My Paternal Grandmother, Alice (England) Prater (1917-2002)
When I think back on family stories, I grew up hearing a lot more about my maternal side of the family. With that grandmother being in DAR, with a Lincoln line and Connecticut and Massachusetts founders, there was a lot of pride in where we came from (England, it was England). On my paternal side, there was pride, but it was a solidity in being rooted. They were farmers. They came from Appalachia. It was a huge family and everyone was community. Where did they come from? Kentucky. No, where before that? Somewhere.
As I’ve researched my lineage, I started with what I knew - my maternal side. And that was a lot. I then delved into my paternal side in order to answer questions - there were so many questions before I started that research. I had no expectations but to maybe be able to name my sixteen. But when I was done, it was an even richer history than I had grown up hearing about. My paternal line has been in this country and worked this earth just as long, if not longer, than the maternal lines we were so proud of. They had more military members and just as much English ancestry. I was floored.
But I still make the same biased mistakes as I was taught growing up - I’ve told you all about my maternal grandparents, but what about my paternal grandparents? Well, I never met my grandfather - he died a year before I was born. But my grandmother, oh she was a fiesty little Southern woman lol And by little I mean short, or she seemed that way to me even as an adolescent.
I was once asked what my grandmother was like. See that photo at the top - that hairstyle, the same as Granny Clampett’s! That always makes me smile when I watch Beverly Hillbillies. But she was already an old farm woman by the time I came around. I didn’t know her as anything other than Gramma Prater. And she would tell stories about farm living that my mom, with her city sensibility, would tell us to forget and not mention. Life was tough, but she managed. I’ve been told she was different before Grandpa died. But she had a lot of loss before him, too - and more after. She lost two children and at least four grandchildren during her life.
I have thick quilts my grandmother made - one she made specifically for my sister circa 1992. But I live where it’s cold and she doesn’t, so I have it (and use it when the occasion calls for it - it is extremely warm!).
So, who was Alice?
Alice England was born January 17, 1917, in Floyd Co., Kentucky, to Silas England and Cynthia (Hale) England.
Alice married Alfred Prater in Kentucky January 23, 1935. He was born September 14, 1914, in Brainard, Floyd Co., Kentucky, to Dave Prater (son of Elijah) and Lizzie (Adams) Prater.
They had several children in Kentucky but relocated permanently to Kosciusko Co., Indiana, before the 1950 census and had their youngest children there. Alice gave birth to 12 children, with 10 surviving infancy.
Juanita (1935-2020)
Willard (1937-2006)
Flora Jean (1939-2006)
Flossie (b. 1940)
Ralph (b. 1942)
Vernie (b. 1944)
Lonnie (1948-2017)
Bobby (1951-2002)
Bruce (b. 1954)
Aileen (b. 1955)
My grandparents’ farm was on Packerton Road outside of Warsaw, Indiana. My father grew up on that farm and we visited often when I was a child. Across the road was a huge field where he and his siblings would play baseball. Her kitchen always smelled like fresh-cooked green beans and dumplings - she made everything from scratch if she could. Her living room had shelves full of pictures of her grandkids and great-grandkids. She had my dad’s Navy photo in her sunroom, on the other side of the hall door from her Immaculate Heart of the Virgin Mary velvet (she was Baptist, but I guess the Catholic iconography meant something to her). That sunroom was where she’d put up her Christmas tree.
I also lived in that house the first roughly 9 months of my life. After getting married and my mom finishing college in New York and dad being discharged from the Navy (stationed in Connecticut), my parents moved in with her until they bought the horse farm I grew up on at the other side of the county in 1980.
Alfred died November 4, 1978, and is buried in Lakeview Cemetery, Silver Lake, Indiana. Alice died March 11, 2002, and is buried next to Alfred as Alice Prater.