Week 41—Changes—What My Grandmother Saw in a Hundred Years

In the nearly one hundred years that my grandmother, Pansy Louise (Lancaster) Johnston, lived, she experienced great technological change.

Born in 1913 and died just two months short of her hundredth birthday in 2013, many technical advances happened in her lifetime.

Growing up on a farm in Erath County, Texas, transportation was likely horse and wagon into town, and walking on her own two feet to school. Later, they lived in the town of Stephenville and her father was a self-taught auto mechanic.

In her lifetime, planes progressed to jets, and her brother, R.D., was an Air Force pilot in World War II and Korea. Her husband, Tom, and her younger brother, Wayne, served in the Navy.

Pansy was independent and drove a car up until the last decade of her life, when a minor heart attack put a stop to her driving.

Their family did not have a radio in 1930, but it was likely they soon had one. Once television was widely available, the Johnston family had one, as I have heard stories of watching the first episodes of “I Love Lucy.” Advances progressed over the years from small-screened black and white televisions to modern color flat-screen TVs.

Many household appliances changed over the years. She was a seamstress, starting out with a treadle machine and moving up to electric machines. Washer machines changed from wringer attachments to internal wringers. Old ice boxes advanced to modern refrigerators with automatic ice makers. Instead of percolating coffee on top of the stove, coffee makers made coffee on the counter. Washing dishes by hand advanced to automatic dishwashers.

One thing she did not keep up with were computers. They never really interested her. My brother tried setting up a computer for her, but she just didn’t have interest. She like talking on the telephone or having visits in person. So, no modern communication devices for her besides a portable telephone.

In my grandmother’s life-time, she witnessed many great technological advances in medicine (received a pacemaker), technology (television, space flight, micro-electronics), transportation (automobiles, BART trains, and jets). What will the next hundred years bring?

Mam-ma with a dishwasher

Mam-ma with her car

This is my fourth year working on this year-long prompt, hosted by Amy Johnson Crow. I will write each week in one of my two blogs, either Mam-ma’s Southern Family or at My Trails Into the Past. I have enjoyed writing about my children’s ancestors in new and exciting ways.


Copyright © 2021 by Lisa S. Gorrell, Mam-ma's Southern Family, All rights reserved.

Comments

  1. Marian B. WoodOctober 20, 2021 at 1:51 PM

    Lots of context for thinking about your grandmother's life. She really lived through a period of significant technological change!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

All comments on this blog will be previewed by the author to prevent spammers and unkind visitors to the site. The blog is open to other-than-just family members particularly those interested in family history and genealogy.

Popular posts from this blog

Happy Blogiversary & Happy 100th Blog Post!

Image
Today is a big milestone. This is the 100th blog post I have written and the 6th anniversary of the beginning of this blog. I began the blog on January 15, 2011, through a blog writing class I took at California Genealogical Society, taught by Craig Siulinski. It was something I wanted to do but wasn’t really sure what I would focus on. I finally settled on writing about my grandmother, Pansy Louise Lancaster’s family and this was my first post . In the beginning it was hard to get started. I learned from the Geneabloggers website, that there were blogging memes I could use and I have done that off and on, especially at the beginning. But I finally learned that what worked best was to write about my discoveries as I researched my grandmother’s family. So what have I written in six years? I discovered I have only written four posts specifically about my grandmother: “Mam-ma was a Tomboy” “Fearless Females – Day 12” “Mam-ma 1913-2013” “My Grandpar...
Read more

John Coor of Copiah County Made an Agreement with Joel Hoggatt

Image
This week at RootsTech 2024, FamilySearch announced a new feature that an every-word search was available for U.S. deeds and probates. It is still in the trial mode and can be found at https://www.familysearch.org/en/labs/ . This is the search screen. It clearly states it is for US land and probate records and Mexico notary records. You can do a keyword search or if you click on the “more options” you can add a name. My Find I immediately gave it a try and searched first for records of the COOR family using the keyword search. Up first came deeds from Wayne County, North Carolina.  At the top, you can filter using record year, record type, record place, and collection. For the past few days, I have mainly filtered by record place. I filtered down to Mississippi. You can even filter to the county. The first entry was a document I had not seen before. It was an 1826 agreement between John Coor and Joel Hoggatt to build a set of grist and sawmills. John Coor is my 4x-great-grand...
Read more

Using the Attendees at Lela Ann (Loveless) Lancaster’s Funeral to Discover Residences

Image
Lela Ann Lancaster, my maternal great-grandmother, died on 17 May 1951. [1] She had died in Wichita Falls, Texas, at the state hospital. The doctor’s handwriting is nearly illegible so the cause of death is difficult to determine. She was conflicted with Parkinson’s Disease which probably contributed to her death. Her funeral was three days later. [2] Lela Ann (left) with Warren, daughter Pansy, granddaughter Lela Nell, and son Wayne, c. 1935 Obituary Tells Story of Life Two obituaries were published on the same day in the Stephenville Empire-Tribune on two different pages. One gave information about her life and the funeral, and the other was about who attended her funeral. The transcription of the first is here: "Mrs. Warren G. Lancaster"    Funeral services for Mrs. Warren G. Lancaster, 55, who died at 4:30 a.m. Thursday at a Wichita Falls Hospital, were at 3 p.m. Sunday at the First Baptist Church with the Rev. Felix Gresham and the Rev. Ernest Rippetoe officiating...
Read more