My Family and How We Grew

Margaret Sherman's My Family and How We Grew is the fascinating tale of Madge Allen Nelson, (mother of golfer Byron Nelson,) told for the most part in her own words. Like Laura Ingalls Wilder, Mrs. Nelson brings an earlier age to vivid life. Her forthright and amusing descriptions carry us through her carefree and adventurous childhood as the only surviving daughter of a Tennessee farmer/lumberman; the trials and joys of early educational experiences in one-room schools; teenage marriage to a Texas farmer much her senior and her efforts to master household management; the birth and growth of her won remarkable children; and her later years as matriarch of an extended family, pillar of her church, and unofficial manager into her seventies of her son's ranch. Beginning in 1894, when the Civil War was a recent memory, and ending in the Gulf War era, Madge Nelson's story spans almost ninety-nine years. Her life, which she considered very ordinary, and her philosophy had a profound effect not only upon her children - Byron, a famous golfer, Charles, a noted musician and Margaret, author of this book - but also upon her friends, her community and all those who met her. Her story illustrates yet again the far-reaching influence possible to an ordinary woman of extraordinary character.