Category: Narratives

Family RecollectionsGrace Eveline Lawton 1871 – ? I have been told that the Lawtons came from England to Rhode Island settling in Portsmouth in 1638, which is two years after Roger Williams came to Providence, and a year before Newport was settled, if I have not forgotten those details. It is said that there were three brothers, George, Thomas and […]

HomesteadingLeo Lawton Between 1874 and 1876 the Native American Indians of Saskatchewan, Canada ceded away their rights to the land. However, settlement by former Europeans awaited surveying of the land, a homestead policy, and a ready means of access. After great hardships and Herculean efforts the Canadian Pacific Railroad was finally completed in 1885. Most people thought this would bring […]

Author: Leo Lawton In the 800 block of Leadenhall Street in Baltimore resides the oldest woodworking firm in the United States. Founded by Joseph Thomas in 1820, the business was soon named Joseph Thomas and Son with the birth of his son in 1823. It came to be that in the year 1845 an enterprising young worker named John L. […]

Author: Leo Lawton December 1, 2019 I often sit and contemplate things that matter little to others. I suppose we all do from time to time. While thus engaged an old poem/song came to mind. “Beyond The Sunset” This is the first verse as sang by Hank Williams, my all-time favorite Country and Western entertainer. Should you go first and […]

Author: Leo Lawton October 11, 1999 My oldest brother “Bert” born in 1927, left to go to war in July 1944 when he turned seventeen. By then there were nine children in the family. Four more children were born, but others fled the nest so that there were never more than ten living there at one time. We were a […]

By: Leo Lawton Peter Warren was born in Dublin, Ireland in 1703. By 1744 he was in command of a 16 ship squadron of the English Royal Navy. He had become a wealthy man. Using some of that wealth he purchased thousands of acres of land along the Mohawk River in central New York in the colonies in 1738. Peter […]

Author: Grace Petterson I “Grace McClain Petterson” will try and write a few things as I remember my mother telling them to us. The family continued to live on the old homestead although things were hard for them and the family was growing. When mother was sixteen she was going steady with a young man six years older then herself […]

Addie Lenora Lawton McClain 1868-1944 This story was lovingly hand written by Addie Lenora Lawton McClain, (1940) and painstakingly transcribed and edited by Stephen Lawton. It was sent in and graciously proof read by Denise Crawford and her husband Vaughn. Thank-you folks! I was born in 1868 in Big Springs, Ottawa County, Michigan in a log house in the home […]