Grandma Gladys

My grandmother, Gladys Hope Ryckman, was born January 25, 1904 in Pontiac, Michigan, to Fredrick Ryckman and Myrtle Day. She had one sister, Joyce Day Ryckman. Grandma was a young woman during the roaring twenties, and judging by the way I remember her, I'll bet she loved it!!
The 1920 Michigan census shows her being 15, and working as a "complaint clerk" at a furniture store. Doesn't that sound like a fun job for a teenager !!!

This is a picture of Grandma and my Grandpa Campbell on their wedding day June 10, 1922. The bridesmaid is Aunt Joyce. They stayed married for about 10 years. They had two children: Jack LeRoy, who died from pneumonia at 9 days, and Mom.



This picture is of Grandma with Mom, after she and Grandpa had separated.

Grandma then married Bud McBride and had two more children, Lawrence Cary, and Gaye Marie.





This is a picture of Grandma and me when she came to see us in California not too long after I was born.

Grandma and Bud divorced after quite a few years. And several years later, she married Bob Arrendale. He was quite a bit younger than her, and spent a lot of time in and out of prison in California, with grandma visiting him there. Eventually, they also divorced.

After the divorce with Bud, Grandma went to school to become a Licensed Vocational Nurse. During this time, Mom quit school to help tend Larry and Gaye. Throughout her career she worked as an industrial nurse, a private duty nurse, and as a charge nurse in a care center in California. In later years, she became an apartment manager.

In my opinion, she seemed to have a hard time with the concept of being a mom. When Larry was 12, she was going to send him to military school, because he was "too hard to handle", so he lived with us for year. When Gaye was 16, she was going to go to work somewhere that needed a live-in nurse. Gaye would have been left on her own, so she came to live with us until she graduated from high school. While I enjoyed having Gaye with us (even if she did share a room with me!!), I never could understand how Grandma could just go off and leave her.

Grandma could play the piano really well. She played the treble hand as written but just chords for the bass hand. It had sort of a "ragtime" type sound to it. I have a lot of music that she copied. Someday maybe I'll find something creative to do with it. Grandma liked her beer and enjoyed spending time at the local taverns, where she often was found playing piano for her friends. Her favorite "hangout" in Southern California was called the Copper Bucket. I'm not sure how many of her friends knew her true age. The joke in the family was that sooner or later we would all be older than her!!

When I was about 8, grandma and her third husband, Bob, moved from Michigan to California. They rented our old house from Mom and Dad for awhile. One night my brother Richard, and I, spent the night with them, and the next morning Grandma fixed us brains and scrambled eggs for breakfast. I seem to remember we were required to eat it!!



Other memories include bowling and swimming in the ocean with Grandma and Bob. Visiting her in her apartment. Styling her hair for her once a week. I can't say I ever felt really close to Grandma. She wasn't the "huggy", comfortable to be with, kind of grandma. She wore spiked heeled boots and had bleached blonde hair, well into her 70's. Even when living in a "retirement-type" apartment building with activities for the tennants, she wouldn't go because she didn't want to hang out with all those "old people".


Eventually though... grandma too, got "old" as we all do. She had an episode that caused her to fall and injure herself while in her California apartment. It was decided that she could no longer drive, or live alone. So, her car was sold and she was moved into a care center in California. She lived there for a couple of years and then Mom and Dad decided she needed to come to Utah where they now lived, and could be closer to them. They rented a motor home and drove her back to Utah in that. She never forgave them for bringing her here. She lived in the Cedar Care Center, with mom visiting often, taking her to hair appointments, bringing her home to dinner, and the grandkids visiting her. She eventually lost her hearing, but wouldn't think of hearing aides. We all wrote notes to her. She became a little senile also. Kari remembers going over to play checkers with her and Grandma getting upset about something and turning over the checker board!!

At the age of 89, Grandma fell getting up in the night at the Care Center, breaking 7 ribs. This put her in the hospital with pneumonia and she died in October of 1993. I was able to be her nurse while she was in the hospital, which was a special experience for me.

And Coming...

Okay...what I have to say about the rest of the Campbell clan comes from what my mom has told me and what I've been able to uncover digging around in my genealogy.








When my great-grandfather, Emlin Anderson Campbell , was born in 1875, his father, John Campbell had already died. John was 25 yrs. old when he died and as of yet, I don't have his death certificate...so I don't know what he died of. Emlin had an older sister, Lucy. Not too much later, his mother, Myra (Huntsman) remarried to a man whose last name was Merrill. They had several more children. And this was as far as my mother knew about this side of her family.


She said her grandfather told her they were not Scotch...they were Pennsylvania Dutch. Well...the Pennsylvania Dutch are Amish who originally came from Germany and settled in Pennsylvania (Germany is called Deutchland and this is where the name came from). So far, I haven't been able to tie the Campbells to Germany. However Emlins wife, Adelaide Wittekind, is of German descent. We'll talk more about the Wittekinds in another post.




The 1900 census shows him and his wife, "Addie" living in Raton, New Mexico, where he was a railroad fireman. This is where my grandpa...an only child...was born.



Mom says her grandfather used to come home from work in his overalls and boots covered with dirt...at that time he worked as a crane operator in a coal yard. He would sit on the front steps, take off his boots, go in to clean up, and come out in black pants, white shirt and suspenders. During the depression when she'd come to visit her father, there was always fresh fruits and vegetables that her grandparents had grown.

When Mom left for California to live. Her Grandpa Campbell told her, "Now don't you get mixed up with any of those damn Mormons!"







This is a copy of his Word War One draft registration. And a copy of his death certificate.

Since all I had was his fathers name...John Campbell...this was as far as it went. I've been searching off and on for several years to find something more and then one day I was looking at a census in the town where Myra Huntsman lived and found a John O. Campbell as a young boy. I also found a cemetary listing for the same person. He and Myra were the same age and it just felt right that this was the John I'd been looking for. This gave me more names...his parents, grandparents, and so on. But I still needed some sort of proof to tie it all together.

Two weeks ago at the Family History Center, I told Don that's what I wanted to accomplish that day.


While combining some records...I came across a marriage date for John O. Campbell and Myra Theora Huntsman. There was the proof I needed and gained several more generations to add to our family records as a bonus!!! Below is a copy of the pedigree from my grandfather Fred to his fourth great-grandfather, Patrick Campbell.

To this point, this is all I have for the Campbells. It is so much more than I had when I started, so I can't complain. I'm hoping as I continue my research, I can learn a little more about these new ancestors. I guess this is why genealogy has become so interesting to me. It's kind of like reading a good mystery book...you never really know what you'll discover next.

Next up: the Ryckmans...my moms maternal ancestors. Until then..........

And coming...

My maternal great-grandparents lived in Wyandotte, Michigan. But at the time their only child, my grandfather, was born they were living in New Mexico. So...Frederick Dow Campbell was born June 15, 1902, in Raton, New Mexico.

The house in the front of this picture was theirs. The one in the back was what my mom called "the little house" and was where she lived with her parents, until one day, when she was about 6 or 7, her parents separated and she and her mother moved to Detroit. She was never let in on the reasons and to this day wonders what happened to their little family.

This is a picture of my grandfather, Frederick Dow Campbell as a young boy. See children...all those poses I could have put you in and didn't!!! Consider yourself lucky.

I'm not quite sure what, or where, he was going hunting but perhaps this is where some of the "outdoorsman gene" in the family comes from.

This is my grandpa Campbell. Lookin' pretty snazzy!!

Grandpa had several jobs. One was as a milk truck driver. The other was running a gas station. Here's a "blast from the past". What is that he's wearing around his waist?







When I was pretty small...about 16 months...my mom took me on the train from California to Michigan to meet all of my relatives back there. A litle while ago,she gave me a bunch of pictures from the trip and wrote a note saying, " The Campbell grandparents were so happy to meet and spoil Kathy". The pictures above are from that trip. The one on the front porch of the Campbell home in Wyandotte is of Mom, her Dad (Fred), and his mother (Adelaide). The other one is of me and my grandpa. This was the first and last time I ever saw him.

Grandpa Campbell was not quite 49 years old when he went to the incinerator (which is a furnace for burning trash). In starting it, he put kerosene on the fire and it exploded back onto him and burned him over a large part of his body. His official cause of death, on May 3, 1951, was listed as pneumonia (which is not uncommon for a burn victim). Because Mom was in the hospital after just having my brother, Richard, she could not go to the funeral. Later, when she and Dad went back to Michigan, most of his belongings were given away. Her step-mother... and her mother...would not let her have much at all.

Much of the information I have about Grandpa Campbell comes from Mom, naturally. She says he was a kind man, a hard worker, and she loved to go visit him in the summers. He re-married after her parents divorced and she never really got along with her step-mother but loved her dad!!! Iwish I could have gotten to know him.