Heirlooms & Heritage

There is a Grandmother Clock that stands in my living room.  I’ve had it now for more than 20 years and it is very special to me.  It cannot be considered an antique since it was purchased new by my Grandma Poff in the 1970’s…but it is special because it was hers and probably the only thing of hers that I have.

Because I have an avid interest in history and genealogy it is a disappointment to me that that I know so little about my Grandma Poff.  Her name in her youth was Susie Lake.  I know that she bore 14 children 12 of whom survived to adulthood.  She moved to Florida to be near my Mom after Grandpa died in 1960.  She was a big woman, these days she would be considered morbidly obese, but that lap of hers was a constant and a source of comfort for her many grandchildren. 

I remember her sitting on the porch of the family farm in Red Lion, Ohio snapping snap beans.  I remember her on the back porch plucking chickens and in the kitchen baking homemade breakfast biscuits over a wood-fired cook stove.  I remember her arms around me the day my 5 year-old niece Lisa was buried.  I have many memories of Grandma Poff, but I know very little of who she was before she was my grandma. 

The one tiny piece of information I have about her youth was shared with me a few days before I moved to Guam.  I had flown from Alaska to Cincinnati for a visit, then a road trip to Maine to see my friend Diane, then flew from Cincinnati to Florida for a visit with the family before my flight to Guam.

I made sure I saw Grandma before my departure and she seemed sad to me.  She made the comment that she would never see me again.  I assured her I would not be in Guam that long, but she must have had a premonition that her time was near, because it was just a few weeks later that she passed. 

That day I remember asking her to tell me about her childhood.  She picked just one story to share.  She told me that her family lived at the base of a mountain in Kentucky not too far from a large town.  One day a ‘mountain man’ came down from the mountains on his way to town.  He stopped to visit with her father.  On his way back a few days later he was driving a herd of horses and was having a hard time handling them by himself.  He asked Grandpa if he would help him drive the horses to his home.  Grandpa couldn’t leave the farm, but he told the Mountain Man that his daughter was an excellent rider and could help him.  So Grandma mounted her horse and off she went with a total stranger and his herd of horses.  That was the one story she told me of her youth.   Now I suspect that it was her equivalent of my adventures.

So, the Grandmother clock sits in my living room as a reminder of Grandma and her life.  An aunt asked recently what I planned to do with the clock since I did not have any children of my own to pass it to.  I had not thought about the clock’s future, but now that the question has been asked I’ve come up with a plan.  It may be coincidental, but the clock already has a tradition that has formed around it. 

Grandma purchased the clock and had it for a few years in her home.  Then, when she could no longer live on her own she moved in with my Mom and Dad, her eldest daughter, and the clock stayed with Mom after Grandma’s death.  As it turned out, when Mom and Dad were downsizing Mom passed it on to Grandma’s eldest granddaughter, me.  I’ve done the research and figured out that the eldest Great Granddaughter of Susie Poff is my cousin’s daughter.  So I plan to pass it on to her in my 70^th birth year. 

I am writing a little book to go with the clock, sharing what little I know of Grandma Poff’s life, Mom’s life and then my life.  I’m hoping that the next in line will add her life story to go with the clock and that she will do the research to see who is the eldest Great, Great Granddaughter of Susie Poff. 

I have no way of ensuring the clock moves from Granddaughter to granddaughter of Susie Poff, but I will at least try to get the tradition going and to share with future generations the heritage and heirloom of one remarkable woman.