My HALLS are also one brick wall after another..However I do have this story written by my grandmother..so far I have not been able to find anyone she mentions here with the exception of her Father Millard ,,I have been able to find his death certificate..she mentions relations to Sir Benjamin Hall in England I have not been able to prove that,,Anyway I thought some of you might enjoy reading this..it's like reading little house on the Prairie Pj This is a copy of what I have of Grandma's Story Chapter 1 Remembering a Childhood May 12th, 1992 My name is Rosella Ballard. I am 84 years of age born in 1908 in Allensville Ky. Iam writing these pages today at the request of my fourth son Whayne, who asked me if I would pen for him the events of my life that I could recall. My father's name was Millard Filmore Hall named for the president of that time. Those were the days when we Americans took great pride in our leaders...enough to name our most precious children after them. Dads father, my grandfather, was a Christian Minister who came here from England. His name was Chaplain Hall . He was the son of Sir Benjamin Hall who sat in Parliament as Lord of the Woods. Dad was an undergraduate of Transsilvania College in Lexington Ky. I know that dad worked his way through school by barbering.. He met my mother while attending college. They were married and began having a family. My eldest sister, the fristborn, was Virginia. Dad went to work at barbering to support his new family. Soon after I was born, then two years later my youngest sister Pauline arrived. Pauline and Virginia were beautiful and i was the ugly duckling. They both had brown eyes and brown hair and I was the cotton top with hazel eyes. My dad said that I looked like his mother and when I saw her for the first time I thought she was ugly. Mother became ill with tuberculosis, and when I was seven she died. Our little family was torn apart. The year is 1915. Pauline and I was sent to live with Our Grandmother Hall, and my sister Virginia was placed in an orphanage. I don't remember where my grandparents lived but it was a big farm and it had a big pond just a piece from the house. They had a colored farmhand and we called him uncle Boyd. He had a son George and a daughter Molly. There were two barns and one had a hayloft . We had two horses, a cow, and several pigs. In grandpa's barn he would milk the cow in the morning and evenings, and Pauline and I use to love to play in the hay. It was so much fun. Grandpa had a surrey with a fringe around the top. We used to sit in the buggy and pretend we were driving to church. My grandfather was a Christian Minister . Every night we would kneel in the bedroom and we would pray. There was a picture of grandpa on the wall and he was a handsome young man posed with one finger on his cheek. He said that he was fifty years old and his finger was covering up his only wrinkle. My uncle Herbert and Aunt Thelma came to stay with us for a while. They had a baby girl. Uncle Herbert loved to fish. He kept a fishing pole sitting along side the house. One day I decided I would like to fish in the pond. Pauline said, "Rosella, you know you shouldn't take Uncle Herbert's fishing pole." but I was a little stinker, so I took the pole and I don't remember putting anything on the hook, and I threw the line into the pond. In just a little while I caught something. and when I pulled it in, to our surprise, a turtle dangled from the line. I was scared cause I couldn't get it off the hook. So I took it to grandma and she made us trutle soup. Around the pond there was lots of tall grass and reeds. Grandpa had geese and they liked to hide their eggs in the tall reeds. We would go in their and find their eggs. When we left them alone there were soon baby geese. I remember how cute they were. Paulina and I would get long stick branches and pretend that we were riding horses. We did have so much fun. However, one day, I remember having done something to Pauline and she said "I'm going to tell Momma!" and I said , "you can't. sh'es dead." ...I guess I was a mean little kid. I know that I will never forget that look on her face. I loved my sister very much. Pauline and I were deeply saddened by the loss of our mother and the separation from our sister Virginia. However our grandparents were so good to us that these times would be remembered as some of the happiest days of my childhood. I loved living in the Country. And I was so fond of my grandpa. I followed him just about everywhere he went. When he plowed the fields I would sit on a rock and watch as the birds would come and get the worms that he would uncover. My grandmother was a wonderful cook. We had chickens and sometimes grandma would get up early, catch a chicken and wring it's neck. She would clean and dress it, and fry it for breakfast with bisquits and gravey.ummmmm...it was good. One morning when there was snow on the ground, my grandpa slaughtered a pig. Pauline and I could hear the pigs squealing and carrying on. I remember watching him boil the water in a huge cauldron and dipping the pig then scrapping off the skin. Grandma made sausage and head cheese and grandpa would cut the hams and ribs and smoke them in a smokehouse. I will never forget the smell. He could do everything. Pauline and I slept in the attic on straw mattresses. I loved the attic because grandma kept jars of all kinds of jellies and preserves up there. There were so many books in the attic that I could read. the book that I remember most was called "Aesops Fables." I loved to read. Grandpa raised tobacco with the help of uncle Boyd and George. When it was ready to harvest, it was cut , secured to sticks and hung up to dry in the tobacco barn. When it was dry we would strip the tobacco from it's stem and tie them in neat bundles. It was then taken to be auctioned and sold to the highest bidder. This is how my grandparents made ther living in those days. We had an ice house on the farm. It was a big deep hole in the ground filled with straw. When the pond froze grandpa and George would cut the ice from the pond in blocks, slide it with big iron hooks into the icehouse and cover it with straw. It would stay frozen for a long time. During the summer grandma would make icecream. There were no refrigeraters on farms in those days, only insulated wooden iceboxes to keep your food from spoiling. There was no electricity on the farm and lighting was by kerosene lamps. Heat was provided by a wood burning fireplace and cooking by a wood burning stove. Water was pumped from the artesian's well with a hand pump. The out house was the outdoor toilet, a wooden building with a bench with a hole in it, built over a trench in the ground. At night you could use a potty commode that was placed under the bed to be dumped in the morning. We had a big rain barrel that caught the water from the roof. This water had many uses such as washi! ng the dishes, bathing, and sometimes cooking. We did not have automobiles in those days. We had a horse drawn buckboard, mostly for uses like a truck is used today, and a surrey with a canopy top and a fringe around the sides. The surrey was horse drawn and it was used much like a car is today. In those days there were no paved roads in the country so surreys were commonly used to go to church, visit friends, and go into the village. Most people did not travel far in those days and when they did it was by railroad. When we had been on the farm for about a year, my grandmother wrote our father and told him it was about time that he consider marriage. Dad married a lady by the name of Lydia Anna and we left the farm and my grandparents to start a new life in Louisville Ky. We called her momma and she owned a big collie dog named BB Her house was nicely furnished and we were very happy. join my diet list CyberDieters-subscribe@onelist.com and my breast cancer support list Remember-Eternity-subscibe@onelist.com