While searching for what we should keep from my late grandmother’s house, I came upon a most lucky find – my greatgrandfather’s notebook, which my grandmother had mentioned to me several times but I thought was lost for decades.
And what a wonderful find it was! Even in a bad shape, missing a number of pages, it’s still a remarkable document, spanning 50 years, from 1887 to 1937, of my greatgrandfather’s life, still easably readable in his elegant handwriting and old-fashioned ortography.
I don’t understand why the order of the entries is so haphazard, the first from 1899, the last from 1888, and jumping back and forth all the time – I wonder how did he fill it? Anyway, he took notes about a number of different things – like family events (births, deaths, marriages), community events (floods, fires, new priests), and accounts (money loans, he did quite a number of those). And also lots of recipes for several different ailments.
The money lending records take a lot of space – as my uncle cunningly observed, he was not only a barber / surgeon / doctor but also a kind of banker, sometimes charging quite high interest rates.
Anyway, the notebook confirms what a remarkable character he was, My greatgrandfasther, my namesake, who was such an important influence in my family, and on his village too – he was still remembered in my youth by many folk, by fixing a broken bone, draining an abscess, lending money.
I’m so happy to have found his notebook, I always kind of thought of myself as his heir… I never met him, but still I keep his portrait, and most of all his memory as handed over to me by his daughter, my grandmother, who was herself such a pivotal influence in my life.
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