Thomas F. Grannell

  General Notes:

From the 6pp manuscript by Guy Grannell in 1937:
"Thomas F. Grannell was named after his father, and he resembled him in appearance and some other ways. He was not very talkative, and on account of his unusual strength and size, he was called `Jumbo' by his brothers. Barnum's Circus came to Norwalk when he was young man, and when the circus left town Thomas Grannell was missing. A few weeks later he returned home, tired and dirty, having walked all the way from Chicago. he said that during a quarrel amond circus men, he had seen one of them picked up by the others and tossed over a wall and he had heard him land with a dull thus on the other side. After his experience with the circus, Thomas tried his luck as a fireman on the railroad. But that job ws not very safe in those days either, and after a narrow escape from being killed because of an engineer being color-blind, he gave up that work also. Not long after Thomas quit the railroad, he happened to be in Cleveland without much money and he was anxious to get home to Norwalk. Seeing a train headed that way, he approched the engineer, with whom he had some acquaintance, and asked if he could ride on the engine. The engineer refused because the private car of the president of the road was attached to the train, and he didn't want to do anything that would be irregular. He jokingly told Thomas that maybe the president would allow him to ride in the private car. When the train arrived in Norwalk, the engineer was surprised to see Thomas again standing beside the engine. He had followed the engineer's suggestion, told his story to the President of the Road, and had been allowed to ride in the private car. Like his father and brothers, Thomas F. was a stone cutter and worked in the Bronson and East Norwalk stone quarries. Later, he worked for his brother, Charles A. on his works in Pennsylvania and elsewhere. Because Thomas wsa a man of few words, it wa sometimes a source of amusement to this relatives and friends to note what he would say when pressed for a reply. Thus one time a friend of the Grannell family, John Costello „ had the misfortunre to lose a leg. Mrs. Grannell (Mary Collins) was going to call on him, she asked her son Thomas what he would like to have rbought to him jif he had lost a leg. Thomas replied, "I'd want them tobring me another leg." Thomas F. Grannell was married to Flora Beerson Novembe r22, 1888. They were parents of two sons Raymond L. (1891-1916) and Leo born in 1893 and now residing in (1937) in the city of Buffalo, NY. But the mother of these boys was taken suddenly ill with diptheria at Fairhope, PA in 1897. She was hastily brought to the home of her parents near Norwalk, but failed to recover. Four years later, January 8, 1901, Thomas F. married a second time; this time to Nellie Powers, a sister to his borther-in-law, John Powers. After his second marriage, Thomas moved to Grafton, West Virginia. About the year 1900, he had experienced a severe attack of pneumonia and though he had appeared to have recovered something of his former strength, this appearance was deceptive. His health failed rapidly and he spent a part of the winter of 1903-1904 in Tennessee, in the hope that a change of climate might benefit him. The change appeared to help but little if any and he died at Laferty, Ohio in August 1904. He was buried in St. Mary's Cemetary at Norwalk, near the graves of his parents and those of other close relatives."

  Noted events in his life were:

• Census, 1880, Independence, Cuyahoga, Ohio, USA.

Thomas married Flora May Beers on 22 Nov 1888 in Norwalk, Huron, Ohio, USA. (Flora May Beers was born in 1868.)