4 grandmothers

My Dear Grandchildren;
As I was growing up then, as my children were growing up, we liked to read stories together of the pioneers and early days to get to know how things were done and how people acted. As I read them I always thought how lucky they were to live in times so different from ours so they could write about them and have interesting things to say.
Through the years, I began to see the changes in our own lifetimes have been interesting. The differences between my mother’s world, and my world, compared to my children's world and their children's world are wonderful, and indeed worth writing about.
In my family, our ancestors came to the Americas as early as l570 from the Canary Islands, near Spain, and early l600's my father’s family came with the early puritan fathers. One of our earliest ancestors to live in the new Americas was George Jacobs, who lived in the Massachusetts colony of Salem and was actually hung for witchcraft during the Salem Witchcraft trials. That is another story and is recorded in history. From there the Jacobs spread across the territories and into the west where my father, Charles Glenn Jacobs, was born in South Dakota in l907. His father and mother were ranchers as their parents had been, and they helped settle the territories. From Dakota to Texas my father came with his father, and from there to Arizona.
My grandmother brought with her from Dakota a wooden chest that had been made for her mother, from her mother’s wooden dining room table. That chest was given to my Aunt and she gave it to me. And I inherited a wind up wooden clock. When we found an old lone star quilt that our grandmother had done, it was ragged and torn, so we cut out the best four squares and each took one. That’s about the entire physical legacy we have. These are symbols of the sacrifices and the courage of my forefathers.
I have nothing of my Mother's parents except copies of pictures of them; they died when she was a baby. Mother's people were among the very earliest settlers of the New Mexico territories, and were citizens of Spain until their lands came to be owned by Mexico, then the United States territories. Their influence throughout the history of the west is great, and it is our heritage, just as is that my father.

I do not have stories of emigrants from other countries, but of western settlers and pioneers, the earliest of citizens of the United States of America.
All I have of my grandmothers is what my uncles and aunts have told me over the years. I want to leave something for my grandchildren and so I am writing these books as letters to my grandchildren. Through them, you will also come to know Aunt Lynae and Uncle Brent as young teens, and a little bit about their older siblings and the amazing people they all were, and how human we all were. Maybe someday you will give it to your children and their children, so each will know that although our lives might be very different, there is a courage and a pioneer spirit that runs strong among our family, and, knowing this, you will turn your hearts to your forefathers.
So my dear grandchildren, this is for you
from Grandma Lynda (LoLyn)