Person:Margaret Harshaw (1)

When we look back to the efforts of our forebears striving for a better life, whether or not they succeeded or failed is not the real issue. The real issue is that they had the strength and courage to try, In the early 1900's there was no social security and no unemployment insurance. .succoet: success depended on them. Roscoe and Oma harshaw were two such Americans who strove for a better life. for themselves and their offspring. Both worked very hard at any job to achieve that dream, When a project failed they had the courage to try again; not once, but again and again, Margret and her brother grew up in this environment of personal independ ence.

The family's first big venture in 1915 was to buy land in Florida sight un seen. This land proved to be useless as it was completely under water, Until enough money could be saved to return to Kansas, Roscoe worked as a "swamper" in a dairy.

The next venture in 1917 was to Coweta, Oklahoma where he worked in a hard ware store. They speculated in oil stocks and the venture failed.

In the Summer of 1921, they set forth in a new Ford car for Sacramento, Cali fornia camping along the way, Roscoe went into a house construction business with a partner. That failed in 1921; then he went to work for Emigh Winchell Hardware Co. This work pro vided bread and butter for the family while he tried growing chickens for sale on a ranch outside Sacramento. The great depression of 1929 put both the chicken farm and the hardware store out of business.

By this time Margret was 19 and had absorbed a lot about "fame and for tune" and how not to find it. In June 1931, she graduated from Sacramento High School. She attended a business college when her parents ref used to finance a course in a hair dressing school as she had always desired.

Times were very hard and everyone in the family was doing everything and anything to make ends meet. Finally word came in 1933 that there was a job opening at Alpha Hardware Store in Grass Valley, California, Roscoe took the job. Margret moved with her parents to Grass Valley where they rented a house at 124 School Street. It was in Grass Valley, at a Methodist Epworth League party that Margret met her future husband, Alfred H, Kramm.