Generous Hearts in the Nason Family

This photo is of my Great-grandparents, George Wilmot and Jessie Louise (Murphy) Nason with their ten children. Photo taken c. 1917-1918.

From time to time, Grammie Muriel would take some of us in her car and drive from place to place to see landmarks of importance in our family: a house here, a barn there, family grave stones, a school. She was a great story-teller and I wish we could remember all of them for you.

One of the landmarks was the old Nason Homestead. The old home was on a little side road off the Lake Road in Monticello, Maine -- but the house was no longer standing when I was a child. It was a fairly self-sufficient life back in those early days of the 20th century. Our great grandfather was a farmer with potato crops and other crops to help feed the farm animals. I know he did lumbering also and I think he ran his own saw mill. He cut trees and milled the lumber to build the Lake Road Church, where he took his turn teaching from the Word and where our Grandfather Cain preached from time to time. Our great grandmother was a keeper at home and much beloved of her children.

I knew and loved all of the people in this photo except for the beloved mother and her baby. The five in the back (Lt - Rt): Merle, Muriel (my grandmother), Harold, Merrit, and Glen. The five in the middle row: Vernon, Grammie Jessie, Ola, Grampie Bill, and Cecil. The little one on his Mother's lap was Lawrence and the son standing in front of his Dad was David.

Great Grandmother Jessie died during the great influenza epidemic of 1918. Grammie Muriel was just a teenager, but she told us how she nursed her dying mother and took care of the children. When her mother died, my grandmother would not allow anyone else to prepare the body for burial. She talked of bathing her mother's body and combing her hair. What a task for a fifteen-year-old!

Little brother Lawrence died also, but I am not sure how much later. Grammie told me how he cried and cried for his Mother and how he died of a broken heart. Another possibility is that he had a birth defect and he may have died from an infection related to the surgical method that was devised for elimination of his urine. I recall that he died in the winter and that his burial took place under the dirt floor of one of the out-buildings on the farm. There was no other choice, a harsh reality of life in those days. That, of course, compounded the grief of losing the little brother. When she had her own son in 1923, she named him after her baby brother.

She was the oldest of the girls and her younger sister and brothers always remembered her as "like a mother to us" (Uncle Merritt named his oldest girl after her). How she loved them! The tragedy of losing her mother was compounded by gaining a step-mother (who apparently met the stereotype). Dear children no longer knew the warmth of a mother's embrace or goodnight kisses, except those they got from their older sister.

Grammie shared with us very sad memories of those last days living at home. The pain and grief of home no longer being "home" led her to marry our grandfather at the tender age of sixteen. She took her little siblings into her's and Grampie's home as often as she could. And it grieved her when they had to go home.

My grandmother was the greatest child advocate I've ever seen. There was nothing within her power that she would not do to try and keep a child safe, comfortable, and feeling loved. Her unconditional love and kindness caused children in the Church and around the town to call her "Grammie Muriel", too.

Our grandfather adored her. He was a quiet and reserved man and not as easy to know as our grandmother. But we loved him and admired his amazing work ethic. We'll talk more about him later. We look back now and wonder how he managed to keep his cool as our grandmother ministered to others in every possible way. She was always providing meals, money, and even housing to people for days, weeks, and years. . . this was not limited to family, but extended to many in need. We thought of her as a SAINT, but now in my later years I understand that she could not have blessed others so much if it had not been for my grandfather being as loving and patient as he was with her. His pet name for her was "Topsy". I don't know why.

I would say from my own observation that generous hearts were common among Jessie's and Bill's children. For example, after our father was killed in a trucking accident in 1956 (leaving our mother a widow at 34), my Mom's uncles Merle and Vernon took upon themselves a mission to reach out to us. They were always helping us in little and big ways. Their wives, Dorothy and Geneva were my Dad's sisters and very precious to me, too. God used them and other family members to comfort and help my Mom in her single-parent days. I cherish the memory of that and will never forget the love they showed us in so many ways.