Four Generations

During the Depression times were hard for farmers in the Gowrie area so certainly Uncle Reuben had reason to complain. However, his various in-laws on the Telleen side of his family (Aunt Agnes as I have mentioned was one of the Telleen clan) included at least six local farmers who apparently rode out the Depression without taking advantage of their parents or their siblings the way Uncle Reuben did.

So my grandfather died on a rather unhappy note. At 18 years of age I was perhaps only beginning to appreciate him but in retrospect I have come to regard him as a gentle, jovial man caught in the end in a web of circumstance not of his own making.

In the 1910 census (I think it was the census for that year) my great-grandfather is listed as a member of the household of my grandfather. He must have been well along in years at the time. Somewhere I have a photograph of four generations of Strands – my great-grandfather, my grandfather, Uncle Reuben and my cousin Leonard. So my great-grandfather was still living when my oldest Strand cousin was a young boy.


Leonard, Reuben, John Emil, and Anders Peter