My father stayed on the family farm with the understanding he would inherit it. It financed new farms for two brothers, a college education for a brother and sister, and payments towards another brother who didn't attend, but financed a lively life style, until it was discovered. Also a financial gift to his sister for her new home. My father was married, at the age of 45, and died at 50, leaving my mother with 4 small children and little income, living with her father-in-law.
Her letters indicate he tried to poison me with pills when I was 15 months old, but the woman attending her when my youngest brother was born found me sitting in the middle of the table, grabbed me and took me to Mom's room and warned her not to leave me alone with him. She said his remark when I was born was that it was too bad I wasn't a dog so he could take me out and shoot me like he had done to my father's dog so no one had to spend 25 cents for a license, By the way, it is almost certain he smothered his first grandchild, people who knew the truth were dead when the story resurfaced. My mother moved us away six months after my father died and struggled to raise us. My
grandfather's older sister begged him to leave the farm to Mom but he refused and finally willed it to our generation when he died. I was 10 at the time. It could not be settled until my youngest brother turned 21 and cost my mother a lot of money that she couldn't afford through court costs through those years. She finally realized her dream of us living on the farm, as she and my father had visualized before he died, and she and my brother lived there until she died. She never could be really happy though because she never had enough money to do what she felt they would have been doing if he had lived. The truth be told, she and my father were realizing he was not going to get the farm and they were looking for some where else to move to when he died. I can remember, at about age 4, of my Aunt Mary sitting on the floor of our living room and wailing at the top of her voice when she found out how my grandfather was treating us and not doing as she was bidding him to do and she felt she had been lied to.
