HomeGRANT BOBZIEN lived most of his life far from his mother's family in Bensenville, IL, but he kept in touch with letters and visits. Although we tend to think of people who lived in the rural communities of Iowa as being isolated but the Bobziens came to Chicago annually to attend ballgames and the livestock shows. They would often gather at the home of his mother's sister in Bensenville to visit. In later years, Grant gave up farming and became an area distributor for Conoco Oil in Iowa Falls. I quote from his letters: "Mother's name was Schmidt Three months on a sail boat over the Atlantic and up the Mississippi river to the drainage canal in Chicago. Mother's first husband was Wilhem Stute. They had the second drug store in Chicago. Mother told about the big fire in Chicago. She told her family that she remembered seeing people running in panic down the streets of Chicago. She saw a lady carrying an empty bird cage and one man was carrying a stovepipe Lena was our half sister, married to Art Sweet. His mother was a James. Her father was a brother of Jesse James' father, so you see we are related to the Jesse James gang--bank and train robbers. Their last job was at Northfleld, Minnesota where they were shot up. When mother lost her first husband Stute, she married Bobzien.
Before moving west, Bobziens lived in Chicago. Grant letters stated that he had a corner newsstand and that the best corners were held by the toughest kids in the neighborhood. He always made sure that his partner was the toughest. They then moved to Hastings, Nebraska where they operated a hotel "Dad located homesteaders in Kansas and Nebraska and Mother ran the hotel."
Growing up in this environment explains why Grant became a real western cowboy and had so many tales to tell. He excelled in story telling--he once told us that as he emerged from his house one morning he was charged by a vicious dog, so he went back inside, got his gun and shot the dog, then buried it. Some time later a farmer came looking for his lost dog, so Grant sold him one of his pups for $5.00.
Later they moved to Iowa to live on the farm which Grant's mother inherited from her father Johann Schmidt and where he related his farming experiences in the paper. His article entitled Yesterday's Threshing was printed in many farm publications. His account of threshing is an accurate description of the way this annual event took place on a farm. To his description of the When he left the farm, he started a Conoco oil business. Whenever anyone in the family planned a long motor trip they would write Grant and Conoco would send maps with recommended routes, motels, etc. He knew how to promote his oil business. He owned a tract of woodland in Colorado. Each fall he and his friends would go hunting. They'd bring back a deer or two and invite everyone in town to a venison dinner at a public hall.
While unloading gasoline an explosion occurred killing Grant's son. Grant had a step brother whose son was Colonel Bobzien, who graduated from West Point and who was at Pearl Harbor when it was bombed. He later died in an air crash in Japan. There is a street named Bobzien at the air base, presumably named after him. It is doubtful that in that pioneer era Grant received much formal schooling, but his writings show he had the gift of composition. He died in 1975 at age 92.