Grandma Samson: Part 1--Miss Shibley

Since I wrote quite a bit about Grandpa Samson, I really need to write about the person I loved most in the entire world: Grandma Samson. My grandmother went the world to me, and I want to share everything I know and remember about her with you.

Grandma, my father’s mother, was born on April 21, 1888, the daughter of Catherine (Kate) O’Melia Shibley and Joseph Shibley. Shibley is most likely an anglicization of the German name Scheible, since Joseph’s parents, Matthias and Grace came from Baden-Baden in Prussia. Great-grandfather Joseph never used the word “German”; his parents were “Prussian,” which is more correct since Germany was a collection of princely states when they arrived in American with their older son Enos. Joseph was the first child of his parents born in American. They were German-speaking people. Kate O’Melia (whose parents came from Ireland) married Joseph Shibley and they lived in Fish Creek, NY with the elder Shibleys. Kate desperately wanted to learn to speak German to that she could speak with the neighbor ladies of the area who were mostly German-speaking, so only German was spoken in the Shibley home.

Joseph and Kate had four children. Howard was born in 1886, my grandmother Rosa Anna was born in 1888, and they had two younger children: Flora, born in 1892, and John (Jack) who was born in 1894. Howard and Rosa were very close all their lives. Howard never married, and eventually inherited Kate’s brother Martin O’Melia’s cabin and all its contents in Fish Creek. I remembering visiting Uncle Howard often. The cabin was at the foot of a hill, on which he had sheep and goats that grazed on the land. He also had a small pond on his land. It was a beautiful, rustic little place, quite cozy. No central heating, of course, but no one had heating heating in that are then (and NO air conditioning, of course).

Grandma and Flora were rather rivals for their father’s attention, it seems. Grandma felt that her father spoiled and favored Flora. And Jack was the baby, totally spoiled, of course. Flora eventually married Floyd Canfield and moved to Utica, as did my grandmother when she married my grandfather. Flora had a son, Roy, my father’s cousin, and the Samson boys and Roy Canfield were very close.

There is an interesting story about Aunt Flora. At one point in her lifetime, she painted nearly everything a light, turquoise-like green. Everything. Beds, wicker furniture, dressers, tables, EVERYTHING. When I was grown and needed a bed frame in 1979, my father said that he had his grandparents’ bed that Joseph had had made for his wedding to Kate in 1891 in the upstairs of his garage. It was, unfortunately, been at Aunt Flora’s during the “Aunt Flora Green” period, so my father took it to be stripped by dipping it in a paint remover. He felt that there was good wood underneath, and he was indeed correct! The bed was made of black walnut and was absolutely beautiful. The huge headboard was made of a single piece of black walnut. The bed was incredibly heavy, being that it was solid wood, not veneer. I used that bed until I moved to Austin in 2002. Then I gave the bed for Cassie to use. The sideboards eventually rotted and broke in around 2007 or 2008.

After my Aunt Elsie, Uncle Bob’s wife, died at the early age of 55, and Roy Canfield had passed away, Roy’s widow Fran and Uncle Bob became quite good friends and were good company for each other, as they shared many of the same interests. Uncle Bob and Cousin Fran were great friends until Fran’s death of heart disease. Jack, too, married and moved to Utica. He married Florence XXX. They had one adopted daughter, Jane, and one child, Rosemary, of their own.

As with most of the children in the area, the Shibley children were educated in the one-room school in the town. They knew English but had only spoken German at home until Howard and Rosa went to school. Grandma aspired to be a teacher, so she continued her education past the 8th grade, and eventually attended Normal School, which was teachers’ training college in New York State. When Grandma graduated from Normal School, her graduation gift from her parents was a rifle. She had secured a job in the one-room school near their village, and when she walked to the school, she had to walk through a wooded area where there were wild animals. So she needed the rifle for protection from the animals, such as bobcats and lynx.

Miss Shibley, as she was known to her students, met my grandfather while she was a teacher and he was a carpenter. They married in Fish Creek at the Catholic Church in November 1911. Grandpa was 27 and Grandma was 23 years old. They moved to Utica, about 45 miles to the south, which was the largest city in the area. It was easier for Grandpa to find work as a carpenter there. And each of them had siblings who also lived there: Grandpa’s youngest brother Nick and his wife (Nick was also a carpenter); and Grandma’s younger sister Flora and her husband Floyd Canfield, as well as her younger brother Jack and his wife Florence (Jack was also a carpenter).

Grandpa Samson: Part 1--Early Years

I decided that I needed to write about a very important person who was in my life for a mere short 20 years--my Grandpa Samson.

Grandpa was born on April 13, 1884, in Mohawk Hill, in New York State, on the Tug Hill Plateau region. John Walter Samson ("Grandpa" or "Pop," as he was known to his sons) was the fourth child born to Bernard Samson, who immigrated to the USA from Luxembourg as a child, and Maria Witzigmann, who was of Swiss descent. Grandpa had two older brothers, Louis (pronounced "Louie," in the French manner, and Joseph; an older sister Anna; and five younger brothers, only two of whom survived to adulthood (Martin and Nicholas). Louis, and Martin never married. My grandfather was very close to his sister Anna, who married George Kraeger and lived at, worked on, and eventually inherited Anna's Uncle Michel Samson's diary farm in Constableville, NY. Uncle Louis was a lumberjack; Joe married and farmed on Mohawk Hill (maybe on his father Bernard's farm?); Martin never married, but I don't know what his profession was (haven't investigated that far yet); and Nick married Josephine Bernadt, a second cousin related to his grandmother, Anne Bernadt, my great-grandfather Michel Samson's wife who had emigrated from Luxembourg with her husband and children (apparently at least one of her brothers had also emigrated; this was Josephine's grandfather, most likely). Both John and Nick were carpenters.

My grandfather met my grandmother Rosa Shibley (Rose) when she was a teacher in a one-room schoolhouse after she had completed Normal School, which was teacher training school/college. She was four years younger than Grandpa, and they were married in November 1911, when she was 23 years old and Grandpa was 27. They moved to Utica, NY, the largest city in the area. My Uncle Nick and Aunt Josephine also moved to Utica; they never had children and were very close to John and Rose.

About 10 months after their marriage, John and Rose had their first child, my father. When I asked Grandma one time why they had named my father "Floyd," which we thought was an odd name, she replied, "That was your grandfather's idea; after that, I named the children." How funny!