O'Connor Family 1905

Grenola, Kansas 1905

Armon was back for a visit from South Africa and Genie traveled from Oregon to visit the family.

Fannie Stiles O'Connor's Coffee Pot

Tonight my daughter and I were polishing a beautiful silver coffee pot that was my great great Grandmother, Fannie Stiles O'Connor. Several years ago, when we went to California to celebrate my grandmother's (Wilma Lobdell) 90th birthday, I was blessed to bring this pot home.  On the back of the pot it has Fannie's maiden name engraved which would date this back to at least 1867.

Along with the coffee pot, I brought several pictures and one of them is of Byron and Fannie in their Grenola, Kansas home, with their youngest daughter Elizabeth.   If you look carefully, you can see this very coffee pot sitting on a lovely table in the room behind them.

O'Connor Home, Grenola, Kansas

In 2006 my family and I drove west to celebrate my grandmother's 90th birthday. On the journey home, it was just my daughters and myself, so we took the opportunity to go to the little Kansas town of Grenola. I had hopes of finding the actual house that Byron and Fannie O'Connor had lived in, but wasn't able to. I am not sure what the present population of the little town is now, but it gave me such satisfaction to see this place where my great-great grandparents had lived along with my great-grandmother (Eugenia (Genie) O'Connor) and my great-great-great grandmother (Elizabeth Dille O'Connor).

I am blessed to have some inside photos of at least one of the homes they lived in along with a few outside pictures. They did live in at least 2 homes during their 30 years there, but I still need to identify the locations of each of the houses specifically. Regardless of where they were, I am delighted to have some of the pictures of them, and even some of the pictures that you can see in the photos. It's a delight for me to view them over and over again, knowing what a special heritage I have been given.

The first two pictures show two different directions in the house, which I think is so wonderful so we get a better view of the first floor.  The second two photos are of the same house, but obviously several years apart in being photographed as the trees are much larger and the fence is gone.  The young girl in the picture is Elizabeth O'Connor, Byron and Fannie's youngest child, born in February 1893.