For this year’s A to Z Challenge, I will be posting an event for that date involving someone in my family tree. Of course it will also involve the letter of the day. It may be a birth, a death, a christening, a journal entry, a letter or a newspaper article. If the entry is a news item, it will be transcribed immediately below. Click on photographs to enlarge in another window.
BIRTH ANNOUNCEMENT.
The hearts of Mr. and Mrs. Merchell Graham were gladened Saturday, April 3rd, by the arrival of a sweet baby girl. Mr. and Mrs. Graham now reside in Detroit, Mich., but both are former Montgomerians.
_______________
Mr. and Mrs. Mershell Graham were my maternal grandparents. Mary Virginia Graham, born April 3, 1920 was my mother’s older sister and my aunt.
My grandfather, Mershell Graham came to Detroit from Montgomery, Alabama in 1917. He proposed to my grandmother, Fannie Turner in 1918. She accepted and they were married on June 15, 1919 at Fannie’s home in Montgomery and left the same day for Detroit.
They roomed with friends from home and lived there when Mary Virginia was born. Mershell worked in an Auto plant as an inspector. My grandmother did not work outside of the home after her marriage.
______________
The Proposal – 1918
The Proposal Accepted – 1918
Mershell Graham and Fannie Mae Turner Marriage License – 11 June 1919
Graham-Turner Wedding – 1919 Montgomery Alabama
F – FAMILY, MY GRAHAMS in the 1920 Census
Another lovely photo of the two of them! 🙂 Also, there is something sweet that births were announced like that.
The Multicolored Diary
I think so too, on both counts.
Love seeing these old pictures. Well done.
I’m so happy I have so many old photos.
Sharing them is so important though so cousins and other relatives can see too – this blog does a great job of that!
I agree! In fact one of my granddaughter is following this A to Z and commented right below you. Love it!
awww such a precious smile on the Mary Virginia’s face in the first picture. also very cool that an Alabama newspaper was sharing news of her birth even though they’d moved to Detroit.
This was during the Great Migration when thousands of African Americans moved from the south to the north. There was already a large community of people from Montgomery who had come to Detroit in 1920 The editor of the paper in Montgomery was Fannie’s first cousin. He and his family moved to Detroit the following year and started a newspaper there, so we still had a lot of family coverage back then.
Very nice pictures! And a reminder of what’s been lost when local papers close and we only have big ones. They are not carrying the “neighbor news”
that supports community building – even across state lines…
So true Jilo.
I love these old photos and news articles!
I couldn’t have done this years challenge without them! 🙂
Happy heavenly birthday to my mom.
Amen! Happy to see you here DD. You will appear in the letter “N” when you were Christened and received a new bonnet.
You have such wonderful photos!
Thank you!
Great pictures. I love the ‘did not work outside the home after the marriage’. How to make a wife a non-person!
You weren’t saying she was a nonperson because she didn’t work outside the home,did you? She was very much a person, she just didn’t work outside of the home.
Now, that is one cuddly baby! (Who was the other girl in that photo, I wonder, the one with the bow in her hair?) I love that people would put birth announcements in the newspapers in those days. Wonder when that practice died out?
That was Mignon, the daughter of the couple that owned the house where my grandparents roomed. She wasn’t related to us.
I love that their hearts were gladdened! =) A very cuddly baby indeed.
https://nydamprintsblackandwhite.blogspot.com/2025/03/c-is-for-cooperation.html
I imagine she was quite cuddly.
The baby has a gorgeous smile
And so little to be smiling!
That’s the most delightful birthday announcement I’ve read. And of course, lovely photos.
Most that’ I’ve read are so dry, just names of parents and maybe grandparents.
Lovely old photos, and a very cute baby. A new baby is alway a joyous occasion. I love the birth announcement.
I looked for one for Mary Virginia’s baby girl years later and found none. Sigh.
Nice details, Kristen…
Thank you!
These are great photos, baby has a wonderful smile! It’s so nice to read birth announcements in the local papers, indicates such a sense of close knit community.
And in this case, a publisher who was related! There were other nice announcements in the paper to be fair.
Yeah, that baby has a great smile. Do you know anything about the dog in the last picture?
I never heard anything about that dog. I suppose it belonged to the people who owned the house where my grandparents roomed. When they had their own house later and my mother was growing up, they had two dogs, neither of which looked like that one, named Bonzo and Tootles.