing sensation that Brent and Lynae had become familiar with; the laws of time and space suspended and the three found themselves in Springfield Illinois.

"John Hoblit kept the halfway house between Lincoln and Springfield. Abe Lincoln often stopped there on his trips between towns and was a good friend of the Hoblit family." Brent whispered, quoting from the Jacobs' genealogy history book. "That was written on one of the divider pages in great-grandma Grace Hoblit Jacobs’ book--in her own writing."
"That must be 'Uncle Sam” Look, he is walking with the cane Lincoln gave him when he was inaugurated as President. "
Millicent Seward walked into the room and greeted 'Uncle Sam',
"I don't want to lose this invitation to the inauguration. That was such a wonderful affair, in spite of the (describe inauguration and conflict in the country using Sandberg's book (2007 I knew there was a reason I have held on to the torn up paper back book) With Monte's help. . . . . )

(elaboration: Millicent Seward was a cousin to W. H. Seaward, Lincoln's secretary of State. Their father's were brothers. John and Millicent are buried in the old Clear Creek cemetery; John had donated the land for the cemetery he was the first to be buried in it. Many Larisons and Hoblits are buried there as well as in the Atlanta Cemetery." (The three siblings visit the cemetery, spending the time with John Hoblit’s family in that century.

John E. Hoblit was John Hoblits son. (include him as a child and his siblings in previous sketch.

'Grace Hoblit wrote of her paternal grandparents;

John E. Hoblit and Rachel C. Larison were married in l838 in Illinois. They had 8 children and raised seven to man and woman hood. Rachel became crippled and helpless and remained so for more than 30 years
Posted by LoLyn at 3:41 AM 0 comments
Turn the Hearts of the Children IV (preview)
Brent carefully stacked the blocks of firewood he had brought in for the fireplace. As he built a log-cabin type tower he grinned up at Mom who was resting in the recliner.
"That reminds me of the little cabins my brothers used to make from the wood blocks Daddy brought home from a box factory in St. Johns Arizona.
My earliest memory is of my brothers allowing Marie and I to play with them. I think sometimes Mother made them let us play”
"Anyway, they would place the wood blocks in a huge circle, well, I was three, what can I say, it was huge to me. There were spaces between each block and then they stacked the next layer between the blocks resting on the bottom row. The let us go inside when we promised to be very careful--and I remember the sun making little squares on the ground inside the wooden igloo as it shone through between each block."
"Both of them are still really good builders. Uncle Glenn built his neat house in Eagar with rammed earth and stuff, and Uncle Duane has changed this whole house around."
Lynae joined the conversation. “I sure like how he made this apartment for you in the basement of his own house.”
"Yeah, my big brothers have always been my heroes and my rescuers. I don't know how I would have lived without them. It's funny when we were still in school I didn't get along with them much, and they weren't around much. Duane went into the Navy and Glenn went on a church mission to Central America and then into officer's training school in the army. Then both they got married, and it was just us scraps at home in Scottsdale.”
"Scraps?" Lynae questioned her choice of words.
"When Cheryse was about ten she and I were home with baby Monte, before you two were even thought of, and I suggested we go to the swimming pool for family time--they had a special family rate. Becky and Doug were off somewhere with their dad, probably at the pig farm.”
“Cheryse asked me, ‘are you sure they'll count us as a family--just us scraps?’"
“I loved the expression, so I use it when referring to just a part of the family. She even painted me a little plaque that I have hanging upstairs in Aunt Jean's sewing area--because she makes these fabulous lone star quilts for all her kid's weddings.
It says, "When life gives you scraps, make a quilt."
"That's pretty much how you've done the last ten years, Mom, you've been given some pretty tough scraps, and have turned it into a beautiful quilt of adventures and education for us," Brent admitted taking a break from the block house that now nearly filled the floor of the Orem apartment living room.
"I've enjoyed the stories you tell us about our family history, Mom," Monte added. "You kind of make the whole thing seem real."
Brent and Lynae were talking later as they cleaned the kitchen after dinner.
"I guess we can never go back to the past now, Lynae, the apartment in Las Vegas seemed to hold the magic carpet to travel through our New Mexico History, and now that Dad moved us to Henderson, everything is different.
"At least you didn't have to change schools because you were already into your Aerospace academy at Rancho. I had to leave all my friends at church and school and go to a strange school. Everyone says your eighth grade is the best year of your life, but I had to move right in the middle and it's a harder school, so I'll probably get all C's instead of straight A's like I usually do. And the school can't even give me a grade for last semester because they can't give me a grade for fifteen days, and I've only been in school twelve days."
"Even though both schools are in Clark County School District? that seems strange." Mom asked rhetorically.
"And besides all that, the day after we moved to Henderson I called my friends Meredith and Luanne in a three way phone conversation and they said that Terry said that if he would have known I liked him four months earlier he would have asked me out."
"Well, you can’t even date until your sixteen anyway, so what difference does it make? Monte questioned his little sister.
"Well I would have said no but it would have been nice to know--and be friends." Lynae countered, forcing the ring she had fashioned onto Mom's ring finger.
"What's that thing?" Brent asked catching a glimpse of the ring. "Lynae made it from the scraps of the glue gun when you used on your project.
"Well, even though I didn't change schools, I had to learn a new bus route from Henderson down town to Rancho and I had to get involved in a new scout group--just after I was inducted into Order of the arrow, and I have to make new friends at church--which we actually haven't been to yet because we've been here during Christmas vacation. One thing is the same, I'm never at home because I have to leave at five a.m. and don't get home until after five thirty, then I eat and go to bed."
"Oh I thought you'd be closer to your school in Henderson."
"I am but the bus route is longer so I actually have to leave earlier.”
"Well Monte has had some big changes in his life too. You guys abandoned him to live with his Grandma and finish up his senior year--"
"Well, I wasn't exactly abandoned by my family--that was my choice because of Swing Thing, and being seminary president and football and wrestling. I just couldn't move out and give that all up.”
"So you basically lived on your own your senior year, then went down to ASU in Tempe to start college. It's been really great having you here with me for these few weeks before you leave for your church mission to Spokane Washington on tax day.”
"Yeah everyone's life has changed this year. You moved here to Orem, We moved to Henderson, Cheryse got remarried and is expecting her fourth baby, Jenny and Aaron got married.
"Stop stop," Brent shouted. "You're giving me a headache. I feel like the world is just spinning too fast for me.
"Well my sons, the world is changing rapidly for our people".
Lynae imitated the ancient ancestor Cristobal Baca that they had met on their first journey through time over a year before.
"Brent laughed, and added, I just wish we still had the magic."
Mom was talking to Monte and missed the exchange.
Later that evening Brent laid the last block to enclose the igloo shaped structure he had so carefully made.
"Lynae, if you are very careful, you can come inside with me."
She crawled through the three foot high opening left for the door and sat cross legged on the floor.
"This reminds me of Pope's Kiva where he visited with the evil spirits and planned the rebellion in Santa Fe.”
"Well, I hope not too much. That is one time I never want to revisit."
"You have a candle and matches?" Lynae gasped. "Mom will kill you."
"It's Christmas time, everyone has candles." Brent rationalized striking the match on the paper cover and carefully lighting the wick of the candle. Outside a storm was beating against the windows and gradually turning from rain to snow.
Lynae didn't dare stretch her cramping legs for fear of knocking the igloo down. She reached to touch the flame of the candle, and Brent bruskly pushed her hand away causing her to jerk back, hitting the blocks beside her and the entire structure crashed down around them.
"Now see what you did!” Brent accused.
"See what I did? Look around and see where we are!' Lynae responded in surprise.

Brent and Lynae spend a few days interacting with the George Jacobs’ I family and neighbors in Salem Massachusetts