My mother’s name was Phoebe Harriet Jackson but she didn’t like being called Phoebe so she changed her name herself to Beatrice. Although, she was named Phoebe everybody called her Bea.

My dad’s name was Hugh William Schuck and he was born in Topeka, Kansas about 1895 or so. Well, because he died in 1990. Well, he was 99 years old when he died, but my mother died when she was 56 in 1951. Very young; she had hypertension and at that time they didn’t know what to do. She went to the Mayo Clinic and they didn’t even know what to do for her. So, she died when she was 56.

There were eleven of us. I had six brothers and four sisters. Of course, I made the eleventh. My youngest brother, the youngest one in the family, just died 13 or 14 months ago. The rest of them have died, you know, through the years. I have one sister left, Dorothy. She lives in Los Angeles and she’s two years older than I am so she’s 84.

On my mother’s side. To begin with, my great-great-grandmother was born and raised in Madagascar. She married a Jewish captain on a slave ship. When he landed – I assume he was looking for slaves, but he married her and brought her to, I believe, New York. From New York he evidently quit the slave trade business and he moved to Washington, D.C. and that’s where my grandmother was born.

So then, my grandfather’s name was Charlie Jackson and my grandmother’s name was Porter. She was Maddie Elizabeth Porter. My grandfather’s name was Charlie Jackson. Now, I know very little about my great-grandparents except what I told you.

Charlie Jackson was a slave. He was about 12 or 13 years old when Sherman marched in Georgia. So, his mother encouraged him to attach himself to one of the Union soldiers who were coming through looking for attendants. So, the colonel that he attached himself to told him to change his name. I can find out what his slave name was but he changed his name to Jackson because he said then they won’t try to catch you as an escaped slave. Then this colonel was deployed to Fort Snelling, Minnesota which is just outside of St. Paul on the St. Croix River. That’s where my grandfather came to Stillwater with him.

When he got here – I sound like I am in Minnesota! When he got to Minnesota I guess…I don’t know, he started to strike out for himself. He walked from Minnesota to a little town - from Stillwater. Stillwater is, I think, about 15 miles from Ft. Snelling.

So, he walked to this little town from Stillwater and he became a barber. He was one of the town barbers and that’s all I know about them. I have clippings too of when he died. All the barbershops closed and went to his funeral, so he was very well liked in Stillwater.

My grandmother had five daughters and two sons. One of them was a dental technician and he moved to Detroit. My other uncle’s name was Claude and he stayed in St. Paul. He was a mechanical engineer and he worked at some kind of mechanical plant. I don’t remember the name of it. It’s gone out of existence now. It was one that made – they used to make – Seagers! Seagers was a company that made refrigerators and then individual stores would put their name on it like Sears? This place was called Seagers and that’s where he went. He worked there until he died I guess.

Then her four sisters were all seamstresses. I don’t think any of them did anything but dressmaking all their lives.

During the war when I was in college there was a company that used to make cookies. It was called Griggs Cooper. When I was in college I used to work and they wanted to start a night shift to make those C-rations for the war effort. So, a friend and I each got jobs and they had eight women and my mother and my aunt. That was the first job, I think, my mother ever had. I don’t think she ever did anything else in her life except make clothes. So, that’s what they did. We used to come in at – we were both in college, so we would come in and give them relief and give them their dinner hour and then give them another relief and then we would go home at about 11 o’clock. That’s what I did when I was in college there. That was fun.