Grandmother was a person who did not talk about herself very much. She was a person that had endure a lot of hard ships for one’s life. During the early years of 1900s it was still quite difficult to live freely as a black woman in America. After the Civil War, many people were uprooted. Grandma Sanders was an orphan and originally her name was Mary Butler. The reason she grew up in Kansas is of some interest to me, since it was considered a free state. When Mary was quite young, she was married, or was she? Mom never told me what had happened to her first marriage. She had one child that was named Lena. I never heard of her last name.

Mom only related a little bit more about Mary in her adult life. Apparently, Mary wound up in Montana where she met William Sanders. Mom never told me why she traveled to Montana. It was quite unusual for blacks to be going north.

Grandpa Sanders real last name was Hunt. I was told the Hunt family lived in Pennsylvania.

His mother passed when he was young child, his father married a short time after. I am sure he was a hurting young boy and had a lot of unresolved problems.

He always told us he left home when he was about seven years old. He lived with a neighbor for several years. He said he helped them doing the chores before he went to school. Leaving home at so young an age he never knew exactly what his real age was. When William was about 16 years old, he said he worked in Minnesota in a logging camp. Those years the loggers stayed at logging camps in bunk houses and ate in the mess halls.

When grandma Mary met him in Montana. He was older and working on the tugboats on Kalispell Lake in Montana, they also lived in Missoula Mt. during the years Eva and Leroy were born.

He moved a lot, apparently looking for work. Mom talked about living in Spokane and Yakima and then living in Everett. If I remember right, she was living in Marysville when she met Adolph Makus. Her mother had a mission there. Apparently, Adolph and Fred went there for the services.

Adolph and Fred were logging at Oslo, a little berg north of Arlington, Washington.

The next part of their life was told to me that Grandpa and Grandma Sanders lived in Kalispell Montana. They lived in Spokane, Yakima, Everett and Marysville, Washington.

Mom told me a story of her and Roy when they lived in Spokane. They were given money for a movie and bus fare. She said she will never forget that day. Her brother Roy bought a treat at the theater using the money intended for the bus fare home. She said they had one long walk home.

When Mom was just four years old her sister died of pneumonia. She became terribly ill too. They were not expecting her to live. We have one picture of her during this time sitting on Grandpa Sander’s lap. During those days they did not have any medicine for infections. It was a wait and see. They did all you they could in their limited way.

She never related much about her growing up years, I wish I would have prodded her more.

I found this information in her bible after she passed away:

-- Born 1904

-- Born again 1918, She was 14 years old (I think at that time her mother came to the Lord also. Ferns Grandparents were going to mission in Marysville. Mom and Marie Baldwin were girlfriends)

-- Married a Christian man 1922

-- 8 children—2 in heaven

-- I saw wonderful healings, I was healed of a goiter, broken leg, a leg lengthened.

We started camp 1940. With Bro. Mackie, from Granite Falls and Pastor Adams, from Arlington.

Mom moved to her eternal home Sept. 8, 1992

As I think of her life, she was a quiet person in public, but was mightily used by the Lord influencing one person at a time. Eternity will only tell the number of people she led to the Lord.

She had well over 100 people at her funeral. Many that were there had been affected by her faithfulness in declaring the goodness of the Lord.

I often think of my mother and how she took care of us while Pop was in Alaska for three months every summer. She and my brothers had to milk around eight to ten cows every day. We cooled the milk in the creek in milk cans then in the morning they had to cart them out to the highway. The cans held eight to ten gallons of milk—no easy job to put them onto the milk stand.

The garden needed to be planted, weeded, and hoed. No rototillers those days. We children had to help so that did not leave much time for play. We would take a swim every afternoon at our neighbors swimming hole, which was about a mile up the road. I often wonder how she ever kept us doing the work. One year I remember Art and Gil putting the poles up for the beans and peas with stilts that was strapped to their knees I am just wondering how many beans and peas were stepped on. We always seemed to have plenty to can. I remember all of us shelling wash tubs of peas. What a long tedious job of shelling, try shelling oodles of peas sometimes. Then there were the bottles to fill and boil on the stove in a cold bath in the boiler. The vegetables had to boil 180 minutes, which meant stoking the wood stove and keeping the heat at an even temp. It was one hot kitchen. We don’t have too much to complain about today.

Every fall was butchering time. In Wisconsin they waited until the weather was really cold then it could hang and freeze. We also made our own sausage and smoked all our bacon and ham. It took hours to can the meat. Mom usually put the meat into jars and canned in the oven. That would take hours to cook and seal. We used this meat all summer because we didn’t have electricity. We didn’t have refrigerators or freezers. When we moved to Washington, we could rent a locker for our meat and other fruit and vegetables. Once a week we would go to the locker at Lake Stevens and pickup our meat. The lockers were like a big cold storage, sometimes our locker would be one of the higher ones and you would have to use a step ladder to get to it. As children we were always afraid someone would leave the locker and close those big doors behind themselves and shut off the lights. It would be pretty scary to find your way out. Finally, the home freezer came on the market. Which caused the end to another lucrative business.

I remember how I hated cleaning up the kitchen after they were through cutting up the meat!!!! Summertime chicken was on the menu at least once a week. A little more variety in our menu, fresh chicken, oh how yummy, nothing like the chicken we buy today.