Alwood Family

From The Family Alwood, by Terry Klaus, June 1991:

To have lived at the home of my grandparents I remember my grandmother Hilda always working with her hands. She would do the crossword puzzlesi n ink, never saw her do that in pencil. She had a gift of writing and keeping diaries, one that we all got to enjoy, that Colleen (Alwood) Fikse put into a book for us a few years ago. Hilda Alwood's Bushy Tales, April 1942 through July 1945. She had a son and two nephews in the war, and its about the day to day activities of her family, a very enlightening piece of work, we thank Colleen for doing that. Harry was a big reader of mystery books, they had a library with a big collection of books.

Hilda was easy to find. If not in the kitchen where she did canning of fruits, she'd be in her green rocking chair with knitting needles, or a crochet hook making the cherished afghans and the quilts she made for her children and grandchildren. For those of us who knew her, we can always recall her 'nodding off, and if you woke her, it was always the same response. "I was just resting", with the little twinkle in her blue eyes and a slight curve of her lip in half a smile.

Hilda made the best biscuits in town and I think all of us have tried to match her. Grandpa Harry wasn't so bad in the kitchen either, he knew how to fix a hearty breakfast. It was a joy to come down stairs, get warm by the stove in the kitchen and then to share breakfast with Grandpa and Grandma, you had everything you could want! It was part of their retirement years that Harry and Hilda were "care-takers' at a logging camp, and they spent their weekends making big meals for the men who were in camp and for any of us wandering relatives.

Hilda gave me my first lesson in letter writing. I will forever thank her for that, its a tool that I have been able to use to make a great many friendships all over the world and the traveling came second. after Harry's death in 1965. Hilda stayed on for a while in Sedro Woolley, until she fell and broke her hip.. . trying to stand on a dinning room table and dust the light. She moved down to Seattle, and then into a nursing home, where she died of pneumonia, Christmas Day 1977. She and Harry are both buried in Bow Cemetery.

The Smith family really started out as Shaw. It seems that when William Shaw went bankrupt, to make a new start in what ever business it was that he was in, he changed his name to Smith, much harder to trace. William was married, had a wife named Helen, a daughter of. the same name, and ason named Joseph.

Hilda Smith (no middle name) was born April 12. 1895. in Nottingham.England. Hilda was a sickly child, had asthma, and didn't make it to school much. Had a tutor quite a bit of her young life. She basically had an eighth grade education. She was four years old when the family moved to Manchester. Cheshire. She had her confirmation on March 12, 1913, by the Bishop of Burnley in Lancaster. She "crossed the pond" when she was 18 years old. She married Harry Carl Alwood.