Family tradition – truth or fiction?
My father’s Aunt Marjorie wrote two lengthy letters in 1995 to my uncle answering his questions about the Bryant family history. The second letter focused on her father, William, and her only brother, my grandfather, Harry Bryant. She described hardships that Harry endured which shaped his personality.
One story was about when he Harry, his mother Ada Belle and three younger sisters (Aunt Marjorie was the baby) lived in Michelson near Houghton Lake about 1911 – getting by as best they could even though their husband/father had left them.
“Your father was a wonderful little boy – after dad left, I remember him helping mother pick over a bushel of navy beans for the grocer to pay for groceries. He also used to take his wagon to the train station – at least a mile away, – and help mother bring home a 5 gallon tub of ice cream, which she sold in the little shop she set up to try to make a living. She also took in sewing.”
Another story reflected that Harry helped to bury two of his sisters. In December of 1911, Ada Belle married her second husband George Coon and in 1913 they all moved “across the Straits to Naubinway” where George’s father had a small house and a job for George at a mill.