Life with Grandma Anna Christiana Larson Keller
Linda Davis: Grandma was a very quite person with a will of iron. She was a good babysitter and helped mother with us children. She was a religious person and wanted us along with her at church.
Carvel Schwieder: Dad had a ford car and we would travel up to the farm at Delhin in it. Grandma would come along. I remember how she helped get the car up the hill. Dad would get us out of the car and then make a run for the hill. When he couldn't go any farther Grandma with us kids running behind push and push and get rocks to put back of the wheels. She was a helper always. She was a kind jolly person around us. A part of our family. I can remember also her temple clothes she had ready for burial and how she kept them in a niece box on the closet shelf. Every once in awhle she would get them down and show them to us and press them.
Phil Schwieder: I got to sleep with Grandma and she would tell me stories about her crossing the plains. She was a good kind lady.
Norma Schwieder: Granma Keller's life with the Arthur W. Schwieder family. Grandma Keller was a lovely sweet person. She crossed the plains as a very youg girl with the pioneers. Can you imagine what that would be like? She had 14 children and raised 6 other children of her husbands by another marriage. When Gramp Schwieder came to Mink Creek, Idaho as a young man to teach school he boarded at Grandma Keller's home. She was a widow of four years. Gramp married grandma Keller's youngest daughter Louella Keller our mother and grandmother. When they were married grandma Keller's life began with the A. W. Schwieder family at Mink Creek.
In 1914 this family and grandma Keller moved to Idaho Falls, Idaho. When we lived in Idaho Falls I remember grandma mistook the wrong door and fell down the basement stairs. But she wasn't hurt too bad and with our love soon got better. After a few years in Idaho Falls the family moved to Delhin, Idaho, a dry farm town. She lived there three cold winters, no water, electric lights, baths in the house. Col cold winters. Grandma lived a hard life but, was always a healthy loving sweet person and she lived a happy life. At the dry farm she'd walk around the yard with one of us little ones, and winters she corded the wool clean and fluffy for our quilts. She was our grandma and our doctor and all she was a person who loved and lived the gospel and I'm sure she influenced all of us. Grandma was a short person, plump and wore full skirted and long sleeved dresses. She had snow white hair, a dimple in her chin and a sunny disposition. She had all her burial clothes and I thought the prettiest thing I'd ever seen the little white satin slippers.
In 1923, we had a hard time so we moved to Iona, Idaho where Gramp taught school. We had a little three room house and there was eight of us children in our family. Rubin was a few months old. In March of that spring, Grandma passed away at our home in Iona at the age of eight-one. I remember how I cried. A funeral at Iona then buried at Mink Creek, Idaho by her husband.
Twenty eight children she helped raised and was midwife for the birth of many more. I myself was born at home with a doctor and grandma's help. Also Linda, Carvel, Phil and Ruth.
How wonderful it will be to greet her once more. She was loved by many and helped so many during those hard hard years. Just think of how easy our life is now compared to those days. We are truly blessed but, we were never never hungry or unloved in those good old days.
