Several years after my mother’s death, I found a cigar box full of unidentified things – pocket watches, big buttons, lockets.  This locket had the note inside saying “? In locket in Daddy’s things”.  I don’t know who the women are.  The initials on the front seem to be H.J.G or maybe J.H.G.  My grandfather’s name was Mershell C. Graham.  His story is sketchy.

I find bits and pieces – unidentified photographs, old notebooks… If I could find him in the 1900 census with his family.  He was born in Coosada Station, Elmore County, Alabama about 1888.  He chose to celebrate his birthday on Christmas day because he didn’t know the actual day.  By the time I found him in the census in 1910 he was working on the railroad.  He moved to Detroit in 1917, married my grandmother in 1918 in Montgomery and they immediately removed to Detroit.  He worked at Ford Motor Co. for years.  He was a founder and trustee at Plymouth Congregational Church in Detroit.  He always grew a large, wonderful garden with cabbage, collards and tomatoes.  He could, and did, fix anything that needed fixing.  He taught himself to read so I assume he never went to school.  There is a story that he was a child servant and slept outside the little girls door at night.  The other story is that his parents came one one rainy day (from work?) to find him and his brother digging sweet potatoes out in the garden.  They had the measles. I’m thinking they were very hungry.  Who feels like digging in the rain when they have the measles?  There were at least three children older than he was according to his delayed birth certificate. There could have been younger siblings too. Those mentioned were a sister named Annie, and a brother named Bill who went west. My cousin, Margaret, told me that was a way to refer to relatives that passed for white.  Perhaps the Jacob, named in front of the little Bible that was also in the box was a brother.