Nana was born September 15, 1923 in an old black house on the corner across from Kennedy Cross Roads near Elimsport PA. The fourth child of Benjamin and Pearl Tilburg's five children, she was the third girl in the family. Elizabeth was born in 1910, Grace in 1912, John in 1920 and Ben in 1930.
Old Picture of the Black House with Mother and Dad Tilburg and Elizabeth and Grace.
Taken before Nana was born.
Nana lived in the black house until one of the most traumatic events
of her childhood. According to Nana, one
day her dad got very drunk on moonshine, grabbed her mother and put her head on a chopping
block. He was ready to chop off her head with an ax when a neighbor saw him and
stopped him before he could strike her. Nana was about five at the
time.
By this time, Elizabeth and Grace were living in an
apartment in Williamsport where they worked at the rubber factory. Mother Tilburg took Nana and John and left Dad Tilburg and the black house to go live with Nana's Uncle Bert and Aunt Katherine. It was summer and Nana loved being on the farm. She looks so happy in this photo.
Nana and Uncle Bert, about 1929
When winter came, it was too cold to stay in the
rooms provided by Uncle Bert and Aunt Katherine. Nana and John and Mother Tilburg moved to Williamsport
to share the apartment with Elizabeth and Grace. That year Nana was supposed to go to
first grade. She told me she was so
shy and upset to leave her mother that she cried every day. Finally, Mother Tilburg decided to wait a
year to have her start school.
Nana remembers her dad coming to visit them in the apartment. He brought her and John toys and was trying to convince Mother Tilburg to come back to him. Nana remembers her mother and dad disappeared into the bedroom and stayed for a long while. A few months later, her mother was pregnant. Mother Tilburg, John and Nana moved back with Dad Tilburg into a rented house near Elimsport on the property of Tenner Moore. Ben was born there in 1930.
The family lived there until Nana was in her teens
when Pap Tilburg built them a house several miles from Elimsport on a winding road leading to the mountain. She
moved into the house when she was seventeen and lived there until she married Stanley Rhone when she was nineteen.
Nana at the back of the house built by Dad Tilburg
