Clara Lathrop

Clara Lathrop

I think that in 1949 or 1950 divorce was a shame placed upon all concerned.  My father pretty much disappeared from my life, having moved out of state, and Lill and Lee seemed to take over a large part of raising me.  My additional good fortune was that I had truncated, but fairly regular, contact with my other Grandma, Clara.  She was also a teacher and Grandma Lill and Grandma Clara, or "Grams", as everyone on my father's side called her, remained close friends.

This was somewhat amazing, in retrospect, considering that it was 1950.  In those days Catholics and Lutherans were not overly fond of one another like they are today, sharing mass and so forth.  Grandma Lill attended the Congregational church and I am certain that she faced a certain degree of criticism when her daughter turned Catholic to marry.  That, and the divorce after only a couple of years, would have driven a wedge between a lot of people.

But Clara and Lill were not ordinary people.  Grandma Lill could give you a good tongue-lashing or cut a willow switch to give you a spanking, but she saw the bigger picture.  Both, although they owned very little, were generous even to complete strangers, and they were equally generous with their good will.  I think that it had a lot to do with sharing the burden of living through the Great Depression and of raising children in difficult times. 

Clara gave me a nice little scrapbook later in her life.  I am sure that she made a similar one for every grandchild.  It details the family ancestors on her and Gramps' side and it is, as probably all of them were, personalized to the recipient.

The very first page has glued to it a folded page which reads:

                                                         WITH
                     VERY                         BEST                     WISHES
                                                            TO
                                  JOHN           LEE                     LATHROP
                                                          FROM
                                     THE          LATHROP             FAMILY

The inside contained a little poem:

     Dear Grandson John,
          It is not so much, who we are,
          As it is, what we are,
          But sometimes we wish to know,
          And why we are just so.

          Now Julius Lothrope had red hair,
          Freckles and curly,
          He passed these on to Frank,
          One of seven sons, quite early

          Then Frank passed the traits along
          To Dudly his eldest, who slipped
          Because his eldest was a girl.

          So to bridge the generation gap
          And add to the confusion
          You are the eldest of the youngest
          Will you be the conclusion?

          So, you see why you have red curly hair and freckles.  The grand sense of humor must, just must come from your mother's side of the house.  I hope your mother does her family tree for you.  What an interesting book this could become.  Lovingly,  your Gram.

So Peter Willger and his wife Barbara Adams came to America from Essen, Germany in 1855.  John A. Willger was their son, and he and his wife Anna (Rinehart) Willger were Grandma Clara's parents.  Clara was the youngest of their ten children.  Anna Rinehart was the daughter of Ferdinand Rinehart and Hannah (Wasmund) Rinehart, who had migrated from Iowa to Nebraska in 1860.

Grams and Gramps lived in a farmhouse out on a county road parallel to Highway 16 west of Sparta.  I can remember going out there several times as a child and Grandma Clara was always accepting and loving. 

Grandma and Grandpa Lathrop had a long chicken coop sort of out building and I would explore in and around it.  They also had a large tree in the front yard which might have been an apple, because I seem to remember eating fruit from it. 

Grandma Clara had a smooth, firm voice and she always finished her sentences in a descending tone, as though she was accepting what she was saying.  It was very relaxing and nonthreatening to have a conversation with her, even as a little child.  Maybe it was the teacher in her.

Because I was merely a toddler, and because I lived under the care of my maternal grandparents, I simply didn't have the day to day contact with Grams and Gramps.  It wasn't as though they lived just down the street within range of my tricycle.  It is my loss that I don't have a rich treasure-trove of intimate memories like my cousins on the Lathrop side do.

Events were soon to take me farther from both her sphere and that of Grandma Lill and Grandpa Lee, but I am grateful that both of my ancestral families never degraded into animosity for one another.  I have never felt estranged from my cousins on my dad's side of the family and I think that this is a great tribute to both Grandma Clara and Grandma Lill. 

 Since the primary motivation of my writing these little blurbs is to provide my grandkids with an idea of what it was like to be a child in the old days, I would welcome comments from any of her other grandchildren or great grandchildren in the section below this post to help memorialize her wonderfulness, and I will have a few more to share a bit later on.