Grandma, Hannah Sophia Gilleland, lived at 924 North Fourth Street, in Grand Forks, North Dakota. Across from her house was a small family-owned grocery store, run by the Kruegers. Then, kitty-corner from Grandma's, was Wilder Grade School, where we went to school through the sixth grade.
During the bitter cold days, with blizzard conditions, we would all join hands after school to make it to the grocery store, where the children were picked up by their parents, and we went across the street to Grandma's.
Grandma and my younger aunts and uncles (who were near our age) all lived in a run-down 2-story house on the corner, painted grey and white. There was a living room with grey plaster walls, drapes and lace curtains, discards from Aunt Oleta's Bemidji home (she was married to a wealthy dentist), an Oriental Axminster rug, library table, piano, leather sofa that made into a bed, a couple of rocking chairs, phonograph, and a lot of Gold Seal records which my mother had purchased. One in particular which I enjoyed was "Cavallera Rusticana."
Across the front of the house was a porch which extended around one side, with an entrance to the "family room." The family room contained a large square oak table and chairs; the table had three leaves which were needed for special occasions. Grandma carefully laundered her damask tablecloth; otherwise fresh oilcloth was purchased. In the spring, the room was papered by all of us, using a flour and water paste. Grandmother generally made fresh white gauze curtains for this room. The storm windows and doors were removed and screens put up. There was a day bed and rocking chairs, and a sink over by the wall into the kitchen. The bathroom was off from this room. The stove was taken out and stored in the shed. A trap door was kept covered with a rag braided rug; this led to the cellar where the canned goods were kept. Linoleum was on the floor and rag rugs we all helped to braid. We sewed strips of cloth together in winter and rolled them into balls for the rugs.
Grandma was an avid reader and a closet was filled with Horatio Alger paperbacks. At night, we used kerosene lamps; Grandma and we kids would all sit around the base burner, drinking coffee or hot cocoa, while Grandma read the "thrillers."
Generally, bread was being baked in the kitchen on a kerosene 4-burner with an oven that sat on top of the burners. We ate the bread fresh from the oven with war margarine and an orange bean worked into the margarine to make it look yellow like butter. We tore the bread apart and slathered it with the margarine and gooseberry jelly -- delicious!
I guess that room was the forerunner of the family room. It was the hub for us and the neighborhood kids who seemed to like to come to Grandma's. We played dominoes, hearts, etc., at night. In summer, we played under the street light on the corner until 10:00 curfew. Any kid caught on the streets after that time was taken to the jail and the parents had to come down and claim them. Still a good idea!
We were very poor and lived on money sent by my father from China. Grandma had an old Singer sewing machine and made all our clothes except coats. I remember three dresses:
The kitchen at Grandma's was off from the family room. She had a Hoover cabinet with a big flour bin and a pull-out board for rolling out pie crusts. The floor was linoleum, and a kitchen table stood in one corner. Off from the kitchen and the living room was a bedroom with a fold-up bed. This was Grandma's room. Upstairs were two bedrooms and a flat landing.
My grandmother was from a large family in Missouri and herself raised a large family. She was never known to utter a swear word. The story goes that her grandmother was the Duchess of Dusseldorf, Germany. She married a shoemaker, was disowned by her parents, and they came to America and settled in Illinois. Captain Robert Gilleland [her son] served in the Civil War and was released to assist his family after the death of his father.
I remember one Fourth of July. I was running a high temperature from tonsilitis, but Uncle Earl, who lived in the same block, Aunt Verona, and all of us went to a big picnic in one of the parks. Grandma was famous for her fresh roast pork sandwiches with sweet pickles and home-made bread. My aunt made ground ham and pickle sandwiches with store bread. We thought they were great. We had on this occasion a freezer of ice cream, salads, jellos, a whole stalk of bananas, watermelon, iced tea, fruit nectar made from a concentrated mix put out by the Jewel Tea Company, pies, and cakes galore. There were races of all kinds, and contests. The band played and everybody had a good time.
Grandma wore a "rat" in her hair and teased the top over it and had a bun teased over both ears. She was a German blonde, and never was fat. She wouldn't think of going without her corset, which was a barbaric metal stave thing with drawstrings. She used to tell us of the square dances she and her sisters would go to on Saturday nights and dance all night, getting home just in time to help with the chores. They were so tired they would vow that they would not go the next week. But the skirts were all washed and starched, and off they would go the next Saturday.
When Grandma had to have her teeth pulled, I went with her. They pulled all of them at once, and we came home on the street car. Grandma was pretty sick for several days.
Adjoining the family room was a sort of breeze-way, enclosed with storm doors, and an attached coal shed. This was also the laundry room where washing was done in the summertime. Grandma had a deep lot to the alley and we always had a garden.
In summer we would pack a picnic basket and go gooseberry picking. We would come home and sit in the porch swing and stem gooseberries for pies and jellies. Grandma's pies were good, but her cakes were usually a disaster, too rich, and "fell" -- but they were always eaten.
In winter, dressed in our thick German wool socks and fleece-lined Indian mocassins, we would pull tobaggans 40 feet up the air to the top of the slides, wrap our legs and arms around the one in front of us, and down we would go across the frozen Red River, on a descent that was both dangerous and breath-taking. We walked nine blocks to junior high and high school in freezing weather. Never again for me!
In grade school I was the only girl with two boys who attained the bronze medal for all-around athletics. The news item appears in this issue.
In summer the ice wagon and team would deliver ice. The kids all trailed barefoot after the ice wagon and the ice man would generously give a hunk to wallow around in our mouths. Ah, was this not happiness? The ice was on sawdust and covered with gunny sacks.
The outdoor swimming pool at Riverside Park opened at one o'clock. We all traipsed to the park, and as I recall, even in summertime it was always a little cool when we first stepped in. We would stay in the pool all afternoon and come home starved.
One winter evening, father's check had been delayed and we were getting low on groceries, so Grandma made a big bowl of macaroni and cheese for supper. Vernon, my younger brother, insisted on carrying it to the dining room table, and as you probably have guessed, slipped and dropped the bowl on the floor. We ate it anyway!
He was always getting into something. He was up on the rafters of a house being built in Riverside Park. He slipped and hung by one leg from the rafters, dislocating his knee and breaking the bone that was dislocated. The doctor thought his leg would not grow and would be shorter than the other, but luckily it grew. I can see him now, on a day-bed in the living room over by the window. It was hot and the itching under the cast nearly drove him crazy.
Another time, when he was just a little fellow, he was delivering groceries and it was bitterly cold. When he got home, it was after dark and his feet were frost-bitten. Grandma had us fill a tub with snow. He put his feet in the snow, and she rubbed and rubbed his feet and legs until she got the circulation going again. For days he could hardly get his shoes on because of the swelling. Grandma cried and said they might have to amputate his feet.
During World War I, my father was sent to Siberia with the Corps of Engineers, as a Captain. We had lived in a small house in Riverside Park, and later, Mother bought a small house next to Grandma's so we could all be closer together while Father was away.
At Christmas, my mother and Grandma always put up a big tree in the living room, with tinsel, balls, clip-on candles, strings of cranberries and popcorn. They sewed stockings out of green netting and filled them with an orange, candy, and nuts. We all got toys -- wagons, BB guns, and tinker toys for the boys, and for the girls dolls, baby buggies (wicker, if you please), tea sets, little cupboards, and all the toys of the day. One year it was bicycles for the boys and sleds. My mother always shared with Grandma and her children.
Mother and Grandma made huge ropes of taffy, white and pink. When cool, it was spread out on the oak table and cracked into pieces. We all got to pull a small piece until it got white. They also made beautiful pink and white divinity, popcorn balls, and peanut brittle. During all the preparation we were sent to bed early while they sewed on the old Singer machine. On Christmas Eve, Uncle Earl would ring the doorbell and show up in a Santa suit. I believed in Santa Claus for years.
A large Norwegian family by the name of Iverson lived across the street from us in a big two-story white house. There were the mother and father; Mary, the oldest daughter, was a bookkeeper at the Ontario Store; Cora, the beauty of the lot; Manila, who did all the cooking; and Larovna, who was my age; and a younger, fat brother; besides the older boys who were carpenters -- making a family to cook for!
They had breakfast early, then at 10 o'clock the inevitable coffee cake, doughnuts, and coffee, big dinner at noon, coffee again in the afternoon, and a big supper. They ate a pound of butter a day!
Larovna was a frequent visitor at Grandma's -- I can see her pasty-colored greasy curls bouncing as she played "Redwing" on the piano. Grandma's was a fun place to be. We played cards, dominoes, and other games popular at the time.
My father was a telegrapher on the Great Northern Railroad. As such, he was able to get passes for us, and we made a few trips to Arkansas, I remember visiting "Auntnie," who helped raise my mother. They lived on a small farm. They had an old plug farm horse, and Uncle Frank's daughter Mary, son John, and Eugene and I would all four get on the horse and ride through the line trees, ground covered with needles, so quiet. My legs stuck straight out, and I could hardly walk when I got off the horse.
Auntnie had a summer kitchen, and in one corner was a shelf with a huge crock. She kept big molasses cookies in this crock all the time. On the train I dearly loved the flakey kidney pies baked in individual casseroles.
We used to climb into the peach and apple trees, take a bite out of the fruit, and if it was not ripe, throw it on the ground. Mamma always dressed me in overalls and a big straw hat when we visited down South. We went barefoot all summer and could hardly get shoes on in fall. The boys would shoot birds, and we would fry them in our little skillets and on our tiny iron stoves.
One time we raided a watermelon patch, and plugged a dozen melons. The farmer came out with a shotgun and we ran like the dickens, leaving a ditch full of plugged melons. Terrible!
Uncle Earl got my father's job when he went into the service, and became Superintendant of Telegraph on the Great Northern in Spokane, Washington.
My father's prolonged stay in the Orient after the war and my mother's refusal to join him, caused the blow-up of the family. Eugene went to China with Father, Mother went south (remarried and started another family), and Vernon and I stayed with Grandma until her death, at which time my father sent for us and we went to China.
All this was a devastating experience. I practically reared Vernon, and we were always very close as a brother and sister. The untimely death of my two brothers is a sorrow that will never leave me as long as I live. Since I am the only one left of this family, I am putting down this part of our lives for the benefit of my nieces and nephews who never knew their grandmother's people.
My mother was orphaned as a child and reared by her uncle, so there is not much history that I know of on her side. For all practical purposes, we three never had parents. They went their way, and we went ours, by necessity. My father provided for us until his death, but other than that, there was never a family, as such.
Three pupils in Wilder School were presented with medals by the National Playground Association of America, for tests taken last spring in playground work, at Defense Day exercises held in the school Friday.
Those who received medals are Laurene Gilleland, Arnold Fladland, and Wilfred Fontaine. This is the first time that tests in playground work have been given in Grand Forks schools.
W.C. Stebbins, superintendant of Grand Forks schools, gave a short talk at the exercises, and Miss Luessen, head of the physical training department, presented the medals.
Here is a 1912 postcard of the Ontario Store in Grand Forks.
On the Jewel Tea Company, see C.L. Miller, Jewel Tea Company: Its History and Products (Schiffer Publishing, 1994).
According to John Culloton, American Troops in Northern Russia and Siberia, World War I, 1918 -1920,
In September 1917, the Russian Provisional Government asked the US for help in maintaining the Trans-Siberian railway. Two hundred eighty-five men from American railway companies were selected to form the Russian Railway Service Corps (RRSC). It was directed by the general manager of the Great Northern Railway, George Emerson, first Assistant to John Stevens head of the RRSC.An article in The Train Dispatcher entitled "American Railroad Men in Siberia", gives the following information about Roy Gilleland:
All the men were given Army commissions for the essentially nonmilitary project, but were not really considered part of the regular Army. The 285 railroader officers and skilled mechanics were commissioned to preserve the Trans-Siberian railway. They established 14 station units distributed the length of the Chinese Eastern Trans-Siberian railroad to Osomsk.
Major J. H. McGlogan is, effective this date, appointed chief telegraph and telephone inspector of the Chinese Eastern district, Trans-Baikal, Tomsk and Omsk railways and the following officers are appointed telegraph and telephone inspectors: Second Lieuts. W. W. Geisse, R. E. Gilleland, G. M. Haynes, M. R. Komisky, W. G. Long, H. E. Martinson, S. E. Martinson, G. B. Sewell, A. Stoneberg and B. Williams. Signed by Colonel George H. Emerson, chief inspector. Harbin, Manchuria, April 1, 1919.R.E. Gilleland, of Anderson Myers Co., Shanghai, China, is listed on the program of the Asssociated Veterans of the Russian Railway Service Corps, 1936 San Francisco Reunion.
