Four Generations

The local papers used to often publish five generation family photos. We didn’t manage five generations on the planet at the same time, but I’m thankful for a few photos with four generations.

Four generations: Doris Neal, holding baby Joy, Grandma Leora Wilson, Great Grandmother Laura Goff. Rural Minburn, Iowa, July 4, 1944

I was a month old when his was taken July 4, 1944, before Dad flew up from Texas to drive us back with him. Mom and I stayed with her folks, Clabe and Leora, while they still farmed near Minburn, Iowa, although all five sons were off to sever in the war. One of Leora’s brothers had driven their mother, Laura Goff, to Minburn from their home in Omaha. The first four-generation photo of my motherline.

Laura Goff, Leora Wilson, Doris Neal, Joy Neal, Guthrie Center, Iowa, mid-1950s. All four of us are the oldest daughter in her family. Three of us are also firstborns.

Dad’s Side

Grandpa Kenneth Neal (who brought a baby locket for me while we were still in the hospital), Mom (Doris Wilson Neal) holding me, Great Grandpa O.S. Neal. (Orlando Swain, named for his mother’s brothers, both of whom served in the Civil War) June 1944

Grandpa Kenneth Neal, Doris (standing in for Dad) with baby Joy, Great Grandpa O.S. (Swain) Neal. I was Kenneth the Ruby’s first grandchild. Since it looks like Mom is still wearing a maternity top, this was probably right after we got “home” (Wilson’s Minburn farm) after the hospital.

Dad, Warren Neal, was in Texas training advanced cadets, so this one is an almost-four-generation photo. Swain Neal died shortly after WWII so I never got to know him, except through Mom’s stories. Swain and Nellie Neal were favorite neighbors when the Wilsons lived in the town of Dexter during the Great Depression.

If you’ve read Leora’s Dexter Stories, O.S. Neal is the man who hired Doris to work in the Dexter Canning Factory in 1935. (This is also the lineage that leads to Mayflower ancestors.)