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The Life of Hazel Brand
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A BRIEF HISTORY OF HAZEL ALENE STANDRIDGE My mother, Hazel Alene Standridge Brand, never knew her father, George W. Standridge. Her mother, Atharie May Riley, married George W. Standridge in 1907, in Wood County, Texas. They moved back to North Carolina where George was born and raised. Mother was born on January 13, 1910. She was their only child. George had a habit of disappearing for weeks at a time. I don’t know the whole story behind it. I don’t think Mother knew what caused his absences. After Mother was born and George kept up his habit of leaving her alone, Grandmother decided this was no way to live and packed Mother up and took her back to Texas where Grandmother’s family lived. After Grandmother had been in Texas for a few months, George’s family wrote to her and told her that he had died. Grandmother married a man named Oscar Engaldow Gamblin. They had a child, John Steven, who lived only a few hours. Mother was just a small child, but she said she could remember the people coming in, and she remembered the small coffin in the parlor. They had a second child, my uncle, Oran Monrow Gamblin, Mother’s only sibling. Oscar Gamblin died…I don’t know the circumstances here. I don’t remember Mother telling me what happened to Oscar. She loved him as a father, and could remember fondly many things during the time he lived with them. Grandmother married a third time, to a man named John Dumas Robards. J.D. as he was called, had three sons. Mother had a pretty hard time growing up in this household, as J.D. was a drunk and his sons were mean to her. Grandmother made sure Mother knew of her father and his family. She told her all about them and Mother knew all of George’s siblings in the order of their birth and something about each of them. She only gave Mother good memories of her father. In the early sixties my brother Clayton and his wife, Norma had some dear friends and they laughingly, teasingly, called each other “Kissing Cousins.” They were such good friends, they felt like they were related. One evening as they were sitting around one of their homes, they were talking about family and family names. Jerry mentioned that her maiden name was Standridge… "What a coincidence", said my brother, "My mother’s maiden name was Standridge." They got to talking about the names of her mother’s aunts and uncles, and all of the names fit, except my Grandfather, George. Our George died, as you recall, when Mother was only a couple of years old. They had a George, but he just died a couple of years ago. Well, to make a long story…most of which I don’t really know…short, the ‘two’ George’s were one and the same. His family wrote to Grandmother and told her he was dead because after the last time he took off for parts unknown, when they got him back they committed him to a mental institution, and I suppose didn’t want to spread that news. He lived there the remainder of his life. When Mother found out about her father being alive until only a few years before, she was filled with several different emotions. Excitement at finding some of her family members…she had never known any of her father’s family. Sadness, because had she known he was still alive, she may have met him. And devastation at the knowledge that her mother had married two times while her first husband was still living, which made the other marriages bigamy and her brother illegitimate. Of course, Grandmother had already passed away, and both husbands were gone as well, but mother felt the shame and sadness that Grandmother would have felt had she still been living. Mother and Daddy took a trip to North Carolina and visited with the uncles and aunts who were still living at that time. She got to meet cousins and other family members. She was thrilled to have so many new relatives! Prior to this time she had only one brother to call family. (Daddy was one of ten children, with lots of aunts and uncles, cousins, etc.) So, now Mother also had a big extended family. Neona
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