(Grandma and Grandpa in this history are Ermina Strawn and William Bradley.)
I am condensing and writing in story form from a question-and-answer interview conducted by Brad Naegle with his mother, Gladys Josephine Bradley, sister of my grandmother, Claudia Bradley Moore. My own words will be emboldened.
This is my beautiful great-aunt, Gladys Josephine Bradley Naegle. Aunt Gladys was married to Al Naegle. Al had a photography studio in Salmon, Idaho, and some of the really lovely photographs of our family in Lemhi County were taken by him.
And away we go!
” Mama was Ermina Viola *Also known as Erminnie. I’m not sure which is correct.* Strawn, and papa was William Faber Bradley. She claims Faber was from the French side of the family. Friends called them Minnie and Brad.”
“His Aunt Jane Gladwill was just about his same age, and when Grandmother Gladwill would cook dinner, she would admonish the older children to save some food. She would always say: “Willie and Janie’s to eat yet.”
During this time, family legend claims that they hid the James boys when the law was after them, as did all the people in the countryside. The James brothers were heroes to the people who lived there, and they “weren’t about to let them be taken by the law and be strung up.” To them, Jesse and Frank James were modern day Robin Hoods. *More on this later*
“Papa didn’t have much formal education. He had a few months just before his mother died, and later had two and a half years at the most. He was self-taught from then on and knew the Bible word for word. There was no way you could catch him up on that. You could read a verse to him, and he could tell you the page and the book. Or you could reverse it, and hopscotch all around all through the Bible and you could not catch him up on any of it.
He knew the Bible so well that the neighbors wanted to send him to a seminary to be a preacher, but he had other things in mind! He left home when he was 13 and probably when into mining from then on. I’ve heard him talk about mines he worked in and the people he worked with. * My Grandmother Moore always said her father worked as a cabin boy on a riverboat for a while right after he left home. *
He was 22 or 23 when he went to Colorado. That was after he met the Strawn family and met Ermina Viola Strawn, his future wife. Ermina was born in Butler County, in a little town near Dubuque, Iowa, to Sarah Elizabeth Miller and Nicholas Strawn. Brother and sister married brother and sister in the Miller and Strawn family, so there were double cousins. She had two sisters and a brother, and another little brother that died. And by the way, her sisters’ names were Cecile and Claudia, and the brother’s name was Glenn. It’s interesting because I have a sister Claudia and a sister Cecile, and a brother, Glenn.
My grandpa, Nick Strawn was a wonderful person, and he was a strapping bug husky guy. For instance, one thing I remember people describing him, is he could stand on one side of a regular-sized wagon, flat-footed, and jump over it. He was well over six feet, and my grandma was a little tiny thing. I’ve seen a picture of Grandma sitting kind of in front of one of his shoulders and she looked just like a little doll she was so tiny. From what I know, she had a very happy childhood. You know that she did because of the way she felt about her parents. There was just no other way about it. She made it through grade school, but not high school. Very few gals in those days did.
*Nicholas Strawn joined the Union Army as a drummer boy when he was 15, then went on to become a soldier in the 8th. Iowa Infantry. He is buried in Boise in the Civil War section of the cemetery called Silent Camp.*
