Family photos
A brief history ....
My great Grandmother Anne Fisher, née Donovan, was born in 1892 with her twin brother Frank. She was one of seven (or eleven) children. Her family came to the U.S. from Canada, though they used to take trips back over the border during what she called "The Pro-hi". Her father was an Irishman (O'Donovan, who later dropped the O) and her mother was of German descent (Obert).
I later learned that I knit "backwards" because I learned it from Anne, who learned it in the German style from her grandmother. She played the mandolin and a mean game of cribbage. She was a destroyer class cook and occasionally drank elderberry wine "for medicinal purposes."
A visit to her house was a weird amalgam of comfort, nostalgia and abject terror. Chamber pots in the bedrooms or the dark spider and snake filled outhouse to choose from should the moment arise at night. (She finally got an indoor toilet and shower in the 70's; before that, baths were in a tin bathtub, rather like Nanny Ogg's, though Discworld fans would understand what I mean by saying that in temperment she was VERY much like Granny Weatherwax.)
Woe betide the creature who violated her garden. When she was babysitting my sister (age 6) for several days, my sister made the mistake of mentioning that there was a woodchuck in the garden. Gran promptly bludgeoned it to death in front of her with a garden hoe. When her sight was failing she'd mentioned to my Mom that she'd shot a deer in her garden with her .22. When Mom asked how she was able to see it, she said she'd balanced the gun on her friend's shoulder and shot it with her friend helping to aim. Mom said, "what about her ears?!" Gran said, "Oh, she she's deaf. She can't hear."
Anne graduated from nursing school in Rochester, NY and though it wouldn't be done to allow her to become a doctor, she was a force to be reckoned with in the local medical community. One of her patients, a World War I soldier, Leon Fisher, asked her to marry him. His father built them a farmhouse in Penn Yan, in the Finger Lakes region of central New York.
Leon had a younger brother named Gerald (I'll upload the photo eventually). In 1917 Leon's sister Harriette married Oakley Arnold Allen, a doctor (probably the only doctor) in Watkins Glen, NY, where Harriette taught school. They lived in a big beautiful home that they called Oakmont. Grandma Anne sometimes assisted Oakley in his medical practice when they went there to visit. More details are here....
Anne and Leon had two children, Elizabeth (Betty) and 2nd Lt. Robert (Bob) Fisher. Bob was a B-24 Liberator bomber pilot flew in the 8th Air Force in World War II and was a PoW. ( Check out his amazing story.) Anne and Leon eventually divorced and Leon moved to Fredonia, New York. Betty went with him and followed her mother's path into nursing, graduating from Old Main in Fredonia. She married the fighter pilot that I was named after, but that's another story.
(To eventually be continued...I would love, for instance to know more about my Great Aunt Harriette's social life. I suspect that she liked to party....)
My great grandmother, Anne Donovan with Anne's mother, Mrs. Donovan
siblings George, Adelaide & Frank, Anne's twin
Anne's brother George Donovan Anne's son, 2nd Lt. Robert Fisher, a B-24 Liberator bomber pilot
My great grandfather, Leon Fisher Leon's sister, Harriette Allen