Ancestral Golden Era Jobs

[Lincsong]

Was there a "Vegas" back then? I thought the Vegas we all know and love was a 60's thing...

It was a young seedling in 1948, that blossomed into that wonderful Ocean's 11 of 1960. Wait, don't wake me up just yet. I'm in the club at the Golden Gate. I'm waiting for the floor show to begin.

 

[Gray Ghost]

My Paternal Grandfather: was a Merchant Marine in WWI, shipbuilder in Wilmingon,NC worked for ACL Railroad in Wilmington and moved to Rock Mount, NC with the railroad and was there when it became the SCL railroad.

My Paternal Grandmother: Loving house wife. Her Maternal Grandfather was the Attorney General for the Confederacy, George Davis. There is a monument of him in Wilmington, NC.

My Father: ACL / SCL Railroad in Rocky Mount, NC, 13th Army Air Force in the South Pacific during WWII, back to railroad and also radio and tv repairman. Retired from Railroad.

My Maternal Grandfather: Was a tobacco farmer.

My Maternal Grandmother: Loving house and farm wife.

My Mother: She worked on the farm growing up in the 30"s and 40's and in the late 40's before she got married, she worked for Barringer Studio in Rocky Mount, NC coloring blk and wht photos and portraits. When I started Kindergarten, she went to work as a secretary for the Principal of the local high school and that is what she retired from.

My Great Great Grandfathers on both sides served Proudly in the Confederate Army.

Gray Ghost

 

[skinnychik]

Father: life insurance salesman for John Hancock, proudly driving to his appointments in a big red Cadillac...like "Tin Men"

Mother: homemaker and part-time secretary in my dad's office while we were at school

Paternal Grandfather: Army infantry WWII, killed in Italy when the fuel truck he was driving was hit with a mortar. Wish I knew more about him

Maternal Grandfather: professional Clarinet Player. I wish I knew what the band was called and what kind of music they played. He died when my mom was a kid

Maternal Grandmother: cook/cafeteria lady at University of North Dakota, and later, University of Washington

Great-Grandparents...lots of farmers back in that ancestry...it looks like immigration and subsistence farming and homesteading

 

[imoldfashioned]

Paternal Grandfather; Gardener for Manhattan’s Central Park
Paternal Grandmother; Candymaker until she got married, then Housewife

Maternal Grandfather: Failed farmer, Insurance agent and Part-time pilot
Maternal Stepgrandfather: Worked in a hog slaughterhouse for 50 years
(I think of him whenever I want to whine about my office job)
Maternal Grandmother; Legal secretary, Housewife, Part-time high school nurse

Maternal Greatgrandfather: Farmer; had to sell most of his land during the Great Depression
Maternal Greatgrandmother: Maid in MGGF house, Housewife and mother of 11 (9 who lived to adulthood)

 

[anon`]

Fabulous thread! So let's see:

Maternal grandfather: Carpenter by trade most of his life, excepting the Second World War. He was drafted after the US entered and served in the ETO in '44 and '45 as a Sgt T4 combat engineer in the 65th ID under General Patton. He had some great stories from that period, including one meeting with Patton, and a week of trading shells with the Russians in southern Germany after Berlin fell; the news that Germany has surrendered was "delayed" in reaching that front. He grew up in north central Washington and had all kinds of real-world wisdom.

Maternal grandmother: Homemaker most of her life, except during the war when she worked in the shipyards in San Francisco building Liberty ships.

Maternal great-grandfather: This would be my grandmother's father. Don't know much about him, other than he ran away from home in Virginia and never spoke much of it. He joined the Army shortly after the Civil War (judging by his cadet's unitform, which I found in a steamer trunk in storage a couple years ago). He eventually rose to the rank of major, and was an artillery commander. He commanded Fort Stevens (on the northern Oregon coast) during WWI.

Paternal grandfather: Both in 1908 and the first member of my family to go to college that I'm aware of (at Oregon Agracultural College, later OSC and now OSU), he graduated with a business degree. I don't know what he did prior to WWII, but after the war started he visited three recruiting stations until someone let him sign up (he was 34 at the time). He became a SSgt in the 79th ID and spent the last few months of the war as a POW. After, he had a variety of jobs, including a job with the state collecting back taxes from Indians, and a job with Pacific Power as a surveryor. My dad recalls that at that time he had a key for every gated road in Klamath County, and then some.

Paternal grandmother: I don't know much about what she did, other than a career with the Klamath Herald & News while my dad was in elementary and high school. Not sure when she retired from that, or what she did before.

Paternal great-grandfather: One of them, anyway. He worked his whole life for First National Bank, which is now a part of US Bank. He never went to college, an company policy prevented him from rising even to branch manager. So the company created a new position for him that was essentially an upper-mid level management job, where he worked until he retired in 1954 (then they gave him a gold Hamilton watch as a retirement gift). His family also had a grocery store in Klamath Falls at some point; we've got a picture of it that looks like it was from the first part of the century, before WWI.

That's all I really know for sure, I think. Cool thread

 

[Caledonia]

Mum and Dad both born in 1938 so were kiddies through the war. Mum worked on the farm though and remembers the POWs that came to help in the fields. They all used to sit round the farmhouse kitchen table and my Grandma would serve them up soup, bread, and whatever else she could pull together. They would talk about their own families back home, and how they wanted to get back. Some were really happy to be around the farm and the family because of that, and some got sad because they were so far away and didn't know for sure what was happening to their own loved ones. They all loved the chance to work the farm (it was cattle and associated fodder at the time, with Clydesdale horses doing most of the pulling as there was only one wee tractor). So, maternal grandparents were farmers near Glasgow. Grandma was a milkmaid before she met Grandpa who was a farmer since his own parents. On my dad's side, my Nana worked in a bakery all her life, and my Papa was a miner all of his. Dad went into mining briefly as a result then became a civil engineer. Mum has worked up a whole family tree, so I'll have to ask for a copy. Members of my great grandparents generation migrated to America between the late 1800s and the early 1900s. Some went to Texas and I can't remember where the others went.

 

[JohnTheGreek]

My maternal grandfather worked for years for the Utah Railway. He and his wife were driving to California from Chicago in 1944 and stopped for gas in the tiny Utah town of Helper (a railroad term for those of you who aren't train nuts). He saw the train stop so he went to the station and asked if they had a job available. They did and the two of them stayed there until my grandmother's death in 1979. She used to say it was the "longest damn fuel stop in history".

My paternal grandparents also have an interesting past. During WWII my grandmother worked as a coal miner when all the men had gone off to war and the coal needed to be pulled out of the ground anyway. This woman is still, at 85, the toughest woman I have ever met.

My paternal grandfather and his siblings owned a hotel, coffee house, and movie theatre in the little town of Price, Utah at the same time. Apparently the Metropole Hotel also doubled as a brothel and moonshine was manufactured for sale in the basement. Interestingly, my father and aunt remember NEVER being allowed to visit their father at work and I doubt even my grandmother ever saw the inside of the place until it was sold in the late 1960s. My grandfather's "Crown Theatre" was the site of his proposal to my grandmother and occured on their FIRST DATE! He asked my grandmother to a movie, closed the theatre one evening and they watched the film alone. At the end of the film he simply looked at her and said "Do you like me? Lets get married!"...and she answered "yes". Days later my grandmother saw one of her new fiancee's MUCH older brothers on the street and someone mentioned his last name. Having only really seen my grandfather in the dark, she thought it was him and was shocked that she had accepted the marriage proposal of such an old man! Amazingly, the five brothers and one sister all shared a SINGLE checking account that gathered all revenues from the businesses. They NEVER bickered about money or accused the spouses of any other brother of over-spending. This account existed from the earliest years of the 20th century until 1971 when my grandfather (the last of the siblings) passed away. Those were the days!

Best,

John

 

[raiderrescuer]

ancestral jobs...

Dad - Military, Mill Work
Grandpa - Farming, Mill Work, Railroad & Marshall, More Farming
Great Granddad - Mill Work, Farming
Great Great Grandad -Mill Work, Farming

All my dad's brother's were in Forestry of some kind and they were all military except one that didn't qualify but did work stateside on 'munitions.

Mom - Housewife
Grandpa - Military & Railroad
Great Grandpa - Farming

 

[Jack Scorpion]

Mommy's grandparents - farmers? in now-Slovakia, factory-worker(s?)
Mommy's Mommy - Housewife, Volunteer Nurse
Mommy's Daddy - WWII (Coast Guard), Electrical Engineer
Mommy - Producer's Assistant, Bookkeeper

Daddy's grandparents - ? in Odessa-area Ukraine, started Drapery business
Daddy's Mommy - Housewife, Stage Actress
Daddy's Daddy - WWII (Paratroopers), Hat Store owner, Drapery business owner
Daddy - Cameraman

 

[Irena]

Let's see....

Mother's side:
Great Grandparents 1: Had a dairy farm on the floodlands (yes, they had dikes) on the Grey's River. Great-grandma ran the house; great-grandpa ran the farm.
Great-Grandparents 2: Great-grandpa ran cattle on a small mountain that is now a part of the Gifford Pinchot National Forest and took odd jobs, I think he was a handyman also. Great-grandma took care of the house and kids.
Grandparents: Raised beef cattle on the old dairy farm, grandpa was a diesel mechanic for Weyerhauser, Grandma took care of the 16 children (14 were the most living at home at one time).
It's not golden era, but my great-great grandmother ran the farm and bought and sold timberland on the lower Columbia while great-great grandpa fished (not as recreation, though). She even had cigar rafts going down the river with her name on them!

Father's side:
North Dakota farmers, going waaaaay back (and still going). My grandpa went to college and taught school for a few years before becoming a lineman for the telephone company out there, then when my dad was five they moved out here where he worked for another telephone company until retirement.
My grandma's family lived out here, and both her father and stepfather were preachers.

 

[Fleur De Guerre]

Golden Era grandparents!

My paternal grandparents both drove emergency vehicles during the Blitz, my grandad drove a fire engine, and my grandmother an ambulence. Neither of them have spoken much about that time, I imagine it was pretty traumatic for them.

My maternal grandmother was a beauty queen and a hairdresser. Unfortunately, due to my grandfather being a total scoundrel during their marriage, she spent about 30 years addicted to strong traquillisers and became, shall we say, a little doolally in her old age. I was sadly too young to be interested in her teaching me old-fashioned hair styling techniques while she was still with it, it's something that saddens me so much - my mother says she would have been so proud and fascinated to see me today! She was so glamorous as a young and older woman.

My maternal grandfather, the scoundrel in question, was an RAF squadron leader. He flew Mosquitos, and was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for his role in the low-level bombing raid on the Gestapo headquarters in Norway. He was also awarded the Air Force Cross, and was recommended for the Distinguished Service Order, but said he could not accept unless everyone in the plane also got it, and so nobody got one! Typical of him.

He was shot down over Germany, and was held as a Prisoner of War in Stalag Luft III for more than a year. He was supposed to take part in the Great Escape, but was (luckily) not one of those that actually got out.

Towards the end of the war a flock of curlews flew into his windscreen and it shattered and cut his face. He was blinded by blood and glass (temporarily) and the navigator had to be talked into landing the plane! Talk about hairy!

Ironically, being a PoW was a big contributing factor to his death. His experiences and the appalling food they were made to eat meant that he never wasted a bite of food, and all the fat he used to eat off his own and the rest of the family's plates contributed to heart disease. When he died, my brother was left all his RAF log books, but we discovered his a lot of his effects, including his medals (and the most interesting log-book, that would have covered his period as a PoW) were missing, probably given to one of his mistresses. A real shame. But an interesting family history!

 

[The Reno Kid]

Maternal Grandparents: Ran a boarding house in a small town in Northern Nevada. My grandmother was also a tailor.

Paternal Grandparents: Farmers.

My father grew up in the 30s and worked as a miner mostly. In the late 30s, he and two of my uncles went to LA to work for Lockheed. They all joined up when the war broke out.