Alice and William

William and Alice

Grandfather and Grandmother more than likely belonged to the same parish of the established Church of England and met there. Social life on the island revolved around morning mass and vesper service in the evenings. Grandfather also conducted services for the seamen at St. Peter Port harbor, when he became a Baptist for a short time. He never seemed to stay with one denomination for any great length of time but bounced from the English Church to Baptist in Guernsey, Episcopalian in Canada, Baptist again in the U.S. but finally stayed Presbyterian for the latter part of his life, where from time to time he conducted services at First Presbyterian in Portland, although he was never ordained.

We cousins always tried to stay in pairs when he was around, as he never cornered more than one of us at at time for a private lecture about sinners becoming saints, which we had no great desire to be.

The Heads lost a great deal of investments, bad years in wheat in Saskatchewan, foreign bonds during World War I and again in real estate during the Great Depression (they were worth what would have been several million dollars in my generation). They led a very comfortable life. Grandfather, although owning a large farm, did no labor himself. He did, however, enjoy tending his own vegetable garden – strawberries and asparagus beds and also gathered the eggs, milked Bessie the cow, gathered and stored the supplies in the root garden cellar.