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Our Family Story: A bumpy start with Great-Grandma Ross


“You are the nosiest person I have ever met.”

Those were the words of my Great Grandmother Ross in 1979.

She was 94 and apparently didn’t like the question I just asked. I wasn’t nosy, I was just a 13-year-old kid who had been gifted a blue and gold trimmed book titled Our Family Story. It was a workbook to help you build a family tree. It included tips to start the process and the main suggestion was this: interview your older relatives. So, that’s what I planned to do.

I decided to start with Great-Grandma Ross, my oldest relative.

Lelia Levine Sanders Ross of Scenery Hill, Pa. had recently moved in with my grandparents: her son Forest Vance Ross and daughter-in-law Ruth Brown Ross. Vance and Ruth lived in Clarksville in Greene County, Pa. and I lived on the other side of town. I already spent a lot of time at their house, so this gave me the opportunity to get to know my great-grandmother.

One day I grabbed my new family tree book, a notebook with a list of questions, and a pen. I went upstairs to her room, knocked on the door, and sat down for a chat. I told her about my book and that I would like to ask her some questions about her life. She agreed.

Lelia was an imposing woman, not in stature, but in presence. She was very pretty, with softly permed silver hair and a bit of rouge on her cheeks. She took pride in her appearance and accessorized her bathrobes with costume jewelry. Her hands were pretty and delicate and I painted her fingernails during after-school visits. We had a nice little relationship established, so this would be easy.


I looked at my list of questions and I settled on one I thought would make a great starting point.

“So, Grandma, how old were you when you got married?” I asked, feeling proud of my question.

The mood in the room quickly changed. She sat up straight in her chair, looked me in the eye, and told me just how nosy I was. She didn’t answer the question. As a matter of fact, she didn’t add anything else to the conversation. At this point, she seemed pretty scary and intense, so I packed up my writing materials, excused myself, and left. My first interview was a bust, a failure. It was over.

It turns out that Lelia was 23 when she married Forest Eli Ross, who was only 20. In 1908, it must have been scandalous to be older than your husband. Or maybe marriage was just a touchy subject for her because her union to Forest wasn’t a good one and she apparently didn’t want to talk about it. (I will write more about their story at another time.)

Lelia died later that year on November 9, 1979. I remember that she had a big funeral in Washington, Pa. with three days of visitation and a funeral on the fourth day. It seemed a little drawn out, but we had to wait for one of her her sons, Uncle Keith, to make the trip from Florida to Pennsylvania. He didn’t like to fly or drive on highways, so he headed north on the backroads. This apparently took some time and I’m betting Lelia wouldn’t have been too happy about this.

One thing was certain though – once Lelia was gone, so was my opportunity to get up the nerve to ask her any more questions. To this day, I wonder why I didn’t just ask her where she was born.

I have since found out that Lelia Sanders Ross was born 136 years ago today, on April 6, 1885, in Lone Pine, Amwell Township, Washington County to Daniel and Lucy Sanders.

My paternal ancestral line to Lelia Levine Sanders: 1.  Randi Lee Ross; 2. Forrest Wayne Ross; 3. Forest Vance Ross; 4. Lelia Levine Sanders

Written by Randi Lee Ross Marodi

randileeross@gmail.com

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Comments

  1. RaptrApril 7, 2021 at 8:04 AM

    Love this and I'm looking forward to the rest of the story! :-)

    ReplyDelete

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