NewMexiKen’s very own grandfather, John Louis Beyett, was born in Alvord, Wise County, Texas, 130 years ago today. He died before I was born, but I met his mother, my great-grandmother when I was 8-years-old. She was born in 1865 and was just 15 when my grandfather was born; the first of her nine children. She was 87 when I met her (and lived to be 93). It has always amazed me that I met an ancestor who was born the year Abraham Lincoln died.
My grandfather was French-Canadian on his father’s side (the family in Québec for 200 years before moving to Texas); Scots-Irish from Kentucky on his mother’s. His first wife died in 1918 giving birth to their sixth child. That child died then too, but the older five lived normal lifespans, though three had no children of their own. I met my four half-aunts and half-uncle, but just a few times.
A few years after, at age 42, my widower grandfather married my 33-year-old never married grandmother, Lulu Cook. Only she too, his second wife, died in childbirth. That was in 1925 and that child survived. It was my mother. Mom ended up being raised by her mom’s brother and his wife (Grandpa and Grandma to me growing up).
Though I’d never met my grandfather or knew much about him, I always thought how tragic (if not uncommon) to lose two wives in childbirth. What a melancholy man he must have been by the time he died of a heart attack at age 62.*
And then a few years ago, thanks to the internets, I discovered all was not as it had seemed. Just 10 weeks before my mother was born to his newlywed wife, my grandfather had another daughter born. Her mother’s name was Hernandez and it was their third child together. I had two more half-uncles and a half-aunt, Francisco, Eduardo and Ana Maria. This was in Laredo, Texas.
It’s a miracle any one of us is here at all.
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* My mother, grandmother and grandfather died at ages 48, 35 and 62. I don’t include them in any life expectancy charts. My dad, grandmother and grandfather died at 83, 90 and 90. I got all my genes from them.
I have always loved that photo. He looks like a nice man. I wish I could have known him. I have always thought that, in that particular photo, Lee looks a lot like our grandfather.
I still have a tough time wrapping my mind around the fact that the man in that picture is my actual grandfather, even though Debby is right and even I must admit to some resemblance to him.
Ironic that I should have his face and the man I grew up calling Grandpa’s name.