This is a bonus post and not a part of the A to Z
Eleven years ago in 2014, I published this photograph of my grandmother on the steps of her church with some friends. I decided to look on newspaper.com and see if anything was going on at Church that Sunday. There was! It was the 17th Anniversary of Plymouth Congregational Church.
Written on the back of the photograph by my grandmother Fannie:
“Mrs. C. L. Thompson, Miss Watt, Mrs. Martha Lee (Died July 1937), F. Graham. Taken as we talked on our Church steps 5/17/36 by Jim Dunbar”
______________
PLYMOUTH CHURCH TO CELEBRATE 17TH ANNIVERSARY
REV. WHITE TO DELIVER SERMON
Plymouth Congregational Church, at Garfield and Beaubien, will celebrate its seventeenth anniversary,! Sunday, May 17 and during; the week following.
The minister, Rev. Horace White, will deliver the anniversary sermon, Sunday, May 17. Special music will be rendered by the choir.
Other features of the week’s program will include an address on “The Social Message of the Church,” by Rev. A. C. Williams, pastor of Metropolitan Baptist Church, Tuesday, May 19. His Senior Choir will provide the music. Wednesday, May 20, at 7 p. m. the church’s annual birthday dinner will be held, and after the dinner, Dr. Harold M. Kingsley, of Chicago, will speak. Friday, May 22, will be observed as “Frolic Night.’’ The young people of the church will furnish the program. All members and friends of the church are invited to join Plymouth in celebrating the seventeenth anniversary of its work in Detroit.
In 1936 the Grahams lived on THEODORE Street on the east side of Detroit. My grandfather Mershell worked at Ford’s Rouge plant in the Electrical Stacks. He was 49 years old. He was one of the founders of Plymouth Church.
My grandmother Fannie was 47 years old. She didn’t work outside of the home. They kept chickens, had a large garden and several fruit trees. My grandfather rode the streetcar to work and they drove “Lizzie” to church. They had bought their first car, “Lizzie” two years earlier and kept it until the late 1950s.
My aunt Mary Virginia was 16 and my mother Doris was 13. Both were students at Eastern High School on East Grand Blvd and within walking distance of their house.
This photograph was taken the previous Sunday , Mother’s Day.
From Montgomery to Detroit – Plymouth Congregational Church – 1919
P – PLYMOUTH Congregational Church – 1928
Interesting facts and memories. Photographs are precious. With today’s trend to pictures on pictures on phones and computers, rarely printed, I wonder what memories later generations will have
I am guilty of having so many unprinted photos! I should do something about that.
So much activity at the church! It was really the social center. Being able to take public transportation or walk, with chickens, gardens and fruit trees sounds ideal. I think I will plant my container garden on the patio today. You think the neighbors would complian about a chicken on the apartments second floor screened porch?
As long as you only have a hen and it doesn’t roost on the porch railing, you might get away with it…
I wonder if Grandma and MV had roles in the Frolic Night! Interesting to be thinking about the lives lived by my grandmother and great-grandparents when they were all younger than I am now. Nothing else has really brought the phrase “the circle of life” into quite such sharp focus for me.
They probably had some role. MV is in the photo with the youth. Maybe my mother was too young?
Yes, reading about lives in the past does bring the circle of life into reality.
Satisfying to link the photo with the newspaper reports. you are lucky to have the ophotos so precisely captioned.
Yes. My maternal grandmother was very good about labeling the photos. I do appreciate it!!