When she was young, my mother took the family Bible to school to share and somehow lost it. I think she felt guilty about this for the rest of her life. I felt a little bit like this when I realized that the photo album I’d placed her old family photos in had damaged some of them. It was one of those albums with a sticky backing and some of the stickiness bled through into some of the pictures. This fall I purchased a new album, with no stickiness. I paid a friend to copy and improve any of the pictures that he could and have placed them in the album, along with those he was unable to change. During this process I looked up one name on the Internet, just to be sure I was spelling it correctly. This was Hezekiah Pennington Malone, my great-grandfather.

My grandmother, on my mother’s side, was a Malone. I guess that Irish side is where my mother got her beautiful hair, dark brown, curling, with lots of red highlights.

In writing about family history my mother said that the Malones (her great- grandparents) were Quakers but originally the family came from North Ireland to the United States, settling first in Pennsylvania. Her great-grandmother had been a Pennington.

They were farmers and believed in hard work and “solid worth”. The women wore grays and blacks and dove colors but their clothes were of the best materials available—“woolens and heavy, durable silks”.

Her great-grandfather established a farm in Ohio. He and his wife were actually cousins. They had seven sons and one daughter. My great-grandfather, Hezekiah, was the eldest son. As with many farm children in those days, none wanted to work as hard as they had to on the property. When Hezekiah was 17 he ran away from home. Eventually he was able to make some money by taking part in some business opportunities (salt-bed oil wells, in Pennsylvania) and, as soon as he could afford it, he began to send for his brothers and to set them up in business. Nothing is said about what happened to the one sister.

Hezekiah Malone married Emma Hart, who was not a Quaker, but became one when she married. “She was the daughter of the treasurer of the City of Cleveland” and her family at that time was “well-to-do”. My mother described Emma Hart as having a 17- inch waist and said that “she wore a hoop skirt, bodice with real lace, carried a little purse decorated with real lace. She wore shoes that were size one, high ones that laced up the sides, also white. “ This was on her wedding day from what I understand. Emma Hart was only 17 when Hezekiah decided she was the one for him. The information was somehow passed down through the family.

Here my mother mentions that Emma Hart’s father, a miller, was a direct descendent of John Hart, who signed the Declaration of Independence and states that “there were silver smiths some place in the family”. During the Civil War he ran n underground railway in his home for escaping slaves.” (My grandmother never told my grandfather about that. This is interesting to me because I didn’t know which of her parents had thought that owning slaves had been acceptable although I knew one had.).

Hezekiah Malone “made money and built a mansion right next door to the Harts”, and my mother’s two uncles, her mother and an aunt were born there in Cleveland. to be continued