It’s amazing to me that such a tiny baby could have survived in 1891, but I’m sure glad she did. Otherwise I wouldn’t be here.
Her father died the following year and her mother in 1900. Mabel and her older sister went to live with their Lamb grandparents in San Ardo. a small town in Monterey County. She told me about being wakened from a sound sleep on April 18, 1906, the day of the great San Francisco earthquake.
This photo of Mabel and my dad was probably taken about 1916. She could be so dramatic!
Mabel was a bit of a free spirit. I’m not sure if she was still married to my grandfather when this photo was taken. Look at the peacock feathers on her hat!
Grandma spent most of her life on ranches in central coastal California: Peachtree Ranch in Monterey County; Quien Sabe Ranch in San Benito County; Rancho Santa Margarita in San Luis Obispo County, where my mother and I joined her when my dad went off to war after Pearl Harbor; and apparently Rancho 101 where this photo was taken. I don’t know where this ranch was located but I suspect it was either in San Luis Obispo or Santa Barbara County.
Mabel was my only surviving grandparent: my maternal grandmother and both of my grandfathers had died before I was born. However she had remarried in about 1925 to a wonderful man who had no children of his own.
When my dad went off to war he asked his step-father to take care of me if he didn’t come back. Grandpa Griffin took his assignment seriously and was a true grandfather to me for the first ten years of my life.
Grandma Mabel died in 1975 but she is still remembered fondly.
