(Boy 1) My Dad, Charles Abner Monson.

This is the first post (Boy 1) of the part of my Life Story that covers the period between the time when my Mom passed away to the time that my Dad had his stroke.

 When my wife, Jackie, passed away seven years ago I started studying genealogy. It ties right in with my interest in history, etc and I thought it would fill some time. Boy! does it!

I had never heard any discussion of Monson genealogy from my Dad or family. I thought we had come over on a turnip boat from Sweden a hundred years ago or so. I knew that Dad had been born in Kentucky and his sister lived there. I barely got started on genealogy when I learned that Dad's 7th great grandfather, Captain Thomas Munson, had been born in England in 1612 and had fought in a New England Indian War in 1637. This year is considered to be the time he came to America.

I found out that there was and is a Thomas Munson Society that has published five volumes of Munson genealogy, The title of the volumes is The Munson Record. My Dad is mentioned in one of the volumes. They do not mention me. Maybe Volume VI? So here is probably all of the genealogy of my Dad. Thousands of cousins are mentioned, many with pages of their personal history. It has been fascinating reading about them. Even the cousin who was eaten by cannibals.

So my Dad's people have been in America for 377 years. I had no conception of such a thing. I wish that I had known that.

Dad enjoyed a good argument over politics and or religion. He and my grand mother had many disagreements on religion.

Dad was a teamster. he handled teams of horses to do work. I can remember watching him excavate the basement for a church with horses and an excavator. He had a team of horses (named Bert and Beck) at the house on Kingsley that he used to do contract work in the groves and farms in the Pomona Valley. He was fairly well off. We lived in a large two story house. Then the depression came.  My siblings left. My last time living with my Dad was in a single room of my oldest sister's house. I can remember meals of biscuits and salt pork gravy. Salt pork was four and a half cents per pound.

My Dad was a victim of two trends. The replacement of horses by machines and the depression. To top it off he suffered a massive stroke and spent the last 17 years of his life with one side of his body paralyzed. What a sad terrible thing. I have been told that he was so depressed that he attempted suicide and failed. He then stopped eating until he died.

I believe that his daughters thought of him as a strict taskmaster. They got married to get away. Four of my five sisters divorced their first husband and remarried. I have always said that the fifth one should have done the same.

My Mom and Dad in the 1920s.