My maternal grandparents and four of their children immigrated to the United States from Lanarkshire, Scotland, in 1922. My grandfather, William Miller, was a coal miner, the son and grandson of coal miners. Times were hard in Scotland in the early 1920s, with frequent mining strikes chipping away at my grandfather’s efforts to make a living.

A relative in Pennsylvania coaxed my grandparents to try their luck in the States. They settled in Eastern Pennsylvania for a while, where my grandfather worked in the anthracite coal mines and my grandmother, Bella, had two more children, my mother the youngest.

Before the decade was over, the Millers found their way to Southern California. They settled in Redondo Beach in what is called the South Bay. By then the Depression had hit, and it hit my grandparents especially hard. My grandfather died at 48, a casualty of a life filled with financial stress and grim, back-breaking labor in the mines. He left my grandmother a young widow with six children to rear during the Depression.

Like children everywhere, and especially children in the Depression era, my mother and her siblings managed to find ways to entertain themselves with little. As it turned out, Redondo Beach in those days was like living down the street from Disneyland, with one of California’s prettiest beaches and an amusement park just a stone’s throw from the shore. There, young people had their pick from an array of attractions–carnival rides and games, a movie theatre, the world’s largest salt-water plunge, and the Mandarin Ballroom, where Big Band-era musicians performed every weekend.

My mother says she loved growing up in Redondo Beach. She spent most of her childhood summers swimming in the ocean and the plunge. As a teenager she worked as an usher in the theatre and danced with her high school sweetheart, later to become my father, at the Mandarin Ballroom.

The photo above captures five of the Miller children posed on the beach in an assortment of makeshift beach attire. My mother stands in the lower right, her dress tucked into her panties to keep it from getting wet. They look like they’re having a great day at the seashore, their thoughts a thousand miles away from the troubles that burdened their parents.

About a decade ago, my mother and a couple of her sisters were browsing through a photo album and came across this photograph. “We sure looked like a bunch of goof-balls, didn’t we?” one said. “Yeah, real ragamuffins,” agreed another. “Look at our flat chests. It was the style then to play down our chests. Remember how we bound them in later years?” chimed in a third.

As it turned out, the “Miller Girls,” for that’s what they were called, grew up to be quite the lookers, known for their good figures—especially their great legs. But this photo was taken before they blossomed into beauties, before their lives would change forever when their father died. On this day they’re caught in a moment in time, as carefree as any kids at the beach.

My paternal grandmother was my age when she died. I was startled to discover this recently when I studied with fresh eyes the span of dates that comprised her life. Funny, she had seemed so old to me the last time I saw her when I was seventeen.

What wouldn’t I give to sit down with her now, two women the same age, and catch up on the events of each other’s lives? We’d sit at her green Formica table in her sunny yellow kitchen with the marble-patterned linoleum on the floor. As we chatted, we would look out over her tiny manicured yard edged in pansies she had planted on her hands and knees in her house dress, since women of her generation didn’t wear pants, even for gardening. We would share something good to eat, maybe a piece of her famous coconut cream pie, because she was a woman who went out of her way for company.

I would be a better listener now than I was when she tried to tell me the story about her parents, Ada Johnson and Paul Nelson, who emigrated from Sweden when they were teenagers and met each other in Kentucky working in the same hotel. They married young, eventually parenting eleven children, of which Grandma was the eighth. The family was living in Pueblo, Colorado, in 1903 when my grandmother was born. Ada and Paul named her Ethel.

About ten years ago, I found the 1910 census record that showed where the Nelson family lived in Pueblo. Later, on a vacation to Colorado, I drove to that address on Elm Street and parked my car at the curb. A small, white, wood-framed house stands on that property and could very well be the Nelson home, given its weathered, dilapidated state. I stood on the sidewalk in front of the house, taking pictures, my mind whirling with unanswered questions. A few blocks away, I found Pueblo Smelters where Paul Nelson worked, within walking distance of home. Large, grey, and rusty, the steel plant still stands, a silent, decaying remnant of the noisy thriving enterprise it must have been in its day when it employed most of the men in Pueblo.

Between bites of coconut pie, I’d ask my grandmother how a family so large managed to make a life in a house so small, how her father could earn a living for thirteen on the salary he earned as a steelworker. I’d listen with more concentration this time around.

There’s a great deal I would ask her because I have so few memories from my childhood that include her. She and my grandfather, Glen Parrett, the Pueblo grocery store salesman she married when she was eighteen, seem to stand on the periphery of my youth. Grandma and my mother (her daughter-in-law) were both redheads—the Clairol kind—with spunky temperaments commonly ascribed to redheads. They locked horns right from the start, each seeing the other as a rival for a pre-eminent place in my father’s heart, a man who would do anything to maintain peace between the two women he loved.

Over the years my mother has softened her criticism of her mother-in-law, admits to immaturity, says she was sassy and maybe lacked empathy for Grandma’s situation and point of view. I never heard my grandmother’s thoughts about my mother, and that’s one of the things I’d ask her if we chatted face to face in her kitchen. I hope she’d trust me enough to confide in me.

Out of fairness to my mother, more than rivalry sparked the contention that festered between them over the years. My grandmother came from a family with a weakness for alcohol. At any gathering of the Nelsons, liquor flowed like lava. Several of Grandma’s siblings died young of alcohol-related illnesses. My grandparents partook freely, more freely as the years passed. My mother couldn’t abide it, particularly when liquor made my grandmother alternately weepy and belligerent and my grandfather loud and embarrassing.

I vaguely remember that behavior and the “scenes” they provoked, primarily between my mother and grandmother, the blaming and name calling, while my father quietly hurried us children out to the car for home. If we developed enough trust between us as we sat in her kitchen, I might ask Grandma about all of this, but then again, maybe I wouldn’t.

In most cases, there are reasons why people behave the way they do. Heredity, in this instance? Family pressures to fit in? Stresses of dealing with the hard cards dealt you in life? My father had one sibling, a lively, likeable sister, Virginia, two years younger than he, a natural athlete like my father. When she was eighteen, she began showing symptoms of multiple sclerosis, the disease that would render her wheelchair-bound by the time I knew her. My grandparents faced the challenge of caring for an invalid at a time when there were few government resources to provide guidance and relief. One who has not known such adversity cannot walk in the shoes of someone who has—or judge their capacity to cope with such a blow. It couldn’t have been easy. Virginia was heavy in midlife, dead weight when she was moved from bed to wheel chair, from wheel chair to the bathroom. And my grandmother did this by herself when my grandfather was at work, and full time after he died.

And so, sadly, my grandparents were in the margins of my childhood. I expect my grandmother would cry if we talked about this now, for she was sentimental, fiercely protective of Virginia, and vulnerable to tears. My two brothers and I were her only grandchildren. Now that I have grandchildren of my own, I can guess how much she wished to be more in our lives.

But my memories of Grandma aren’t all tied to unpleasantness and regret. Grandma was fun to be around. She loved Rosemary Clooney and the Big Bands of the Forties. I remember her popping a 78 rpm record on their phonograph and kicking up her legs in the dining room, her pale blue eyes glistening with the sheer joy of moving to the music. Grandma had attractive legs. She said they were her best asset. Sometimes I noticed her slyly crossing them in a purposeful way when she sat and arranging her skirt so it would show her legs to best advantage.

Grandma was embarrassed about wearing dentures. I don’t know the story behind them, but in the days before root canals, crowns, and other dental innovations, dentists solved most teeth problems by yanking them out. Once when I was staying with her, I was startled when I discovered her false teeth floating ominously in a glass of cloudy water by her bedside early one morning. On another occasion when my brothers and I were staying at my grandparents’ house, Grandma tried to teach us how to blow bubbles with bubble gum. She stood in the middle of her living room to demonstrate, gamely blowing a bubble that grew larger and larger. As her mouth widened, her false teeth fell into the bubble. I screamed and cried and required lots of consoling. As young as I was, I was aware of Grandma’s embarrassment and anxiousness when she explained the situation to my parents when they came to pick us up.

She was a magnificent cook. In my mind’s eye, I see her wearing a pressed, floral-print apron tied around her ample waist. She stood about five foot three, I’d say, and was broad through the hips and full breasted. She’d work herself into a sweat standing over her four-burner stove preparing multi-course meals when we came to dinner—roast beef and mashed potatoes, turkey and all the trimmings, coleslaw with crushed pineapple the way I liked it, and, always, large black olives we kids plopped on each finger like puppets. Grandpa worked as head butcher at Safeway Market, so they always had access to the best cuts of meat. Mom especially liked white asparagus, and in a demonstration of kindness to my mother, Grandma occasionally placed a dish of cold asparagus alongside her plate. I never noticed it, but Mom has mentioned it in recent years, a tone of regret and wistfulness in her voice.

Looking back from today’s perspective, I realize that Grandma was essentially trapped in her home, as most women were in those days. She didn’t drive. My grandfather drove their brown and white Chevrolet to work every day. Grandma’s life was filled with keeping house and caring for an invalid daughter. On Mondays she washed clothes in her wringer washing machine. On Tuesdays she ironed. Each day was dedicated to a particular chore, a cycle repeated week after week.

After Grandpa died, opportunity and necessity emboldened Grandma to get a driver’s license. I remember her telling us about her achievement, excitement animating her face and voice. Dad said she drove like a “bat out of hell,” barely pausing at stop signs, whipping around corners, giving him palpitations—an odd generation reversal. I can only imagine the sense of independence she felt, a woman who had married at eighteen and lived for the next four decades the circumscribed life marked out for a married woman in those days. The door to her cage had suddenly opened, inviting her into a world she could explore on her own.

Unfortunately, Grandma lived only a few more years. My parents received a call one summer afternoon in 1964 notifying them of her death. By then she had already been dead for three days. The story is a sad one. She apparently had a heart attack during the night. The next morning Virginia called to her mother. Getting no response, Virginia tried to get out of bed, fell, and being crippled, couldn’t move. She lay on the floor for three days. Fortunately, a neighbor became concerned when newspapers began piling up on their driveway. She knocked on the front door, then went around to the back of the house and called to them. Virginia yelled back, “I’m all right, but I think Mom’s dead.”

Imagination can fill in the details of the horrible, unforgettable situation my parents found when they finally arrived at Grandma’s house. What a tragedy.

There’s one more thing worth sharing, poignant, yet so like Grandma. When my mother went into Grandma’s bathroom after her death, she found a half-empty bottle of Clairol hair dye on the sink, along with some splattered rubber gloves and a plastic bowl with some leftover solution. Grandma had been feeling well enough in the evening to dye her hair. Maybe she felt tired or ill afterward and lay down, planning to clean up the mess in the morning. She was making herself look nice that night, prettying herself for the days ahead, not planning to die.

I never saw a decent photo of my grandmother in her youth. I have a few pictures taken in Pueblo when she was a teenager—small, candid photos typical of that time, never clear or close enough to help me visualize her as a girl. Then, to my delight a few years ago, Grandma’s sister Hilda gave me the photo that appears here. What an illumination—Grandma so young, on the cusp of adulthood, perhaps sixteen or seventeen, before time and toil had worked on her, diminishing her vitality, her smooth complexion, her girlish figure.

I bet she loved that photograph. After eating our pie and talking awhile, I would surprise her, place the picture in front of her on the table, and then watch her face as she told me all about the winsome girl smiling back at her.

Note: This is a post for the Carnival of Genealogy. Those who write family history stories may want to participate in the Carnival. It’s a good opportunity to post your writing on the Internet for others to read. Click HERE to find out more about the COG, and HERE to access the stories posted for the 52nd edition.
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I am a Scottish coalminer’s granddaughter. It seems hard to believe. I have lived my entire life in California, a life as different from my grandfather’s as the sunny California beaches are from the dreary Scottish coal mines. His name was William Miller, but people called him Bill. His petite, plucky wife, my grandmother, was named Bella. They both died before I was born, so I was never able to thank them for the legacy they left me, a legacy honed with grit, hard work, and sacrifice. These qualities got them to California in the mid-1920s with six young children in tow and helped them battle the Great Depression that bore down on them not long after their arrival. In the end, these qualities were not enough. They both died young, defeated by what they had left Scotland to avoid. Here is their story.

They were a poor family in Bellshill, Scotland, a coalmining town twelve miles south of Glasgow, in Lanarkshire. Bill’s father and grandfather were both coalminers. His grandfather had migrated to Scotland from Ireland to escape the Irish potato famine. Born in 1887, Bill was the second of four children in his family. Bella was born later that year to William and Marion Bullock, the seventh of eight children. Her father was also a coalminer, as was his father.

Bill and Bella married in 1910 when he was 23 and she, 22. They were an attractive couple, though a study in contrasts—Bill, with his dark eyes, hair, and complexion; Bella with her blue eyes, fair skin and sandy-colored hair. She was a good foot shorter than her five-foot-ten-inch husband, and more talkative and comfortable around people. Within seven years, they had four children, a boy and three girls.

Life was tough for coalmining families then, even more so than now, with long workdays and meager pay. Bill had been working in coalmines since he was a boy, and knew little else. But working conditions had become intolerable as increasing miners’ strikes kept him unemployed for long periods of time, substantially decreasing their already limited income. Deciding they had had enough, they began thinking about letters they had received from Bella’s sister Jessie Mallon, who lived in Duryea, Pennsylvania. Her husband, James, had acquired a job in the coalmines near Pittston and claimed he could find work for Bill as well. Bill should come and work for a few months, find a place to live, and then send for Bella and the children.

It had to be a difficult decision, requiring weighing family ties against the opportunity to provide a better life for their children. Their parents on both sides were in their 70s. Travel was expensive and sometimes precarious in those days. Who knew if they’d ever see their families again? Perhaps this was just a foolhardy idea, a waste of money they would regret forevermore. Wouldn’t it be safer to stick with the known rather than risking everything?

In the end, they decided to take a chance. Life in Bellshill was no longer tenable. Their children deserved any advantage they could give them. Bill boarded the SS Assyria out of Glasgow in September 1921. He was 34 years old and had $37 in his pocket. After arriving in Pennsylvania, ten days later, he secured the job James had promised, located a house, and sent for his family. Bella and the children crossed the Atlantic on the SS Columbia in late November. It was a rough crossing, made worse because Bella was six months pregnant with her fifth child.

Bill greeted them when they disembarked from their ship in New York harbor dressed in the dark wool suit and hat he wore on special occasions. Always fastidious about his appearance, he especially impressed his eldest daughter, Marion, at this time, for she remembered years later how handsome he looked standing there on the dock, his smile brightening his face as they disembarked.

The Millers settled into a rented home in Duryea and were thrilled to have a back yard of their own, a yard with actual fruit trees. If felt like paradise. Over the next three years, two more children were added to the family, Bill, Jr., the second son, and Jessie, my mother, named after Bella’s sister. During that time, Bill received a letter from an uncle in California touting the job opportunities offered by Standard Oil in the community of Taft in Kern County. Why not come west and work above ground for a change, his uncle suggested. The winters were better than those on the East Coast and Standard Oil money had created a model school system in Taft that would benefit his children. Bill decided to follow his uncle’s advice and headed west. Standard Oil hired him to work in the oil fields. Within six months, he sent Bella the money for train tickets to California.

It was 1925 and Bella was 38 when she made that trip. One has to sympathize with her crossing the country on a hot, crowded train with six children, the youngest still in diapers, and it was only cloth diapers in those days. But they did it, and soon they were settled in a rented home on Kern Street and the older children enrolled in school. They lived in Taft for five years, saving their coins in a cigar box so each summer Bella and the children could spend a few weeks’ vacation in Redondo Beach, a respite from the Kern Valley’s overwhelming heat.

Unfortunately, the Depression hit and Bill lost his job with Standard Oil in 1931, a victim of a massive lay-off. The attractions of Redondo Beach encouraged them to make the popular vacation resort their permanent home. Bill found work on a road crew and was involved in the construction of Pacific Coast Highway, earning two dollars for a day’s labor. Later, he secured a job at Dicolite Company, a mining operation in nearby Walteria. The company mined a fine white powder called diatomaceous earth and converted the powder into various patented preparations used in oil and manufacturing. The work was physically demanding and hard on Bill’s lungs, which were already damaged from years of coal mining and heavy smoking.

Their situation worsened when Bill, a quiet man with a nervous disposition, began complaining of chest pains and dizziness. The stress of a lifetime of mining and financial worry had taken its toll. On March 10, 1935, Bill died suddenly of a heart attack. He was 48 years old—too young, even for that time.

It was the middle of the Great Depression. Bella was 47, with responsibility for six children, one mentally disabled. She cleaned houses to pay the bills, supplementing her income with money the children earned from part-time jobs at the Fox Theatre and Woolworths. She felt ashamed when she had to depend occasionally on government assistance and the charity of friends, but times were rough all over, and they weren’t the only family in this predicament. Bella lived eight more years after her husband died, succumbing on January 21, 1943, to kidney failure at 55—again, too young.

Like so many Scottish emigrants of their day, Bill and Bella left their homeland with a vision of a better life in the United States. While it’s impossible to assess how they would have fared had they remained in Scotland, their life in America was a constant struggle to provide even the barest necessities for their many children. They could not have foreseen the deterioration of economic opportunities they would encounter here.

Though neither of them would have known it at the time of their deaths, Bill and Bella fulfilled their dream of giving their children a chance at a better life. The economy rebounded in the late ’40s, offering an opportunity for their children to purchase homes of their own and provide college educations and more than life’s necessities for their children.

Bill and Bella had nine grandchildren and nineteen great-grandchildren. Considering the mobility of American society today, it is extraordinary that all but two of their descendants reside today in California.

As one of their grandchildren, I became curious about my Scottish heritage some years ago. I spent a year compiling information about them and preparing a brief biography of their lives based on material I pulled from books and gleaned from interviews with three of their daughters. I bound the biography with a plaid cover, using for the design the family’s Gordon tartan.

On a vacation to Wales a few years later, I visited a coal mining museum that offered guided tours of an actual mine. Our tour group donned shiny yellow miners’ helmets, stepped into an authentic pit cage, and descended with our guide 300 feet to the mine floor. Three hundred feet is a long descent in a rickety old cage in the semi-darkness. When we finally clanked and bumped to a halt at the bottom, we found that the mine was electrified, one of the few in Great Britain to have electricity as early as 1910. Our guide walked us down several rocky tunnels, pointing out coal veins, explaining procedures for extracting coal and hauling it above ground. We had to stoop in places as we moved from chamber to chamber. What a dank, cold, colorless workplace it was, even with lights.

I tried to picture my grandfather working in such an environment day after long day since his boyhood—the incessant clanging of the pickaxes and mine cars, the murky lighting from the miner’s lamp fastened to his helmet, the choking, smelly coal dust, the poor ventilation, the lunches eaten underground, the cold. It was all too much to take in, and it hit me hard. How naïve I was. I thought I had captured their lives in my little plaid book. I hadn’t known them at all—had no idea what their lives were like. I would never know what it was like to walk in my grandfather’s shoes.

And then there were my grandmother’s shoes—tiny shoes for a tiny four-foot-ten-inch lady, practical shoes for cleaning other people’s houses, walking from place to place because she had no car, walking the floor at night in the excruciating pain of kidney disease. No, I hadn’t walked in her shoes either.

I am a coalminer’s granddaughter. How can my life be so different from that of my grandparents in so few years—just two generations? How can I ever repay them for the heritage and opportunities they’ve given me?

© Dawn Thurston, 2008