Don Grinnell in France 1918

 Donald Ivan Grinnell served in the United States Army in France during the First World War.  He spent Christmas overseas, but returned to his home in Bellevue, Michigan the following January.  Don was assigned to the 56th Engineers of the American Expeditionary Forces, he was 23 years old and had rarely been away from the comfort of his parents home, just south of Bellevue.  His older brother Harry was also stationed in France, serving in a hospital facility caring for the wounded.

This letter is especially revealing.  In it he tells of the close calls and details of his deployment  that a son would only share with his father or a brother.  I doubt very much that he would have wanted his mother to know such details.

Almost 100 years ago this season, Don was spending his holiday's away from his family surrounded by perhaps a strange and unfamiliar landscape.  So, with the coming of Christmas Day, I hope we remember all those who, past and present, sacrifice so much for us all.

Envelope states: Dad's X-Mas Letter

To Mr. James T. Grinnell

      Bellevue,

            Mich

                   USA

++++ Text of Letter ++++

   Langres, France

Nov[ember] 24, 1918

Dear Father,

           Well as this is Fathers day I will write you a letter and as the sensorship is raised maby [maybe] I can say a little more than usual.  I am well as usual and hope this finds you folks better than the last I heard from you.  I was very sorry to hear of the sickness in Amos's family and have worried about them and mother ever since and am anxiously waiting for a letter to arrive.  Well I will try and tell you some of my experiences.  I left Washington  July 8 for New York.  There were three companies of us each 250 men.  We arrived at New York Wednesday morning the ninth and imediatly went aboard but the boat did not leave the docks until noon Thursday then we sailed out past the statue of Liberty and anchored in the harbor until just before dark when we pulled anchor and put to sea and by dark, land was out of sight.  After we were at sea a day or two we begin  to pick up other transpoorts and finaly a battleship and one destroyer joined us making in all fourteen boats in the convoy.  Ours was about the smallest boat and had only about 11 or 12 hundred men aboard.  On the eighteenth there were about ten submarine chasers joined us and escorted us to the port.  In all we were eleven days on the way, we had a level sea all the way but some of us were sick and dident care what happened although we did not sight a sub, we kept a watch all the way and had boat drill every day.  On Sunday  July 21 we anchored in the harbor at Brest France and were ferried ashore.  We marched through Brest and about three miles into the country where we pitched our little tents in the mud and stayed for three days, then one morning at two oclock we marched back to Brest got on a train of little French horsecars and after a three day and three nights ride we landed at eleven oclock at night in Langres where we were hauled in trucks to a little town of Longeau.  We stayed at this place about a week then marched back through  Langres about seven miles to my present camp at Champigny about a mile from Langres.  After nearly a week here we marched to the train at 5 o'clock one morning and left for the British Front, we had a ride of about three days and passed through Troys, Parris, Raven, and landed at Amien in the Northern part of France on August 10th.  At that time the front lines were just outside of Amiens which was then under shell fire.  The night we passed through Paris there was an air raid and we could hear the allarms and see the city as it was put in darkness.  When we arrived at the front our company was divided up among the five British Armies our platoon was divided among the 4th Army and sent out about five men to a search light section and that was our first experience of the war.  The section which I was with had about fiften men one searchlight and two motor trucks.  The big advance began on August 8 and we followed it until October 22.  We would have to move nearly every day.  When we moved we would pack our light and all equipment on the trucks and move about three miles or sometimes as far as ten miles, pick out or location, dig an implacement for our light, set up our tents and be ready for action by dark.  We stood guard all night long, each man doing about two hours and when the guard heard an plain [airplane] aproaching, which he could distinguish by the sound of its motor, he would call out the other men and when the plain was near enough which is anywhere up to five or six miles we would turn the light on and search the heavens for him.  It is very hard to find a plane with a search light as one has nothing but the sound to direct the light, but when a hostile plane appears on the seen the whole heavens seem to be split by searchlight beams because there are so many lights looking for him.  When once found all the lights within range are turned upon him and he can be seen very planely.  Then the antiaircraft guns begin to fire and the air is full of shell bursts.  Usually the enemy is so stunned or scared that he drops all of his bombs and imeadiatly begins to retreat unless he has an extra strong nerve or is hit by the shell fire.  Sometimes an enemy intent upon gaining his object or at least doing some damage will continue on after being spoted by a light and will drop his bombs at a searchlight and machine gun them but he usualy does little damage to them for they are safely dug in the ground again sometimes he will drop his bombs among some troops, hhorses, on an amunition dump or an air droom in that case great damage is done.  I have had them drop bombs all around our light but never hurt any of us also I have had them fire on us with their machine guns and if he was within range we did the same thing but usualy they fly too high for a machine gun.  The best method of bringing them down seems for one of our scout planes to attack them when the light shows them up.  Nearly  always the enemy is set a fire and falls in flames when this method is used.  I have seen as many as four planes brought down in one evening like this.  Our lights were nearly always under shell fire from the enemys heavy guns and sometimes we had pretty warm times when one hears one of these heavy shells come screaming towards him it dosent take him long to git [get] close to the ground.  About the closest I ever came to being hit  by one of these was when I was sitting by the campfire after dinner one day.  A big shell struck about one hundred yards from me and a piece of shrapnel about the size of an hens egg went into the dirt bank so close to me that I could have caught it in my hands and another which was much larger passed so close over head that I could see it.  Some of the bombs used held a ton of explosive and I have seen them blow holes six feet deep and thirty feet in diamiter so you can imagine what damage one would do when it hit its target.

 

              One morning just at dawn we had eight enemy come over at one time and were also being shelled by the heavy artilery but there were no antiaircraft guns close by so they all got away safely.  Were all taken off the English lights on October 21 and bidding our tommy friends good by boarded a train at Perone which was then some thirty miles behind the lines, and left for Langres.  Some of the most hardly contested towns have hardley a brick left standing and some of the battlefields are just one continual shell hole after another.  I passed through the famous Von Hindenburg line which is a master piece of machinery with miles and miles of barbed wire entanglements and concrete dug outs which go to eighty or ninty feet deep.  Also I passed over the famous DeNord Canal.  When the Germans asked one of our boys how they got the tanks across it he told him we had tanks that walked on water now.  Sometimes we were so close to the lines that we could see the infantry when they went over the top.  Well we arrived here on Oct[ober] 25 and expected to get our own lights and be sent up to the American sector but before they arrived the Armistice was signed so we did not go and now we will have to pack our outfits and ship them home again.  We are all prepared to leave now just waiting the orders to go which wont be many days.  Some think we will be in the states in 15 days but I think new year or Christmas is nearer to the day we will probably leave from either Brest or Le Harve.  Well I expect this letter wont reach you much before your birthday so will wish you many happy returns of the day although I hope to be with you on that day.  Good By.

Your Loving Son.

Donald I. Grinnell

Co F 23 Platoon 56 Engrs.

Amer. Ex. F.  A. P. O. 731A

           P.S.  Have mother write the Quarter Master General at Washington D. C.  And tell him about my allotment and all of the sircomstances [circumstance].  The Lieutenaut said to have you do this.  He has already writ[t]en him.

Nina Johnson Benn: A Rural Life

Nina Johnson with her sons Bob, Dave and George at Christmas

There are very few people alive today that knew my great-grandmother, Nina Mae (Hagaman) Johnson Benn. Earlier today I sat down to do some family history research only to discover that fifty-four years ago today Nina died at the age of 83 years in Jackson, Michigan.  So, I thought I should take the opportunity to write something about the life of this women who worked hard in the rural area of Leoni and Grass Lake townships.  Nina was a daughter, a wife, mother and grandmother to many.  So lets explore her life together.

Nina Hagaman was born on 18 December 1878 in Somerset Center, Hillsdale Co. Michigan to George and Ida (Galusha) Hagaman.  The Hagaman's lived on a farm a little north west of the small village of Somerset Center, where Nina's grandfather Jacob Hagaman owned and operated what was probably a general store. Not far from this store sat a small white framed church that would be a important center for the Hagaman families spiritual and social life.  Here, at the Somerset Center Methodist Episcopal Church Nina's mother played the piano for Sunday services and probably a number of other actives, such as recitals and plays, which were common in rural 19th century communities.  The Hagaman's resided with Nina's paternal grandmother, Elizabeth.  It is clear that following Elizabeth's death in 1890, fortunes must have changed for Nina's parents.  The farm was sold and the family would move to the Grass Lake area, first living on a small farm in southern Waterloo Township and then later on property that they probably rented.

Following the move to Grass Lake, Nina met a young farmer named David Rattler Johnson of Leoni.  They were married on 20th of January 1897 by Rev. John F. Orwick, the Chaplain for the State Prison of Southern Michigan, located in downtown Jackson.  The witnesses listed in the marriage records are Charles and Carrie Johnson, the brother and sister-in-law of the groom.  I suspect the Rev. Orwick was affiliated with the Trinity Lutheran Church in Jackson, where Carrie Fisher Johnson's family had been members.

It would be only a few short years and David and Nina would become parents to a large group of children, they were: 1) John (1898-1970), 2) David (1900-1967), 3) George (1904-1957), 4) Ida (1908-1977), 5) Alfred (1911-1966), and 6) Robert (1915-1980).

The Johnson's would live on rented farms throughout Leoni Township for many years, never owning their own place, as far as I'm able to determine. Using the 1910 and 1920 Federal Censuses I have pin pointed their residence in the area just east of the Michigan Center Mill Pond/Center Lake, probably along Napoleon, Lee, and Noon Roads.  By the 1930 and 1940 Federal Censuses the Johnson's were living in the northern sections of Leoni Township, on farms that my mother always referred to as the Whipple Farm.

In the late 30s David would become ill with Tuberculosis and was hospitalized periodically, finally succumbing to the often fatal illness on 8 October 1940 after a four month stay at the Jackson County Tuberculosis Sanitarium.

As a 62 year old widow,  Nina would now be on her own.  She rented various apartments around Leoni and Grass Lake until she married a widower Mr. Stewart Benn in 1942.  Before  her second marriage, its not clear what her source of income was, but I would guess that like so many women at the time she would have done domestic work for large families in the community, helping with the cooking, cleaning and the washing of cloths was a very common activity for older women that could be turned into a way of support. Also, at this time Social Security was a new benefit and perhaps she was eligible to receive a monthly check based on her first husbands previous work.

It is unclear to most of her descendants how long she shared a domestic situation with Mr. Benn.  Concluding from stories we have heard, it appears that domestic life as a married couple with Nina and Stewart was tense and uncomfortable.  Eventually Nina left her second husband, but they never divorced.  It was about this time that my sister remembers Grandma Nina.  At the time she was living in an apartment in Grass Lake....it was in what is today the home of the Grass Lake Historical Society, the Coe House Museum.  How long Nina lived at the corner of East Michigan Avenue and Wolf Lake Road is not certain.  Eventually Nina would no longer be able to live on her own and she took up residence with her daughter, Mrs. Ida Johnson Meyer at 1900 Wolf Lake Road.

Nina Johnson Benn died of a heart attack on 3 December 1962 at the W. A. Foote Memorial Hospital in Jackson.  Her funeral service was held at the Stormont Funeral Home in Grass Lake with the Rev. Archie H. Donigan of the Grass Lake Methodist Church officiating.  She was to be buried next to her first husband, David at the Leoni Cemetery on South Portage Road, just south of the village of Leoni.  However, when the sexton began to open the gravesite an existing interment was discovered.  This necessitated finding another final resting place for Nina.  It is said that she was interred "nearby".  But the gravesite was never marked and attempts to locate it have proven difficult. Last year, I contacted the Leoni Township Clerks Office thinking they would have a record where Nina's final resting place is located (The township is now the owner and operator of the cemetery).  Unfortunately, they can find no record of where she was buried.  While we are certain that she is buried at the Leoni Cemetery because "Burial Permits" were issued, it has become one of my goals to locate her grave and make sure that it is marked for future generations of her descendants.

While Nina has not been memorialized with a marker signifying the location of her mortal remains, on this day I hope she knows that she is Remembered!

UPDATE!
Received a letter from the Burden's Funeral Home yesterday.  Burden's is the successor to the Stormont Funeral Home, which is the company that managed Nina's final services.  Unfortunately, Burden's has no knowledge of the whereabouts of records for the former Stormont Funeral Home. Sad news....I was hopeful that they would be another source of information on Nina's final resting place.