Robert and Frances Montgomery with Alice, Laura and Margaret

This beautiful picture of my great-grandparents and their first three children was taken in approximately 1898.  Robert E. Lee Montgomery and Frances Barber Linton were married in Washington County, Kentucky, February 7, 1893.  They celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary in 1943, two years before Frances passed away.  Mother says the Washington County fair was going on the week of her death.  Frances dearly loved going to the fair each year, fixing a picnic basket of food to take – it was something all the family enjoyed very much.  Each grandchild had a quarter to spend – each thing cost a nickel – a ride, popcorn, cotton candy, a drink – many choices to make!  Aunt Maggie said the children should still go to the fair – “It’s what Mama would have wanted!”

My grandmother, Mary Alice, is the oldest, standing in front of her mother.  She was born December 8, 1893.  Baby Laura Frances, sitting on her mother’s lap, was born December 4, 1897.  At the age of 15 she succumbed to tuberculosis.  Anna Margaret, born September 18, 1895, sitting on her father’s lap, never married.  It was said “Papa” didn’t approve of her choice in a young man, and she would marry no other.  After her parents were gone she lived with her brother Robert, an old bachelor, in the same house until their deaths, within a year of each other.  They lived to the ripe old ages of 89 and 82 respectively.

My grandmother married and had seven children – Robert, Rueben, Beulah, Paul, Ann, Catherine and Mary Alice.  Robert was killed in World War II.  Rueben died at the age of ten, of appendicitis.  Her husband, my grandfather, Joseph Rue Carrico, died in 1961.  Grandmother lived 25 more years – to the ripe old age of 92.  My mother visited her in the hospital the day before she died.  When she went in she noticed the oxygen tubes had been taken out.  When asked why my grandmother promptly replied, “Because I couldn’t enjoy my breakfast with them in!”  She truly loved to eat!  Honestly, I think the only reason she passed away that night was she was going to the nursing home the next day.  She really, really didn’t want to go!