Hess Family - by Anne

Dear Future Family,

God loves you. I love you. Times change, good morals and a loving family don’t.

My great grandparents were strong in the face of tough frontier life. Women were keepers at home then.

Adele Eugenia Boisso was born in Illinois in 1848. Her parents came from France. She was smart but she could not read or write. She come home from school one day and found her father dragging her mother around the house by the hair of her head. He was drunk again. Adele vowed not to go to school any more. When she was at home she could calm her father and keep him from hurting her mother. He was a good man, and provided for his family well. He was so ashamed of his drinking. He could not control it. He got worse.

One day he hugged and kissed them all and told them, “Don’t none of you ever be like me.” He walked off from home with a little bundle of clothes on his back. They never saw him again. They hoped that he got back to France.

She married a widower with three children, Joseph Eugene Hess. They heard tales of Texas and wanted to come. Her mother cried for weeks, “That wild, rough, dangerous country.” She gave Adele her inheritance.

He came to Texas on the train and bought a section of land. She followed later. He stopped the train on the prairie near where Mineral Wells is now.

Adele Eugenia had her six year old Theresa, three year old David, and my Grandmother, Julia with her, she was two. Julia had to be carried on a pillow because her head was the size of a teacup when she was born. Six weeks after they arrived in Texas, George was born. Later Victor Adolph, Henry, and Charlie were born. She raised his two daughters for years.

You could smell her good French cooking when you come in the gate. She had her own herb garden, she knew how to use them, too.

You come from good stock that knows the value of work.

You can do anything you want to.

You can be anything that you want to be. If I can learn to do all this at 80.