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Verne Laing ROOTS Since
these reminiscences are primarily for my children and grandchildren perhaps I
should include a little family background. My
grandfather, John Allen, M.D., in the 1880's as a student at Washington Med
School in St. Louis participated in the first use of ether as an anesthetic west
of the Mississippi River. As a
practicing physician in Kansas he had in his office a drug cabinet and mixed his
own prescriptions. That was usual
in those days, before the days of modern drug stores.
My grandfather Robert Coursen Laing was a stone mason.
In his days the mason actually cut and laid the stone at the building
site. Dr. Allen was a six-footer
who hated smoking, particularly cigarettes; but Grandpa Laing was barely five
feet tall with a Santa Claus type white beard and was an inveterate pipe-smoker.
So as not to appear too chauvinistic, my grandmothers were Anna McGregor
Allen (her maiden name was Anna Sparks)
and she was first married to a Mr. McGregor.
After his death, she married Grandpa John Allen, M.D. My father's mother
was Josephine Van Sickle Laing. Elbert
George Laing called "E.G." or 'Bert" and my mother, whose maiden
name was Reitha Lenore Allen, both came from the Missouri Ozark country.
Dadd from Jericho Springs and Mom from Aurora.
He came to Alliance, Nebraska in the western panhandle of that state
shortly after his discharge as bugler and company barber from the Army in the
Spanish-American War. So I was born
and grew up in Alliance. PATERNAL SIDE
In
1792, Edith Lundy married Samuel Laing. They
had 10 children (one of whom, Joseph C. Laing, married Anna Coursen Bunting).
Their son, Samuel Webster Laing married Charlotte Miller in 1836 - they had 9
children. Their son (my
grandfather) Robert Coursen Laing born 1846 married Josephine Van Sickle in
1874 and they had 6 children. Their
son (MX father) Elbert George Laing born in 1878 married in 1903 to Reitha
Lenore Allen mother). MATERNAL SIDE Robert
Sparks married Elizabeth Shaw (her mother was Miss Craig of Craigie just outside
of Cork, Ireland). They had 6
daughters and 3 sons. Their
daughter (m ei grandmother) Anna first married to Mr. McGregor.
They had a son George McGregor (who lived in Dallas, Texas).
After Mr. McGregor died she married John Allen, M.D. (my
grandfather). They had one
daughter. Their daughter (MZ
mother) Reitha Lenore Allen married in 1903 to Elbert George Laing (my
father). They had 3 children; Eugenia
Chester Laing Hofferber, born October 4, 1905; Verne McGregor Laing born April
15, 1907 and Allen Boyd Laing, born April 12, 1920. The
genealogy of the Laing family back to 1792 is found as the Sixth Branch of the
Lundy Family in "The Lundy Family and Their Descendants' by W. C.
Armstrong, pages 310-311 Copyrighted 1902
Copyright
© 1999, 2000 Verne Laing. "I,
Witness to History" and logo are trademarks of Wesley Retirement
Communities, Inc., d/b/a Larksfield Place. All rights reserved.
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