sollers

My grandmother's parents were Germans who fled Russia in the 1920s, so our boogeymen were the Bolsheviks. (Bad men with beards, I hear.) But a lot of the details are hazy. Most of my family history I know is on my dad's side, and that because my great-grandfather spent decades tracking down family letters and photos and writing it all down. It's really odd to read the letters from mid-19th century about relatives involved in major historical events, telling each other which of their friends from home just died in battle and complaining about drunken officers. It suddenly moves out of that realm of Grand List of Distant Historical Events Carved in Marble.