Lillian is seen above as a young mother with son Larry and daughter Jean.Lillan Rose Loomis is our paternal grandmother. She was born December 8, 1902 at Waupun Township, Fond du Lac County, Wisconsin. She was the daughter of Charles Harvey Loomis and Margaret Kelly and was the youngest child and second daughter of a family of five children. Her brothers and sisters were Thomas Franklin, James Ray, Agnes Josephine and Charles Henry. When Lillian was just nine years of age, her mother died. Lillian described her as tall and slender. Her father, she said, "was wonderful and a quiet man." According to Lillian family history was never talked about.
Lillian was born and raised on the family farm of 100 acres established by her paternal grandparents. Horses were used on the farm to drive the machinery and the crops raised were grain, corn, potatoes and hay. In addition, the family had an apple orchard of 25 to 30 trees and utilized a cider press kept in the cellar of the house. Part of Lilllian's chores as a child were to carry in kindling and water. There was a 100 foot well on the farm and the water drawn from it was always ice cold. Through the summer it was Lillian's job to carry cold water to the men in the fields and water to her mother so that lemonade and ginger ale could be made to quench the men's thirst.
Lillian worked the farm for one year during World War I. She was age fifteen. She recounts the circumstances as follows:
"There was a man that had always wanted to buy the farm from Dad and he wouldn't sell it to him. And I know that this man was on the draft board and we always figured that he thought that if my brother was drafted that Dad would have to sell the place. Instead, even though I was only fifteen at the time, I took over and milked ten cows and did all the chores, cut all the hay and raked all the hay. I worked outside just like a man all summer."
Lillian graduated from the eighth grade and went on to complete two years of high school. Her education was interrupted with the advent of World War I that required her help on the farm. She walked three and a half miles to attend high school in temperatures that often reached forty degrees below zero. She shared the following story from her grade school years, that showed her determination to attend school.
"They had a contest. Everybody that had perfect attendance that year got a certificate for it. Well, I was terribly sick. I used to have sick spells, more or less maybe the same thing as I do now, just be sick for a day or two. And I was going to go to school. In fact they practically had to tie me in bed. I was going to go to school. I was going to get that certificate. Well, the teacher was nice enough to see to it that I got it. I guess she knew that I couldn't have stayed out of school, if it would have killed me I went to school."
Lillian attended school in a one-room schoolhouse that included all eight grades. Edna Cramer was her teacher. Lillian like to read and learned things fairly easily. About grades 5 or 6, she was so far ahead of the rest of the kids that the teacher let her skip a half-a-grade. Part of what she skipped was learning the Roman numerals. Lillian was very good in algebra when she started high school.
Her study of domestic science brought two especially remembered highlights to Lillian's life. Even though she did not want to take the domestic science class because she felt she already knew how to cook and sew, on the day they baked bread, "my little loaf of bread was the very best in the class." When they made cakes the class ran out of milk before Lillian got some to make her cake. The teacher asked her to just watch the others make theirs but Lillian insisted she didn't mind and would use water in hers. "My cake was the best there was and I had just used water!"
Lillian was just two years old when Bill Armga saw her crying on the front porch of her house. She was wearing a red dress. He lived on a nearby farm and had come to pick mulberries. She later learned that he had said at that time, "Someday that's going to be my wife." (Bill would have been 7-years-old at the time).
The Armga farm was located 1 1/4 miles directly north of the Loomis farm. Both families were good friends and traditionally spent Thanksgiving at the Armga's and Christmas at the Loomis' Lillian grew up playing with the Armga girls and they would spend days at a time at each other's house. She helped with the ironing at the Armga house from the time she was 'knee-high-to-a-grasshopper'. The old heavy flat irons that were heated on the wood stove were used.
Lillian and William (Bill) Armga were married in 1920 by a Justice of the Peace named Fairbanks. Lillian wore a beautiful blue georgette dress complemented by a large hat with a pleated ribbon.
Lillian described her brother Frank as an excellent mechanic who was 'one of the best.' In the late summer he would go down 'as far south and Texas and start with the threshing crews' as the work took them through the nation's breadbasket up into the Dakotas and even Canada. He went to mechanics school in Regina, Canada through the winter. Frank and his wife Alice had two boys, Lee and Ray and were 'very good to us'.
James married his childhood sweetheart Marion Carrier. She died. Charles worked the farm and never married. Frank later committed suicide. All the family is buried at Cattaroga cemetery in Waupun.
After Lillian and Bill married they lived on the Armga farm for one year. Son Larry was born on the farm. They next lived in Fond du Lac where Bill worked delivering coal while learning to be a mechanic. Jean was born in Fond du Lac. The family then moved to Washington, Pennsylvania where Billie Lee was born. He was about one year old when the family returned to Kenosha, Wisconsin where Bill worked construction and helped build a bank and a hospital. During this time Lillian and children stayed with her brother Frank and his wife, Alice until they could get a home to live in. Lillian also worked and got a job running the elevator in the bank building for which she was paid $.25 an hour. Later she was in charge of a restaurant at night where she distinguished herself by having the income of the establishment show a significant increase under her watch. In Twin Falls, Idaho Lillian worked for Mary DeBaird at the lunch counter of Woolworth's and also for both Parisian and Troy laundries.
In 1930 the family left Wisconsin in a Ford sedan headed for Twin Falls, Idaho. They drove night and day with the children sleeping in the back of the car. They stopped several days in Montana where they stayed with the Adams family who were 'very very good to us'. In Idaho, Bill worked for a Mr. Mullencamp and helped build the Twin Falls Feed and Ice Building. It was his acquaintance with Mr. Mullencamp that lured the family to Idaho. Mr Mullencamp wrote and promised Bill a job if they went to Idaho so "we brought everything we possibly could, practically all our worldly goods" and set out for the new state.
Lillian recounts, "One of the biggest thrills of my life was seeing Old Faithful in Yellowstone Park [during the trip out to Idaho]. I had started school at 4 1/2 and remember seeing a picture of Old Faithful in my geography book. I said, 'Someday I'm going to see that.'" She also told the following story of the family's stay in the National Park. "We had all our food and utensils on a box on the running board of the car. To sleep, the kids slept in the back of the car with us parents out on the ground. It started to rain so we had to get up and try to sleep the best we could in the front seat. Just at daybreak something woke us up and there was a great big 'ol black bear just about ready to get into our food box. We piled out of the car on my side and shewed the bear away. The food box was on the ground but opened perfectly -- just the luggage carrier was hurt. When the bear left us he went and climbed into the back of a great big truck where some boy scouts were sleeping. Boy, if you don't think that was a sight to behold to see all those scouts scattering!"
This information was gathered from an interview I had with Lillian in 1981 at her home in Twin Falls, Idaho. She died November 22, 1994 in a Boise, Idaho nursing home at age 92.
Lillian was born and raised on the family farm of 100 acres established by her paternal grandparents. Horses were used on the farm to drive the machinery and the crops raised were grain, corn, potatoes and hay. In addition, the family had an apple orchard of 25 to 30 trees and utilized a cider press kept in the cellar of the house. Part of Lilllian's chores as a child were to carry in kindling and water. There was a 100 foot well on the farm and the water drawn from it was always ice cold. Through the summer it was Lillian's job to carry cold water to the men in the fields and water to her mother so that lemonade and ginger ale could be made to quench the men's thirst.
Lillian worked the farm for one year during World War I. She was age fifteen. She recounts the circumstances as follows:
"There was a man that had always wanted to buy the farm from Dad and he wouldn't sell it to him. And I know that this man was on the draft board and we always figured that he thought that if my brother was drafted that Dad would have to sell the place. Instead, even though I was only fifteen at the time, I took over and milked ten cows and did all the chores, cut all the hay and raked all the hay. I worked outside just like a man all summer."
Lillian graduated from the eighth grade and went on to complete two years of high school. Her education was interrupted with the advent of World War I that required her help on the farm. She walked three and a half miles to attend high school in temperatures that often reached forty degrees below zero. She shared the following story from her grade school years, that showed her determination to attend school.
"They had a contest. Everybody that had perfect attendance that year got a certificate for it. Well, I was terribly sick. I used to have sick spells, more or less maybe the same thing as I do now, just be sick for a day or two. And I was going to go to school. In fact they practically had to tie me in bed. I was going to go to school. I was going to get that certificate. Well, the teacher was nice enough to see to it that I got it. I guess she knew that I couldn't have stayed out of school, if it would have killed me I went to school."
Lillian attended school in a one-room schoolhouse that included all eight grades. Edna Cramer was her teacher. Lillian like to read and learned things fairly easily. About grades 5 or 6, she was so far ahead of the rest of the kids that the teacher let her skip a half-a-grade. Part of what she skipped was learning the Roman numerals. Lillian was very good in algebra when she started high school.
Her study of domestic science brought two especially remembered highlights to Lillian's life. Even though she did not want to take the domestic science class because she felt she already knew how to cook and sew, on the day they baked bread, "my little loaf of bread was the very best in the class." When they made cakes the class ran out of milk before Lillian got some to make her cake. The teacher asked her to just watch the others make theirs but Lillian insisted she didn't mind and would use water in hers. "My cake was the best there was and I had just used water!"
Lillian was just two years old when Bill Armga saw her crying on the front porch of her house. She was wearing a red dress. He lived on a nearby farm and had come to pick mulberries. She later learned that he had said at that time, "Someday that's going to be my wife." (Bill would have been 7-years-old at the time).
The Armga farm was located 1 1/4 miles directly north of the Loomis farm. Both families were good friends and traditionally spent Thanksgiving at the Armga's and Christmas at the Loomis' Lillian grew up playing with the Armga girls and they would spend days at a time at each other's house. She helped with the ironing at the Armga house from the time she was 'knee-high-to-a-grasshopper'. The old heavy flat irons that were heated on the wood stove were used.
Lillian and William (Bill) Armga were married in 1920 by a Justice of the Peace named Fairbanks. Lillian wore a beautiful blue georgette dress complemented by a large hat with a pleated ribbon.
Lillian described her brother Frank as an excellent mechanic who was 'one of the best.' In the late summer he would go down 'as far south and Texas and start with the threshing crews' as the work took them through the nation's breadbasket up into the Dakotas and even Canada. He went to mechanics school in Regina, Canada through the winter. Frank and his wife Alice had two boys, Lee and Ray and were 'very good to us'.
James married his childhood sweetheart Marion Carrier. She died. Charles worked the farm and never married. Frank later committed suicide. All the family is buried at Cattaroga cemetery in Waupun.
After Lillian and Bill married they lived on the Armga farm for one year. Son Larry was born on the farm. They next lived in Fond du Lac where Bill worked delivering coal while learning to be a mechanic. Jean was born in Fond du Lac. The family then moved to Washington, Pennsylvania where Billie Lee was born. He was about one year old when the family returned to Kenosha, Wisconsin where Bill worked construction and helped build a bank and a hospital. During this time Lillian and children stayed with her brother Frank and his wife, Alice until they could get a home to live in. Lillian also worked and got a job running the elevator in the bank building for which she was paid $.25 an hour. Later she was in charge of a restaurant at night where she distinguished herself by having the income of the establishment show a significant increase under her watch. In Twin Falls, Idaho Lillian worked for Mary DeBaird at the lunch counter of Woolworth's and also for both Parisian and Troy laundries.
In 1930 the family left Wisconsin in a Ford sedan headed for Twin Falls, Idaho. They drove night and day with the children sleeping in the back of the car. They stopped several days in Montana where they stayed with the Adams family who were 'very very good to us'. In Idaho, Bill worked for a Mr. Mullencamp and helped build the Twin Falls Feed and Ice Building. It was his acquaintance with Mr. Mullencamp that lured the family to Idaho. Mr Mullencamp wrote and promised Bill a job if they went to Idaho so "we brought everything we possibly could, practically all our worldly goods" and set out for the new state.
Lillian recounts, "One of the biggest thrills of my life was seeing Old Faithful in Yellowstone Park [during the trip out to Idaho]. I had started school at 4 1/2 and remember seeing a picture of Old Faithful in my geography book. I said, 'Someday I'm going to see that.'" She also told the following story of the family's stay in the National Park. "We had all our food and utensils on a box on the running board of the car. To sleep, the kids slept in the back of the car with us parents out on the ground. It started to rain so we had to get up and try to sleep the best we could in the front seat. Just at daybreak something woke us up and there was a great big 'ol black bear just about ready to get into our food box. We piled out of the car on my side and shewed the bear away. The food box was on the ground but opened perfectly -- just the luggage carrier was hurt. When the bear left us he went and climbed into the back of a great big truck where some boy scouts were sleeping. Boy, if you don't think that was a sight to behold to see all those scouts scattering!"
This information was gathered from an interview I had with Lillian in 1981 at her home in Twin Falls, Idaho. She died November 22, 1994 in a Boise, Idaho nursing home at age 92.
Fantastic! I am glad she allowed you to speak with her...I have always been curious about her.
ReplyDeleteWow! That was great.
ReplyDeleteI feel really bad that we didn't get to know our paternal grandparents. Their stories are so interesting and they should be a part of us....unfortunately we don't know anything about them. I am thankful that you were able to get some small part of her history. Thanks!!!!
ReplyDelete