Frank Whitman & Mary Emma (Smith) Raney - Spokane Washington

There it is, the house at 513 E. Nora, Spokane; Grandma and Grandpa's home where their children and families were always welcome. Son Denny and daughter Mary Agnes were rearing their families only blocks away.  Son Paul in the Merchant Marine would make lightning trips from Seattle when in port. Even the Hunter family, lost for a time after daughter Louise's untimely death, finally made its way back for a visit.  Living across the state line in the Idaho mountains, I looked forward to the family gathering every Christmas from the 1950s through the1960s. The adults sat at the dining room table, its size expanded with leaves, we cousins at card tables. Roast turkey, mashed potatoes, yams, fruit salad with whipping cream, rolls, pumpkin pie - the same wonderful meal every year. Later we'd crowd into the living room, children sitting cross-legged on the floor around the Christmas tree, while Uncle Red Charbonneau usually played Santa Claus, handing out presents, including his gag gifts that made everyone laugh.

The summer evenings were especially pleasant at the house. The top of the glider can be seen on the big porch where our grandparents sat, Grandpa pushing it with his cane. My mother, Jean, the youngest child, had three marriage proposals on that swing. Beneath the birch trees on either side of the walk the grass was cool to play on, even on the hottest days.

Frank & Mary Raney - 1960 50th Wedding Anniversary

Frank and Mary Raney purchased this house in 1935, when being a union worker for the Northern Pacific Railway gave Frank the means to move from an old rented farmhouse without a bathroom on Broadway in the valley (he walked to work at the NP roundhouse in Parkwater) to the St. Aloysius parish neighborhood. They'd produced six children, but James, the oldest (1911-1921), died of blood poisoning from an untreated blister on his heel while Mary Raney and baby Mary Agnes were hospitalized with Typhoid Fever. Years later they still wept over his death.

Children Louise, Geneva, Mary Agnes, Paul (the tall one) and Dennis Raney c.1934

Before we cousins knew them as our grandparents, they'd led interesting, but difficult lives, as had their forebears.  Join me on this journey as I, Karen Charbonneau, daughter of Geneva, delve into the Raney lineage -  back to southern Indiana, and before that to 19th century Kentucky and Tennessee, 18th century colonial Virginia and Maryland, and the Carolinas, and even to the beginnings of our country in the 17th century. Yes, our people were southerners and our mostly British ancestors came early to America. I'm writing this blog for you, a member of our large family descended from Frank and Mary Raney, so I invite you to sign up to receive each blog via email, Feel free to comment and ask questions, too.

Our forebears were agriculturalists, living close to American soil. I was shocked only twice in my research. Here's that first shock. During my life whenever the issue came up that descendants of slave owners should apologize to African Americans for the behavior of their ancestors, I smugly thought, "That doesn't apply to me . . . my ancestors were dirt-poor farmers."  Well, the "dirt-poor" part was in the latter half of the 19th and into the early 20th centuries.  Our earlier ancestors,  and they were many, were slave-owners - tobacco planters in Maryland, Virginia and the Carolinas. Slavery is wrong. Period.  I've had to deal with this knowledge and so, too, will you. I'll save the other shock for a later blog. Otherwise, the Raney line and the ascents of their wives and their forebears, whose blood flows in our veins, were conservative, law-abiding men and women. There will be pleasant surprises, too. I'm about to take you on a fascinating journey into America's past.