Grandpa Meets Grandpa

 ...not in person, but in a picture I ran across recently of a portrait of the Jolly family of Anderson, South Carolina taken around 1895. John Andrew Jolly was his name and he doesn't look very grandfatherly since  he was still a teenager when this particular photograph was taken.

He is the boy shown second to the left with his bicycle. I never knew him; in fact, my Mother hardly did either, since he died when she was three years old. My grandmother was left penniless with 4 little children. What a woman! He passed some of the "genes" along, but it was up to her to provide for and raise the children, all of whom became good, middle class American citizens who raised their own good, middle class Americans, one of whom became a war hero (Charles Mateer) one who became a well known North Carolina Judge (John R. Jolly), and one was a secret service agent (David Jolly).

Not bad for a family that began with so many strikes against them.

On his tombstone was the inscription, "An Honest Man"

Thanks Grandpa. Wish you could have stayed longer.

-Ed