Opening website notes:
Penny Watson typed this up, and I imagine some of you have already read it. My understanding is that they just asked Uncle Mahlon questions and kept track of what he said, but I’m sure someone can give us more details.
I’m going to slice it up into smaller sections like the other “Stories.” The main reason for doing this is that it gives everyone else a chance to comment and post questions as we go along. As with all of the other documents in the “Stories” series, I will post the whole document after all the little bits have been on the website. If I forget to do that, someone should remind me.
I took the liberty of changing this from the third person in the original document to first person. Mostly to make things fit with the other articles from Aunts and Uncles. Special thanks to Penny for getting this to me and I’m sorry it took me two months to start putting them on the website.
Uncle Mahlon’s Story (part 1)
I was born in Jefferson City, Missouri on December 30, 1932 at Realius Beck’s place. The Beck’s place was a log house and I was delivered on a dining room table. This dining room table was the same table we had in my house growing up and ate meals on all the time. Lloyd and I re-visited the Beck’s place in 2011.
My earliest memory of my grandfather, Adolph’s father [this is Johann Mathias Sommerer, Jr] was when he lived with our family for a short time. We lived together in a two-story home located in Shubert, Missouri just south-east of Jefferson City, Missouri off of Highway 50. I can remember my grandfather whittling an ax handle while I wanted to play ring around the rosy. I was three years old and at this time and mother was pregnant with Cleopha. The final earliest memory I have was the time mother looking out the window at a hurst lined up outside because grandfather had passed away. I was awake in the home when he was being loaded up and taken away.