Andrew Anderson, Father of Beatrice Breck (Drury) Anderson

I only remember my grandfather on my mother’s side—Andrew Anderson. His wife died before I could remember, though I think I was a small child. Grandpa Anderson was a rascally old man who rocked in his rocking chair smoking his pipe, told stories for hours and could recite long entertaining poems one after the other. He carried on his father’s grudge against “the Southern race” (his father had been a prisoner at Andersonville prison during the Civil war). I remember him shaving with a straight razor, smoking his pipe and treating me as more important than the grownups in the living room. I sat at the foot of his rocking chair and requested poem after poem, story after story. I still have a few recorded on the Drury Family Cassette. As a young man he was a hard drinker and when he came home drunk would knock his wife about while my mother (Beatrice) lay trembling upstairs. As an old man he moderated his drinking and eventually gave it up completely when he became a Christian. He even gave up his pipe smoking when the pastor suggested it would be evidence of a true conversion. (more later)

Dressing up in a suit was so rare that this Christmas day picture seems to me like another person. (More later)