Richard M Grenfell (1849 - About 1911)

Berenice Grenfell Currey* was raised by her widowed paternal grandmother but probably never met her grandfather because the couple left the farm to retire in San Diego before she was born. She heard stories about him from her grandmother which she shared with me. One of them was about his wanderlust--he traveled all over the world and was in South Africa when the Kimberley diamond fields were opened.

Last week I was contacted by his great great grandson Jim** and when I mentioned that story he told me he would send me a portrait of Richard M. Grenfell taken at that time. And here it is:

[Courtesy of Jim Grenfell]

Richard Grenfell brought his wife and seven children to the United State in 1881 with the original plan of settling in the Bluegrass Country of Kentucky but when they landed in New York a lot of attention was still being given to the gold found in South Dakota so they were there instead. Their first dwelling was in Crook City, a boom town with no sanitation, and that's where the Grenfells buried six of their children--one girl fell into a storm-swollen creek and drowned, and the others died of typhoid fever. Since Richard didn't become a citizen until 1886 he couldn't homestead and so they bought an existing farm.

Here's his application for citizenship:

[From my personal collection]

Until this photo arrived, the only picture I had of Richard Grenfell was this one of he and Grace standing in front of their bungalow on Point Loma around 1910. He died before Mother's arrival in 1912 and I believe he's buried in Alpine. Unfortunately I haven't found a death record in the usual databases.

[From my personal collection]

Jim  wondered if Mother had been the inheritor of a Revolutionary Era silver tea set*** that had belonged to ancestors of her mother Mary Grant Grenfell.

Now, I never heard of any ancestral silver although that wouldn't have arrived at the Grenfell farm house until Mary Grant's marriage to William Grenfell in 1900 so Grandma Stanton**** wouldn't necessarily have known about it. At her father's death it was learned that William Grenfell left his entire estate to his youngest son Richard with no mention of his only daughter or the child of his oldest son. The only things Mother got from the house were a marble-topped table and a punch bowl set of pressed glass. Mother's relationship with Mary Grant Grenfell was almost non-existent--she received one letter from the woman between 1912, when her father took her to live with his mother, and Mary's death in 1948. So even if it existed I can't imagine Mary Grant Grenfell giving it to her daughter.

Even though I can't solve the mystery of that silver tea service for him, I'm glad that Jim reached out to me because I have some family photos and records that belong with him and I'll be sending them off to him later this week.

*The mother who raised me Bernice Evangeline Grenfell (1902-1980). You can read more about her early life here, and here.
**He's the grandson of Gilbert Grenfell, mother's older brother, who was killed in 1928 when his tractor overturned.
**Alleged to have been used to serve tea to General George Washington. (of course!).
****Grace Thomas Grenfell married Joseph Stanton in 1921 and Mother always referred to her by her second husband's surname.
*****


© 2019 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Monday Is for Mothers: Mary A. Grant (1881 - 1948)

In my biographical stories about Bernice Evangeline Grenfell I've touched on the estrangement between her and her mother.* Yesterday's post featuring the Grenfells on horseback--with Mary Grant Grenfell riding sidesaddle--reminded me that there's more about her to be shared.

[Mary A. Grant and William R. Grenfell, undated photo from my personal collection]

Among Mother's papers I found a letter from the father written two days before Mary's death from breast cancer which enclosed an obituary from the local paper.

[From my personal collection]

                                           Whitewood, So. Dak.
                                                       Jan. 15 - 1948
Dear Bernice and family: _ I rec'd your very
nice letter, and I guess it is just as well
you do not come, as it has turned cold to-day
and the weather man says a cold wave is
in prospect. Well, Mamma is still at
the hospital and has been in an ha oxygen
tent for a week. They have sent for
me twice, but she rallied each time.
It would be a blessing for her if she
would pass on and get out of her misery.
I don't understand why we have to
undergo so much pain but I guess
it is God's way of doing things. Well, all
is well between her and me. I freely
forgive and wrong she may have done
to me, said or anything she may have
aid, and will do my utmost to forget
any unpleasant incidents in our
married life and I believe that is
what the Saviour taught, to be kind,
forgiving and forbearing towards one
another. I bear no hard feelings
or ill will against her, for after all
she was my partner in life for
nearly half a century. Now, we must
part and I will be alone. I will never
be the same, and I fear it will be hard
for me to adjust myself to the new 
conditions. This little incident has
surely taken the money. It cost me
$2900 before I took her to Belle Fourche and
now it is costing me $35 per day, you
see, the oxygen costs me $1 per hour, and
she is getting it 24 hours per day.
Well, I am going to Deadwood in a
few minutes to meet Richard. I am
sure glad he is coming for he will
be a great comfort to me. I will let
you know by air mail if anything
happens. Good bye and God Bless you.
                                   Dad
P.S. Was so sorry to hear about Junior. He was a
nice little boy when I saw him and
it surely was a great loss to us all I
know you feel the loss only as a parents
can. I do hope that Patricia will at least
partly fill the gap made by the loss.

From the letter it's clear that he was responding to a message from his daughter giving an excuse** for not returning to South Dakota to attend the death bed of a mother whose continuous mistreatment of her had been evident to the local doctor. It's also obvious that this is the first communication he's had with his daughter since long before her only child was killed in the final months of World War II.

[From my personal collection]

*Which you can read about in the footnotes to posts here and here.
**It sounds as if the reason may have been that she didn't want to leave me--I was about 8 months old at the time.

© 2017 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Sunday Drive: Mr. & Mrs. Grenfell on Horseback

The couple in this photo dating from the early 20th century are the parents of Bernice E. Grenfell Currey (the mother who raised me): William Richard Grenfell (1879-1956) and Mary A. Grant (1881-1948).

[From my personal collection]

It was taken on the Centennial Valley (Lawrence County, South Dakota) property bought by his parents after they moved their family to the U.S. from Cornwall, England. The building in the background is indicated by the orange arrow in the 1951 photo below.

[From my personal collection]

© 2017 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

This Week Is for Mother--Day Two: Bernice Evangeline Grenfell (1902 - 1980)

The only detail I know about the 1912 train trip Bernice and her father took from South Dakota to San Diego was her memory of the first time she saw the Pacific Ocean. They were seated on the wrong side of the train and in her excitement she jumped out of her seat, rushed across the aisle and clambered over the laps of the couple sitting there to look out the window, only to be bitterly disappointed--because she couldn't see the other side!

[Twentieth century transportation, artist E.S. Yates, published by the Delmont Company c1910.

Source: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.]

Bernice's paternal grandparents Richard and Grace (Thomas) Grenfell had already left their farm in South Dakota by the date of the 1900 U.S. Census, probably around the time of their only surviving son's marriage. Richard had been a coal miner in England in his early years and the couple apparently decided to retire to a place with a gentler climate. The first record of them in California is in Coronado in 1905, but by 1908 they were living in La Playa on San Antonio Avenue which is where they were located in the 1910 U.S. Census.*

[Richard and Grace Grenfell, date unknown, from my personal collection.]

William apparently hadn't informed his mother that he and Bernice were coming and that he intended to leave his daughter with her. Grace expressed some reluctance to take on the task of raising her granddaughter because she was living on a very small income. Her son's response was to tell her one day that he was going to run an errand downtown and instead he caught the train back home without any good-byes.

[California Southern (Santa Fe Depot), Save Our Heritage Organization: Lost San Diego Photo: Coons Collection]

Whenever Mother talked about her grandmother, it was like she was talking about an angel. Grace was the first person in her life to love her.**

[Bernice Grenfell still looking serious, undated photo, from my personal collection]

After her arrival she attended the local elementary school*** and recalled that during the Mexican Revolution some of her classmates were from refugee families who had fled the unrest south of the border--she said some of them were embarrassed because of their comparatively dark skins and put flour on their faces to look lighter.

Bernice was listed as a member of the Sophomore Class in the 1921 San Diego High School album. While there she took part in a student production of Othello.

[From the 1921 yearbook "The Russ" San Diego High School Source Information Ancestry.com. U.S. School Yearbooks database on-line. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2010.]

[Bernice, kneeling front row on the right. The tower in the background is the 1915 Indian Arts Building (aka House of Charm) that now houses the Mingei International Museum and the San Diego Art Institute]

Except for a year spent in a Seventh Day Adventist boarding school in South Dakota in 1919, Bernice spent the rest of her life in Southern California.**** This portrait of her with her brothers was taken that year.

[From my personal collection]

So after a rocky start in life, Bernice was settled in San Diego with her Grandmother. But alas, every ointment has a fly looking to land in it.

(To be continued)

*Richard died sometime before 1912 and is buried in Alpine. By 1916 Grace and Bernice had moved to 470 Rosecrans. Around this time her grandmother noted that Rosecrans was getting to be such a busy street that five minutes didn't go by without some traffic.
**Indicative of how frightened she must have been as a child was her story of coming home from school when she was about 16 and finding an old woman (actually a neighbor) using their bathtub. Certain that it was her maternal grandmother Mary Jane (Neill) Grant, the teenager ran to her room and hid under the bed, staying there until her grandmother came looking for her later. All the explanation Mother ever gave me was, "Grandma Grant was the meanest woman I ever knew."
***I think it was on Cañon Street because she was reminded of that story several times as we were driving up that street.
****From 1912 until her mother's death in 1948, Bernice received on letter from her, which does not survive.

© 2015 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

This Week Is for Mother--Day One: Bernice Evangeline Grenfell (1902 - 1980)

This Wednesday, June 17th, will mark the 113th birthday of the woman who raised me and is my emotional mother, Bernice Evangeline Grenfell, so I've decided to dedicate my posts over the next several days to her.*

[From my personal collection]

Bernice was born on a farm near Whitewood in Lawrence County, in the Black Hills of South Dakota, that her English paternal grandfather had bought a year after his arrival in the United States in 1881, and was the second child** and only daughter of William R. and Mary A. (Grant)*** Grenfell. In June 1902 when the midwife was summoned to assist Mary with the birth she broke a smallpox quarantine to do so and the mother and baby caught the disease. Although both survived, that probably contributed to Mary's lifelong antipathy toward her only daughter.****

[Map Of The Black Hills Of South Dakota And Wyoming With Full Descriptions Of Mineral Resources, Etc. By Samuel Scott, M.E. Custer City, S.D. 1897 ... (on verso) Copyrighted 1896 By Samuel Scott, M.E. E.P. Noll & Co. Map Publishers No. 9 N. Sixth St., Philadelphia, Pa.

Source: David Rumsey Historical Map Collection.]

Along with the other children on nearby farms, Bernice, Gilbert and Richard attended the tiny one-room schoolhouse down the road. In none of the surviving photos does she look happy.

[Bernice in dark dress in front row]

[Gilbert, Bernice and Richard at schoolhouse]

[Color slide of old schoolhouse taken during out trip to South Dakota in 1953]

   Nor did she appear to enjoy family picnics.

[Grenfell family, undated photo from my collection]

This situation didn't go unnoticed in the community and in 1912, when Bernice was 10, the local doctor took her father aside and told him that if he wanted his daughter to live to be an adult, he had to get her away from her mother. His solution was to take her to his recently widowed mother living in La Playa on Point Loma in San Diego and he bought train tickets for their journey.

A very unhappy little girl's life was about to change for the better.

(To be continued)

*Most of the information about her life before I arrived in it comes directly from her.
**Her older brother Gilbert was born the preceding year and the baby (and favorite) Richard came along two years later.
***Mary Grant was an obviously unstable woman who probably came from a family with a history of abuse.
****Mother recalled hiding as a child and overhearing her mother confide to a neighbor that it sickened her to even touch her daughter. She also said that when in a rage her mother tried to kill her more than once but that her brothers would pick her up and run with her to keep her away from her mother.

© 2015 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.