Charles Alden Grannell

  General Notes:

These are notes from John K. Grannell of Berkeley, CA sent to the author on October 1, 1971:
"My father met mother in California in 1901 as a chance meeting in Southern California where C.A.G. worked and mother visiting. Married January 2, 1904. Lived in tents and railroad cars, where CAG was a civil engineer with both city of Los Angeles on the first Los Angeles Aqueduct, then Southern Pacific Company in 1906. They went to Quaymos, Mexico on loan from Southern Pacific Company to build Rio-Yacqui-Pacific Railroad. Revolution chased them out, and back to S.P Company. In 1908, they moved to first home in Auburn, California. Dad (CAG) was with S.P. RR and he was civil engineer (who) built Colfax yards for switching trains over the Sierra to Nevada. ..see California map east of Sacramento. First son, Maris Alden Grannell, born Auburn, June 30, 1912. Second son (the author) John Kennard Grannell, born Auburn, CA, on November 27, 1915 with a family started C.A. G did not want to move around anymore, so opened a stationary store, in Auburn in 1911 or so. He did not do well and when offered a job as cost accountant -engineering to build the San Pablo Dam (in Orinda over the hill from Berkeley). He and Elizabeth, Maris, and John moved to Berkeley, California in 1917. After dam was done, he entered real estate as a broker, and dealt in real estate until he died in 1942 of cancer. William Milner Grannell was born in Oakland hospital on November 9, 1919, and my sister, Elizabeth Ann Grannell, born Oakland hospital on May 12, 1923."
"Charles A. Grannell...was highly nervous, very fast, both mentally and physically. He boxed as his hobby as a young man, and more than held his own during years with the Southern Pacific Railroad. During 1920-1929 in real estate he amassed quite an estate.... Dad once told me that his father CAG changed his name from Aidan to Alden, as he received a large check, misspelled Aidan so he kept Alden and dropped Aidan"

  Noted events in his life were:

• Fact 1: Nickname "Shorty."

• Census: Federal, 1910, Placer California, Township 3. Living with Annie Williams, Mother in Law said she was 71 making her born in 1839

Charles married Sarah Elizabeth Williams, daughter of Jesse Maris Williams and Anna Maria Milner, on 2 Jan 1904 in Chicago, Cook, Illinois, USA. (Sarah Elizabeth Williams was born on 3 Jan 1876 in Mount Pleasant, Jefferson, Ohio, USA and died on 2 Nov 1966 in Morro Bay, San Luis Obispo, California, USA.)