Counting days until Spring Break!

Combine full moon and upcoming Spring Break and you have WILD kids! I'm grateful for a field trip tomorrow with 14 of my good students. It should be enjoyable. We are going to The Revolutionary War Park at Camden. The British were here for a year until Nathanael Greene booted them out. Too many Tories here!! I am grateful for my 5th great grandfather, John Renta Baker, who along with the Overmountain Men won at Kings Mountain and again at Cowpens to secure the victory for the patriots.

The pictures above are of my great grandparents, Margaret Ann "Maggie" Boelger and Michael John Mehring. How I wish I could have known them! They worked so hard and had very short lives. Grandpa's father, Leonard, was a tailor. Michael was super artistic and became not only a painter, but free-hand painted the old fashioned home safes in the early 1900's. He did the safe that was in the home of my other great grandparents, Fred and Augusta Schneider. I remember seeing it in my grandma Mehring's closet and admiring the beautiful design. I would love to see it now. Grandpa Michael died in 1916 at the age of 50, leaving behind Uncle Linton (who was married), my grandpa, George, (17), and Uncle Lewis (age 7). He died the day before their 20th wedding anniversary. Grandma Maggie came from a poorer family. Her father came from Bavaria to Cincinnati in 1838, and her mother, Christina, came from Hanover, Germany. More about them in another post. Maggie had two brothers that died at age 18 and 23. One from crippling rheumatism and the other from congestion of lungs (recorded on the burial forms at Spring Grove Cemetery). While taking care of her sick mother, Maggie contracted the flu during the epidemic in 1918, and died at the age of 50. So my Grandpa was virtually an orphan at age 19. He never talked a lot about his family, but there was an absolute respect and reverence for his mother when he did. Grandpa George, my mom, me, Mandy and Tiffany all inherited her luscious thick hair! :)