T – TRAVELING from the South up North – Cleage

This is part three of my family’s migration story. Today the Cleages leave Tennessee and make their way to Detroit.

Celia Rice and Louis Cleage were both born in McMinn County, Tennessee. After the Civil War, both were living in Athens where they met and married in 1872.

All five children of Celia Rice and Louis Cleage were born in Loudon County, Tennessee where Louis was share cropping. Sometime in the late 1890s, they separated. Celia returned to Athens where in 1899, she married William Roger Sherman, a carpenter. The five children – Josephine, Jacob, Henry, Edward and Albert, attended school there.

Josephine’s husband, James Cleage (a different branch) and Henry Cleage became teachers. In 1901 James and his family moved to North Carolina where he taught at Henderson Normal & Industrial College. My grandfather Albert went with them and attended two years. After graduating, he went to Knoxville College in Knoxville, Tennessee and graduated in 1904 with a BA.

By 1904 Henry, Jacob, James and Josephine had moved north to Indianapolis, Indiana. Henry’s second child was born there in 1904. His wife died the same year. Celia came north to help with his two motherless children. In 1907, he lost his daughter. Celia returned to Athens with the son. Henry worked at the post office. Jacob worked as a waiter and had various businesses. James was working as a laborer. It was rare for people who had been teachers in the south to move north and continue to teach, unless they took college classes to upgrade their credentials.

By 1907 Albert had moved to Indianapolis. He lived with his brothers while attending Indiana University Medical School. That left Charles and his family in Athens. Everyone else had moved north.

In 1910 my grandfather Albert graduated and married Pearl Reed. He began to look further north for a place to set up his practice. In 1911, after my father’s birth, the family moved to Kalamazoo, Michigan.

By 1915, Albert’s good friend Dr. Parker Gamble had convinced him to move to Detroit. The family settled there permanently.

By 1920 Jacob Cleage was living in Detroit. By 1922 Henry was also in Detroit. After her husband’s death, Josephine moved to Detroit with her son David by 1934.

Charles Edward and his family remained in Athens Tennessee. He suffered from rheumatoid arthritis and died in 1926. His siblings and their families visited both before and after his death.

No one was sent down for the summer. Uncle Henry’s oldest son spent time there with his grandmother when he was growing up because his mother died when he was very young, about five years old. Some of Charles Edward’s daughters came to Detroit to attend school but returned to Athens afterwards.

Their mother, Celia moved to Detroit in the mid 1920s and lived there until her death in 1930.