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On my mother's side, my grandparents came over from Madeira (the Portuguese island) around 1910. Grandad came first, went to the SF Bay Area and found work in an oil refinery. He sent for my grandmother, who came in through Ellis Island with my oldest uncle. They popped out a buncha kids once they got here, and then my grandfather (I don't even know his name) died of the flu in '27 or '28, when my mom was just five years old.
Grandma had seven kids and no money, so she did the only thing she could: pushed the oldest ones out on their own as soon as possible, and found another husband, an Italian bootlegger. My mom stayed with Grandma the longest, but even she had to quit school in eighth grade and move out. Some of my uncles and aunts never forgave Grandma for booting them out the door. But times were tough. She lived with the bootlegger until he died, and then lived with the son she'd had with him. When I first knew Grandma she was already pushing 70, and didn't move well. But she was smart and blunt and funny, and had a large fund of dirty jokes which she'd deliver in her thick Portuguese accent. She lived to 97; at the end she couldn't even get out of bed, but she was sharp as a tack until she died, and never let anything get her down.
I'd have to look up the names of my paternal grandparents. Both died before I was born. My grandfather on that side was born before the civil war; his people had moved down from the Carolinas to Texas during the war, and stayed there for a while and got into trouble. He moved up to Oklahoma, got a farm, and started a family; several, in fact, as he kept outliving wives. He married my grandmother and that one stuck even though they fought like cats and dogs and pretty much warped my dad's brain. They were both pretty old when my Dad was born. They moved out to California, the San Joaquin Valley during the '20s after Oklahoma turned into the Dust Bowl, and got another small spread. Their many children did well enough.
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