Chapter 1 of Tales I Can Remember, by Elsie Swagerty Burton
I was born to a nineteen-year-old girl, Pearl Elizabeth Aldrich Swagerty, and a twenty-five year old man, Ernest Elmer Swagerty. They were married during mother’s junior year of high school, consequently, she never finished. She told me that while she was holding me during her class graduation exercises, she proclaimed me her diploma while others on stage were merely getting pieces of paper,
My father attended school when he could be spared from his family labor force. His was a large family and everyone’s efforts was needed. My father told us how his father had asked what he wanted to do to make a living. He said he had been giving that some thought and had determined that farming was about the best. He had figured that even while he slept, his crops would still be growing. He said grandfather was much relieved because if Elmer had wanted some other occupation or profession, education would have been a problem but now he didn’t have to worry.
Both the Swagerty’s and Aldrich’s were farm families. They had come west in the hopes the change in climate would improve the health of their wives. The Swagerty’s had come from Kansas and Aldrich’s from Iowa.
Both of my parents had grown up without grandparents, aunts, uncles or cousins living close by so that when I grew up, I was taught that each of the relatives was a very prized and special person.
September 23, 1915, at 9 o’clock in the morning, on the cusp of Virgo and Libra, was the time and date I was born. The event took place in a little house on the property of my maternal grandparents near the small town of Hughson, California. Fortunately, for all concerned I was one of those babies who likes to be cuddle for the grandparents and two teen-age aunties who were eager to cuddle; so everyone was well satisfied. All but Father, that is. I was the first born, and in his sight, naturally, I was expected to have been a boy. I don’t think I was ever forgiven for that mistake. Soon after, within eighteen months, my baby brother, Clem, came. That should have taken care of the faux pas, but for some reason, I never felt that it did quite do the trick.
In four more months a girl-cousin, Iona, came on the scene but she and brother Clem were of a more independent and resistive nature so I still received all the cuddling from those grandparents and two teen-age aunties. My father, fifth in line in his family, already had several nieces and nephews. Because so much loving attention was lavished on me by my mother’s people, I may have become too accustomed to an abundance of attention. At any rate, I felt I was considered “spoiled” and experienced disapproval in the company of my father’s people.
Mother’s family was made up of her parents, Abraham Lincoln Aldrich and Ida Laura Palmer Aldrich, her older sister, by two years, Lulu May (Swagerty), her brother Clarence was just younger, and then came her two sisters, Ethel Mabel (Bohanan) and Lucy Mary (Moorhead Rowland).
Father’s family was somewhat larger. First, his parents, Sampson Clayton Swagerty and Emma Jane Underwood Swagerty. He had two older sisters, Belle (Hamilton) and Lucy (Morris); then an older brother George Harlan and a younger brother, Isaac Wilberforce, two more sisters, Alice (Hutchinson) and Stella (Repass), and the two youngest were John and Helen Elizabeth (Hunter).
There were some misunderstandings about the names chosen for me. It seems my mother chose Irene as her first choice, but father had known, and not liked, an Indian girl by that name, therefore, did not want it for his daughter. I don’t know from where Elsie was dredged, but perhaps the “Elsie Dinsmore” stories were Popular about that time. At any rate, Elsie Irene was agreed upon. Mother always told me that she had been well satisfied with the name, but when Mother’s people heard that their Pearl (my mother) was not able to name her daughter the name she preferred, they decided that they would use that name for me anyway. So in my mother’s family I was known as Irene and elsewhere, Elsie. I liked it. It set me apart and because of that I felt special. With a new sibling arriving every sixteen to twenty months for the next seven and a half years of my life, I needed that.
Swagerty-Aldrich Family Web Site 