Oldest Family Photograph

Isobel Matthews Patterson was my paternal great-grandmother and was born in the 1913 and died in 1979.

When she was just a child, she came over from Ireland. Her parents were servants at Wallingford Castle which was a grand house in Pennsylvania.  The house had a beautiful grand piano which the owners eventually gave to Isobel because she was the only pianist and they loved to listen to her play it. That piano has since been transported across the United States and now my family owns it and it is in our living room to this day.

She then taught piano lessons to my mom starting when my mom was about 4 or 5.  She was also the church organist and a beautiful piano player.  

She died when I was my mom was about 11, in 1979. Her oldest son, my grandpa was exactly like her. He looked very similar and had a near identical sense of humor accompanied with a very loud guffawing laugh. That laugh has been passed on through the generations from Isobel to my grandpa to my mom.

Isobel Patterson also loved to cook and my mother would eat dinner there every Sunday night.

Her oldest child, who was my grandpa, was the first person in my mom’s family to ever attend college.

She came from a very definite working-class background. Her husband worked for a trucking company and therefore did not bring in much of an income. But overtime, her love of music and love of laughter made her life radiant.  She also had a healthy and very active curiosity. They took the time to host a young Japanese man in the early 1960s for nearly two years. They then later ended up building a Japanese Garden in their backyard. This is long before anything of the sort was a usual thing.