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He is such a nice-looking ugly man, and I would rather listen to him talk than read the most interesting book.... Mama is ever so much better and is getting prettier every day." "The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson," written by her sister Mrs. The romantic excitements of R. L. S.'s youth were tame indeed compared to those of Fanny Van de Grift.
The Osbournes, together with nearly all their friends and relatives, cast in their lot with the North, and young Osbourne left his family and went to the war as captain in the army. We must now return to the dark, handsome boy, George Marshall, once the favourite playmate and now the brother-in-law of Fanny Van de Grift.
As Esther Van de Grift limited her corrections of her children to an occasional mild remonstrance, they worked out their own individualities with little interference. Fanny was what the children called a "tomboy," and always preferred the boys' sports, the more daring the better.
After nearly a year she yielded to entreaties and promises of reform, and again journeyed to California, taking Cora Van de Grift, one of her younger sisters, with her. A little while after their return to San Francisco, in 1869, Osbourne bought a house and lot for his family in East Oakland, then known as Brooklyn, at the corner of Eleventh Avenue and East 18th Street.
This name has descended in an unbroken line from Jacob Leendertsen Van de Grift, of New Amsterdam, through eleven generations, to the brother of Fanny Stevenson, Jacob Van de Grift, of Riverside, California. John Miller, a paternal great-grandfather of ours, was also Dutch.
Stevenson had a strange and dramatic meeting with Samuel Osbourne's second wife, a quiet, gentle little woman whom he married soon after his divorce from Fanny Van de Grift.
When Jacob Van de Grift arrived in Indianapolis in 1836 the first rawness of frontier life had passed away, and many of the comforts of civilization had made their way out from the East or up from New Orleans.
The records show that they were married in Philadelphia in 1837. Like many another irresponsible young man, Jacob Van de Grift married became quite a different person. Returning to Indianapolis, he built a house for himself with the aid of friends, and, launching out into the lumber business, soon became one of the prosperous and solid citizens of the place.
As long as she lived she never forgot just how this cradle looked. Jacob Van de Grift, father of Fanny Van de Grift Stevenson, was a fine-looking man, broad-shouldered and deep-chested, slightly above medium height, blue-eyed, black-haired, and with the regular features and rosy complexion of his Dutch ancestors.
The little house on the Circle was made into a pleasant home partly by furniture sent by Jacob's mother from Philadelphia, partly by articles made by himself, for he had served a short apprenticeship at cabinet-making while living in his grandfather's house. Among other pieces of furniture made by him was the cradle in which Fanny Van de Grift was rocked.
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