My Portfolio

We all know the phrase, "It takes a village to raise a child," but have you ever applied it to your own experience? Who are the influential people in your life, past or present, who have shaped and influenced you? Here's my top 10: 1. & 2. My parents. Of course....

 Benjamin Halle had nine children by his first wife, Malvina Baquet, and 9 by his second wife, Marceline Beaudoin. In 1879, the year the family emigrated from Quebec, to Massachusetts, Amanda (Marie Anne Leonise) was about 3 years old. With 7 older siblings and one younger, Amanda found attention every child...

( (Hal Melanson, Anne Grant, Harold "Mickey" and Eleanor "Dusty" Melanson)   If I had no problem with time, talent or money... I would gather all the children the world cast aside And shower them with Love and help build up their pride. I would buy a big farm With animals,...

I met Mom working at the Harry Doehla Greeting Card Company [local company started in the 1920s: see article from 1962 http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=2209&dat=19620630&id=xrUrAAAAIBAJ&sjid=1v4FAAAAIBAJ&pg=5126,5946058] My first impression of her was that she was silly but not a wise guy and fun to be with; easy to please, but noisy; willing to do anything...

  I was walking through Cabelas the other day and passed these wintergreen mints. It immediately triggered a memory of my Grampa Grant, who had a stash of these always on hand in a little dish by his lounge chair. We even referred to him as Candy Man! Grampa was always...

  It was April 1954 and Don had just arrived home from a 3-year stint in Europe as an Army PFC. He had been lucky--of the 1000 men in his group, 800 went to Korea and he spent the entire 2 years in Salzburg as acting sergeant in charge of the...

  This gravestone rubbing is one that I made in the summer of 1989 when my dad and I drove from Massachusetts to Vermont on an ancestor hunt. We knew the cemetery was on the "Old Niles Farm," which, of course, no longer exists, but undaunted, we headed out to the small...

In 1980 I interviewed my dad, Donald Stuart Grant, and asked him about his mother, Ethel Frances Gilchrest Grant. This is what he said: "My mother was a very easy-going person, always finding the good side of people. I never heard her say anything bad about anybody. She would say, "if...

      Here is a photo of a photo of my grandmother, Ethel Frances Gilchrest Grant, at age 18. It was taken at her granduation from "Normal School."  As a homemaker, she would wear a house dress during the day to do her cleaning, cooking, etc. Then right before her husband...

Denis and Bridget (O'Brien) Connolly lived in Skibbereen, Cork, Ireland during the Irish Potato Famine. They toughed it out through the worst of it, but by the 1870s, the future for 11 children was bleak. Seven (Cornelius "Con", Patrick, Dennis, Thomas (my great-grandfather), Dan, Tim, and John) of the 9 boys...