A Lifetime of Discovery

This year, on the day after Christmas, it will be 145 years since Grandpa Jacob was born. He was 23 years younger than his oldest brother Eli. Just think about the changes in the world during his lifetime! He was born in 1867, two years after the Civil War and died in 1963 during the infancy of space travel. The list below is just a few of the inventions and discoveries that took place just during the 96 years he was alive.

Grandpa and our Wedding Gift

Jacob postponed his winter trip to California to attend our wedding in September of 1962.  He liked to attend the weddings of his grandchildren. He was there for the event and we had a wonderful time. He even brought us two wedding gifts.

The one was a vegetable bowl from the dime store that we were to use every day and it would remind us of him. It was a pretty china bowl, cream colored with some little pink flowers on it. I thought it was very pretty and special and wanted to put it in the cupboard for special occasions, but Harold said no, grandpa wanted us to use it. And so we did, almost every day it would hold the potatoes or vegetable or jello we were having for dinner. We used it often and for quite a few years until one day when it broke. Now it has been fifty years since we were married and we still remember that bowl and grandpa.

The second gift he gave us – we have no idea what it was!

Grandpa Jacob never got to California that winter. He ended up getting sick and in the spring he passed away. He was 96 years old.