Did you ever attempt to show your deep and sincere appreciation to one who has gone from this life for over eighty years?  To one whom you never knowingly saw, or had the pleasure of being in the company of, or in association with, that person?  To say the least, this is most unusual but I am doing that just now.  The person to whom I owe so very much was my grandmother, Diana McGranahan.  She rests quietly and very much alone in her little plot at the Augusta Cemetery with the simple marker "Diana McGranahan, 1846-1916."  And on occasion, very rare occasions, she has a flower marking her resting place.  The purpose of this little account is to show my gratitude for having such a grandmother.

For you, or anyone else to know the reason for this appreciation, it is necessary for me to recall, as best I can, the Brown family in 1914-1916.  And also to show, as best I can, the McGranahan family in 1914-1916.

I will start out with my faulty memory of the first place I lived, and my memory takes me back, I believe, to 1914.  The place was the so-called Dice home about 100 yards south of the home of my grandparents, the Brown family, on Shepler Church Road south of Canton.  It is called the Dice home (they were cousins of mine) because the home belonged to the Dice family.  For some reason or other, it was built or located on this lot near my grandparents, and for reasons unknown to me, the Dice family did not need the home at the time we moved into it.

I have no recollection of this move as it was before the time of my recollections.  It was a typical rectangular home (two stories) with a spacious yard surrounding it that made it very appealing to the boys in our family.  I have no recollections of the furniture in this home.  In fact, it was the most "comfortable" of all the homes I enjoyed in the period of 1914-16.  I could divert and tell you of one article of furnishings in the home that caused me much pain, but that is not the story I am interested in disclosing in this little article.  Why we left this home is not known to me, but I am certain that it was because the Dice family desired to reside therein, as they lived at this place for many, many years thereafter.

Our first move was to my grandparents' Brown home, and we moved into what was called an "out building" very close to their residence.  This was one room, an old room, and I even don't remember whether the place had a floor as we remember floors in our rooms.  It was a hodgepodge, just limited furniture crammed into a space that was not meant for furniture.  To put it another way, it was a "roof over our heads" - grandma saw to it that we had someplace to live.  I don't know the circumstances, but I now surmise that we had to move, and there was no money to move, and no place to move - so grandma came to the rescue.  I don't think we lived there very long as it would have been impossible to spend a winter in that place.  But for a little boy there was some pluses in this location - it was close to grandmother, with her cookies and other good things to eat.  We certainly weren't going to starve in this location.  I would say that we lived in the outhouse in 1915.

Why we left grandmother's "outhouse" I have no knowledge, nor do I have any recollection of the move.  In 1915 we moved to Myers Lake Village, to a cottage on the north side of the lake which I will locate it as being on Lakeside Avenue, although I don't know whether there was ever a Lakeside Avenue.  This cottage was very, very small and located on the north side of Lakeside Avenue.  We didn't live there very long as we moved into another cottage, as small as the first, on the opposite side of Lakeside.  This last cottage was on the south side of Lakeside.  Why we moved from one small place to another is a mystery to me, but I surmise it had something to do with the payment of the rent on the cottage.

We didn't live in this cottage very long as we next moved to Whipple Avenue, just south of Myers Lake.  The house we moved into on Whipple is about where Stanbaugh's store is now located.  Then it was on a slight knoll on the north side of Whipple.  The place at that time was wooded and very sparsely populated.  Our house on the hill had two stories and ample play space around it.  As a child, that was very important.  It seemed that we were located on this spot for a longer time than at grandmother's or at the Lakeside cottages.

The reason that I remember this longer time is that I was enrolled at Clarendon Avenue School as a first grader.  I really was enrolled at Clarendon Avenue for my first year of school, 1915-1916.  As we locate schools today, this was an impossible location as I had to travel by foot from Whipple Avenue to Clarendon Avenue School each day, and only a first grader.  I suspect, although I do not know, that many of the days I was to be in school I was someplace else.  I can't remember anything about Clarendon Avenue School except the chairs for the first graders were arranged in a semicircle.  I would not be proud for you, or anyone else, to examine the grades I earned at Clarendon Avenue Grade School.  To me this period was a blank in my memory, something best to be forgotten.

But, except for the school experiences I have rather pleasant memories of our residence on Whipple.  As I said before it was on a knoll, in a grove of trees, with ample room to play.  And as a boy of five or six, play was extremely important, especially when one had brothers!  My older brother, whom we called "Buster," was about 12 years old,  Ralph was about 4, and Harley 2; that gave us enough boys to make the playground on the knoll around the Whipple house very useful for all the activities we were interested in.

As an aside, it is so important that young children do not know the difficulties their parents are encountering as they grow from year to year.  Moving from place to place is taken as commonplace and luxuries are not too important so long as there is someplace to enjoy, someplace to play.

Now in the summer of 1916, after I had assimilated one year of education, something happened that changed the lives of the entire Brown family.  You may wonder why we were such a moving family; it was because my father had an enormous desire to enjoy such places in our areas that didn't depend upon coke or Pepsi, but some liquors that would take the mind to much greater things - at least for a time.  Normally a peaceful man, with a little juice of the wrong kind, he was ready to lick the world.  He was talented in wood working, laying bricks, and many other tasks that would earn him a living - but the yearning for a taste of those drinks that could make him what he wasn't, were entirely too much for him.  Thus we had little; mother had a terrible time, and we were "on the move."

So much for our moving schedule between 1914-16.  Again I want to remind you that the events remembered are the recollections of a very small boy.  But they were events that disturbed a lady in Augusta, Ohio, one Diana McGranahan.  Diana was the mother of Ina Brown, the lady who was on the move.  Diana knew of the unquenchable thirst that filled the life of Harry J. Brown and made life so miserable for her daughter and her family.  So we examine the life of Diana McGranahan from 1914-16.

I have been told that my grandfather, William McGranahan, a man with an Irish temper and a veteran of the Civil War, decided to leave his little farm about one mile north of Augusta and move into the village during his last years.  He left his farm and bought the premises on the main street in Augusta, and I have no date for that move.  I do know that his marker in the Augusta Cemetery shows this: "William McGranahan, 1842-1915."  So I have no present recollection of ever seeing my grandfather, although I may have been taken by my mother when she went to Augusta to visit him in his last illness.  We do know, from the records of the death of both grandparents, that Diana survived her husband, but that she died in 1916, not more than one year after he had passed away.  And my grandmother had two grave problems during her last months of life.  One, the losing of her mate, and the other, the difficult conditions of her daughter who was attempting to rear four children.

Diana was fully aware of the terrible thirst that my father had and the effect of that thirst on his family, and she came to the conclusion that if he did not pass the "coca cola" dispensers each day, he might avoid the spending of his money for things he could not afford, and he might not go into flights of fancy resulting from the hard liquor that he bought but could not afford.  So Diana, on her own, concluded that the Brown family should live in Augusta where no hard liquor was sold, and she prepared a will giving her home in Augusta and its contents to her daughter.  She did that with a hope, and possibly a prayer, that something good would come out of it.  Then Diana died, in 1916, the year following the death of her husband William.

This fact, this concern of Diana McGranahan, for her daughter, Ina, and her four children, is the basis for this account expressing my appreciation, and I hope, the appreciation for the entire Brown family, for Diana McGranahan.  Let's see what Diana did!

In the late summer of 1916, the entire six members of the Brown family loaded on a spring wagon pulled by a horse, both of which were furnished I believe by my grandfather, George Brown, traveled over the hills and valleys from Canton to Augusta, Ohio.  The road from Canton to Augusta was not paved at this time.  The old horse, patiently pulled the entire clan through East Canton, Robertsville, Minerva, and at last into the village of Augusta, Ohio, as Diana had planned.  There we found a home, completely furnished, awaiting us.  It was ours.  No rent to pay.  No "coca cola" dispensers for miles around it.  No furniture needed to make us comfortable.  It was all there, except the coca cola!

That was the last move the Brown family made.  Ina died in that home in 1939!  Harry Brown, the coca cola drinker, had the home when he died around 1955.  The Brown children were reared in this home, and when Buster passed away, he had a home in Augusta.  When Ralph passed away, he had a new home and a pottery in Sebring, Ohio, and I had a home in Massillon, Ohio.  And the baby of the family, Harley, when he passed away in 1996 (he was the only member of the family who lived in Augusta all his life), he left a very comfortable home in Augusta, Ohio.

Why show appreciation to Diana McGranahan?  Her wisdom and her thinking way back in 1916 for the concern of her daughter and her children, made it possible for the entire Brown family to discontinue the nomadic life and move to a community that encouraged them to grow into good members of society, and to make the several contributions to society that each has made.  What each would have done if Diana had not been concerned is a question.  No one knows the answer.  But it is certain that her thinking and her concern was a major reason for the success of the Brown family.  For that we are eternally grateful, as it was a jump from the spring wagon to the success that was Augusta.

THE END.