Gilbert Lawrance COCHRAN

                   My grandmother Maggie was about 13 when her mother died.  I have an old green dish she bought at an auction when her parents died.  It is cracked and not worth anything but sentimental value to me, just knowing it was precious to her.  When her husband "Lee" died,( She had brought him home to Mo. to die from their homestead in Washington)  She owned two or three  homes in Mcdonald Co. Mo.  She later married Gil.Cochran who traded the homes for a store in Butterfield.  He traded that for an old farm in Ark.  They later moved to Idaho. and he later abandonded the family. He took the Family Bible,all of the money except .29 cents and the rotor to the car.  He left to chop wood and never came back.  Aunt Ola said grandma got a job in a hotel in Ellensburg Washington washing dishes,so her kids would have a place to live.  Aunt Ola remembers the lady in the hotel always having a piece of pie for them to eat when they got home from school.  They later let her cook which paid a little better .Grandma  later worked as a cook on ranches where her boys worked.  At that time she had the children of Vashtie and her husband, Wiley.  Aunt Ola  Manford,Clifford ,grandma and Dad,with Wiley and his two kids, Velda and Noble,  decided to come to Ca. , The  family took two old fords and started off .  Dad remembers him and Clifford being in one car and running out of gas and waiting along side the road till Grandma caught up with them as she had the money.
They settled in Palermo and lived in several houses in Palermo.One of the houses was on Palermo road on the north East  side of a small bridge.  The house is still there(2004) and has a large pine tree in the yard grandma planted after Xmas when she had the boys go to Rocky Honcut and find a tree and they dug up the roots and planted it in a bucket.  The last house they lived in in Palermo was on upper Palermo rd. where I (Joyce) was born.  She later moved to Central House on Cox lane, and then when the boys had to go in the 2nd World War they moved her to Gridley.  She lived in at least 4 houses in the Gridley area, that I remember..I loved visiting her.  I remember her giving us lumps of brown sugar for treats.seeing her "wring a chickens neck" for dinner,milk her "old cow Bossy" , go with us to the Sat. Matinees, feed us oatmeal with real cream on it, stand at the door wiping her hands on her apron so she could hug me and pretending that I hugged her really hard,having Xmas eve at her house waiting for Uncle Ed and Aunt Ola., seeing my dad fuss with the presents because he couldn't wait,looking at her old family pictures,taking my kids to see her,eating the hard tack candy she always had around.going to dances at a church where Wiley played his violin and old and young danced, smelling the mentholatum she rubbed on her every night. She was a good grandma.
When bad things happen I think of her and what she went through.  She lostt her parents,two brothers ,1 sister, a husband and 2 children to tuberculosis, one daughter to typhoid fever a small child to measles or chicken pox and was abandoned by her 2nd husband,  She just kept working and keeping her family together.  She came to Calif. during the depression and worked plucking turkeys, and in the fruit cutting sheds until her boys were all big enough to work.  One of the biggest insults she had was a letter to her from the husband that left calling her a hussy for "bobbing her hair.  This happened  when she was living in Gridley.  She had a great attitude and always seemed happy in spite of the things that came her way.  I hope I can be remembered with love ,the way I remember her.

In the 1900 census,Elkhorn,McDonald,Mo. Maggie gave her birthday as May 1874. and age 26,  I tend to believe this may be correct, although I have her birthday as 1877.
This census gives Robert as age 30 b. May 1870,and Joseph L.( Lionel ) son Sep.1896 age 5,Margaret V.(Vastie),Apr.1898 age 2.