Letters From Uncle Bill

Ellen's grandmother, Susan O'Neill traveled from Scotland to the USA in 1908 with five young children to join her husband, James O'Neill, who had arrived earlier and established a home in
the coal ming town of Gillispie, Illinois.

Ellen first learned, by accident in 1956, that she was born Ellen Elizabeth O'Neill in 1936.
That is the reason Ellen ask Uncle Bill to send her some of the history of the O'Neill family.
I have tried to type the letters word for word as they were written by Uncle Bill who was now near 90 years old.

Dear Ellen and Ted

I hope this will be legible enough so that you can dechiper it. I'm trying to think what you would be interested in knowing about your family so I'll just ramble on wi th what ever comes to mind.

Your grandmother Susan Brannan O'Neill was roly poly little woman who loved her family, parties and people. She had a sweet little singing voice and sang hundreds of old country
songs to us through the years. Ma loved to play games. It was a circus when she and my brother Pat played some kind of dice game. They always tried to cheat one another and would banter back and forth. Pat was John's father and he was the comedian in the family. Ma was very
religious but she was broad minded. She prayed her rosary every day but she was no purde.

When we moved from the house in what we called the "hollow" to the big house on Olive street,
she started a small grocery in our front living room. She sold bread and milk and some canned goods. It went so well that she had a store built on our corner lot and did very well for many years. This would be around 1920. She kept a lot of miners supplies etc. She and my father had only three or four years of schooling but she would have made a good business women. She told me once that her mother had six sons also. Her mother always said she had six sons to carry her to her grave, but it wasn't to be as they all died before she did. So when she passed away in 1945
we were the pall bearers. I had just shortly returned from over seas and Larry was still there
with Patton so we had a friend as a proxy for him.

Friends and neighbors were alwsys dropping in and the tea kettle was always on. We has a lot of parties at our home and family picnics in the woods near by. All of our cousins were within
six blocks of us and we were all pretty close. Ma had a quilting bee at home and her neighbors and friends came there to chat and gossip.

LOOK FOR THE NEXT INSTALLMENT SOON.