Baba Ania’s birthday was on Sunday. When I went to Mom for our traditional afternoon Sunday coffee, I also took a small bottle of liquor with me, and we drank in memory of Baba Ania (for some reason, my mom was surprised I remembered the day (?!)).
Unfortunately, I can’t get any new information from my mom in addition to what I already know. Maybe I will be able to fill in the gaps later – I made some recordings of mom’s stories when she first came to the US, but now I need to find and decipher them.
I know that Baba Ania was “from a village”; however, the photograph below shows a group that could be anybody but peasants. These are four Grigoriev brothers; the first from the left, Petr, is Baba Ania’s father.
According to mom’s notes, Petr was either the second or the third of the brothers, next is Stepan, the fifth (the youngest) next is FIlipp (either the second or the third) next – Alexey, the fourth child, and last one is the oldest brother, Nikolay. Unfortunately, no information about when this photo was taken.
In this picture, Petr should be the first person on the left in the second row from the bottom, according to mom’s notes:
Was it the beginning of WWI? I can’t tell. One more picture, judging by its quality, taken by some “official” photographer, also hints the wartime, but mom’s notes indicate that she could not locate Grandfather Petr in this picture:
No images of Baba Ania’s mother. No images of Baba Ania as a child. The pictures I showed in the previous post were the earliest Baba Ania pictures I have.
And here is the last one prior to her marriage to my grandfather. For her excellent work, she was promoted, and the picture below shows her among the employees of the Eliseyev store – the number one grocery/delicatessen store in Saint Petersburg before the Revolution and later in Leningrad. See this wiki article for details.
Can you find my grandmother? She is in the top row, second from the right.
My historical posts are being published in random order. Please refer to the page Hettie’s timeline to find where exactly each post belongs and what was before and after.
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