Cyril Richardson Tifft was born into a family of pioneers. Most were among the earliest settlers in New England in the mid-1600s. Later they became early settlers in Illinois and Minnesota. This is the story of Cyril’s ancestors in America.
Cyril Richardson Tifft, a revered physician and surgeon in St. Paul, Minnesota for over forty years, was born in Glencoe, Minnesota in 1906. He was married twice—first to Beatrice Hallberg, who passed away suddenly in 1946, and second to Jean Goodrich Watson, a WW II widow with a small son. With Beatrice, he had two daughters, and with Jean he had a third daughter. In 1949, Cyril and Jean adopted each other’s children, creating one large blended family.
Mary Tifft’s mother died when Mary was twenty-six months old. Her father valiantly tried to find a suitable housekeeper to take care of his motherless daughters and his home but for more than six months housekeepers came and went through a revolving door. During that time, Mary was more-or-less unsupervised. This is the tale of the capers she got into with the neighborhood kids, and the mischief she introduced her new step-brother to when her father remarried.
