|
Bornyasz Family Tree |
|
Bornyasz Unknown Pictures Bronson Brown Riesinger |
This summary of various family members was found in the family archives By deduction we know the author was Ester Marie Coleman - exact date unknown but a guess is between 1910 and 1930 ?? Memories of Various Family Members . . . Aunt Jennie Weippert remembered her father (Benjamin Samuel Lyda) as being very kind and good and rubbing her feet and ankles (they were turned in and under, she didn't walk until she was four). Grandma Coleman remembered him as going on drinking sprees when he would lose everything they had accumulated. Grandma said they would get a place to live and a little land, a horse, a wagon, cow and chickens and then he would go into town and not come home for three or four days. They would know that he had disposed of everything for a drink. In between sprees he was a sober, hard-working man. It was during one of the times when Grandpa Lyda had lost everything that Grandma Coleman and her sisters became ill with either diphtheria or typhoid fever They were staying with an Aunt and Uncle. While they were sick they were staying on the second floor of the granary. All they had to lay on were a couple of comforters on the floor. Their mother took care of them and they both managed to come through it all right. When Grandma Coleman was little she had only linsey-woolsey dresses and went barefoot all summer. One year she and her sisters saved their pennies to buy their mother a birthday present. They walked into town barefoot and bought a sawtooth cream pitcher, sugar bowl and spoon holder. Grandma Lyda apparently was afraid of a sewing machine as she would never learn to sew with one. Grandma Coleman was once asked why she married Eli Coleman. She said that he was a man of means and respect in the community. She had boarded at him home when she was teaching. After his wife died, he courted her and they married. She said it was a good thing she did marry him because it helped her family. Not too long after they married, her father died. Grandma said "Eli, What shall I do about my mother? She has no money to live on and no place to go." "Bring her to live with us, of course," was Eli's reply. Her sister Jennie taught school and lived with them during vacations. She finally married Tom Weippert. They had not been married long when he died in his sleep. She was a few weeks pregnant and came to live with Grandma and Grandpa Coleman. Her baby (Lorita) was born there and they stayed about a year and a half. Grandma and Grandpa Coleman had not been married very long when Grandpa Coleman went into town one day and some of his cronies were teasing him about having a young wife and telling him that she married him for his money. He said, "Of course she did. I would have hated to have married a fool." Grandma Coleman said that her Grandfather Lyda had been a Spanish sea captain and had sailed out of a Portugese port and had sailed back and forth between Spain and Cuba. He met a Cuban girl and married her and she made several trips with him across the ocean before they settled in Artemesia, Cuba. Grandma was supposed to have been named for this place but her name was spelled Artha Macy. Aunt Jennie said that this story is wrong. She knew someone who had done a lot of research on the Lyda's and they said that he was a sea captain, but sailed back and forth between Holland and Spain and that he married a Dutch girl and they sailed to Cuba and settled in Artemesia. They didn't live there too long before they moved to the U.S. and settled in New Jersey. (I have found Lyda's in Maryland as early as 1775. This story probably has some truth to it but I'm not sure in what generation.) Grandma Coleman said that the big boys would try to drive the teacher out of the school but no one ever drove a Lyda girl out. Anna (Grandma Coleman's sister) always worked. She had no children. Her husband, Eugene Halladay, was hit by a train at a railroad crossing and could never talk right after that. She died of a tumor. Frank Lyda (Grandma's brother) and Rebecca Lyda had no children. After he died she went back to her family in Ohio. She was a pretty, intelligent, well-educated woman and came from a good family. Grandma could never understand why she married her brother Frank. Rebecca fell and broke her leg and walked with a limp after that. Grandfather Coleman had a huge closet on the second floor of his house and would keep sugar and flour in it during the winter. They always kept big cakes of maple sugar in the pantry. Grandfather Coleman believed that anyone should be welcome if they came to the door and wanted to stay the night. One night a peddler came to the door and Grandfather asked him to stay for dinner and spend the night. The next day they found bedbugs. Grandfather had to go upstairs and scrub and clean the bedroom and burn the straw mattress. He didn't ask just anyone to stay the night again. One time Grandfather Coleman gave Grandma several hundred dollars to put in the bank for him. She didn't notice that they put it in her name instead of his until sometime later. He never said a work about missing that money. She got to keep the money and used it for household items and bought six new chairs for the dining room. He never let on that there were six new chairs. Grandfather was rather tightfisted with money where his family was concerned but was very generous to everyone else. Grandfather Coleman hated any kind of card playing or gambling. The girls had a deck of Flinch cards and played when he wasn't around and where they could see him coming. He never knew they had them. Grandfather Coleman allowed his brother Dave and his wife to live on his farm but he kept the papers. When Dave died the land was sold and the money divided among the girls. Cousin Edie figured that the family spoon molds should be hers. Aunt Grace wanted them and made up her mind she was going to have them. When Aunt Grace asked about the molds, Cousin Edie replied that "Possession is nine pints in the sight of the law. While Cousin Edie was away, Aunt Grace took some money, left in on the table and took the molds. Cousin Edie also said "Blessed by nuthin". Grandfather told about the Civil War. One time they got down and drank out of a pond. They discovered that there was a dead mule in the water. He told about hiding in the bushes and when a darkie came by on horseback with two hams slung across the horse in back of him, they cut the rope and took the hams to a colored mammy and she cooked the hams for them. They used to forage the farms for chickens. Grandfather Coleman used to give Moms (Esther) pennies for singing "Marching Through Georgia". When Grandma Coleman (Artha Macy Lyda) was a little girl she and her family lived in a log cabin out on the River Road outside of Portland. One day her mother was doing the washing at the river. Macy and her sisters Anna and Jennie were out in front of the cabin playing when they saw a great big snake on the ground, coiled and ready to strike. They began to scream. Their mother heard them and came running up the hill. There was a hoe leaning against the cabin and she used it to cut the head off the snake. Lyda's were afraid of the Indians when they camped at Shimnecon during the summer. The Indians would go into town on Saturday nights to visit the saloons. They would get drunk and then would ride their ponies home whooping and hollering. Lyda's would make sure the fire was banked good and that no light would be showing from the cabin. They were afraid that if the Indians saw any lights they might burn the cabin down. Sometimes during the summer, Lyda's would go to Shimnecon where the Indians were camped and buy baskets. The cabin Lyda's lived in had one room with a loft overhead. Macy, her brother and sisters climbed a ladder and slept in the loft. Their parents bed was downstairs in the main cabin. Grandma Lyda (Mary Ann Rozelle) was along in the cabin one day when she looked up and saw two Indian Braves walk through the door. They sat down at the table and said "coo-cumber". Grandma Lyda was afraid of them but she got a jar of pickles off the shelf, opened it and put in on the table in front of them. The Indians ate the whole thing and didn't say another word. (Except, maybe, Ugh! as they left.) Lyda's were very poor and Grandma Coleman said all she ever got were linsey-woolsey dresses. They went barefoot al summer and saved their shoes for the winter. They never had any toys. One year a neighbor lady made her and her sisters corncob dolls and they loved them dearly. Her brother, Frank, was very spoiled (being the only son) and one day, while playing with another boy, he took the dolls and buried them and wouldn't tell where. They never saw the dolls again. Grandma never forgave her brother for doing it, nor her mother for not making him tell where he had buried them. Grandma Coleman said her mother used to smoke a pipe (either clay or corncob). When she and Jennie were grown up and teaching, they put pressure on her to stop-at least in their presence.
*Shimnecon means apple orchard.
|
||