I found these great old pictures posted by my dad's cousin on the Bonne Terre, MO wesite in the geneology section. The Marchands are from Alsace and arrived in the 1870s, bascially draft dodgers from the Franco Prussian war . Sometimes the internet provides amazing connections, like this BBS or family pictures I've never seen before.

These folks were not double gunners, but I do have my G-Father's St Joe Lead issued and marked revolver and Frank Marchand's 20 ga trapdoor Springfield from that era.

Great Grandfather Louis Marchand in Marchand's Saloon, Bonne Terre ~1903


Wilkerson Farm in East Bonne Terre ~1906


Perry Wilkerson, Dad's uncle, with some other "Railroad Men" in Deadwood, SD ~1900

Nice cornsheller too. They probably just got it.

jack

Jack,
There's about 3 pictures from the same day on the website and the cornsheller is front and center in all. I think you're right, they were proud of it.

It's nice you have an interest in your ancestors. I've been trying to get my Mother's history written. I have my Great Grandfather's written history, (Only 7 pages). He died in the 1930's and he would just be a name in a register with out it.

Are you related to Al Swearingen? (Just kidding!) Very interesting pictures. Thank you for sharing them.

Very interesting. Those old photos are most evocative and really do let us peep into a very different world.

My grandmother is in the late 80s now and is probably one of the last few living examples of the British Raj. She was born in Burma to an Irish (Brigadeer, career soldier)father and mother and raised in India, where her father was posted.

She there met my Grandfather, another Irish career soldier, who served in the Ghurkas, ending his service as a colonel. She had two children in India in her early 20s and expected to live her life there as the wife of an officer in the Raj and all the priviledge and lifestyle that went with it; all she had known, in fact.

When the Brits got kicked out of India in 1947, she was shipped back to England, a country she did not know and had to start life all over again in the austerity of post-war Britain.

As a young woman, she knew Jim Corbett and his sisters, often visuted them and saw Jim's early cine films of tigers in the wild (certainly the first ever taken).

My father is trying to record her reminiscences of her life in that very different world of a generation past, when the British ruled half the world, India was full of wild game and a tiger in the hills was a daily threat, not an endangered species.

I'm sure you've heard this old gag SmallBore, but...

Two women overheard in conversation just after WWII.

"My husband is an officer with the Gurkha Regiment"

"I didn't know you're husband was coloured?"

"Oh he's not, in the Gurkha's only the privates are coloured"

"Oh I SAY!, how.........contemporary!"

Great story. I love the subtleties of "Indian Army" and "Army in India." The plane my cousin was flying went down in Lahore in late 40's, attributed to a bomb /sabotage to kill a passenger. Have neighbours here in Kerry , both (husband and wife) were born in India of Army folk. Another dec'd neighbour was an ADC in Govt. House.
Great credit to your father, hope he gets all recorded soon, future generations - and posterity - will thank him!
K.