All posts by Kristin

Just The Facts – Timeline For My Great Aunt Alice

Timeline,

1866 October 1 – Jennie Allen Turner born (Alice’s mother)
1888 March 12 – Fannie born (Alice’s oldest sister)
1890 May – Daisy born (sister)
1905 Jennie married Wright  (according to the 1910 census)
1910 Census – 7th Precinct, Montgomery     19 April 1910
Top of the page is Sallie H. Wright, a widow and a teacher
Address 712 E. Grove Street
Jennie T. Wright – age 40 2nd marriage, 5 years Dressmaker – 3 children, all living (44)
Fannie Mae Turner – age 20 book keeper (22)
Daisy Turner – age 17 clerk (20)
Alice Wright – age 2 father born North Carolina (after this census Alice’s last name is always given as “Turner”, Jennie’s first husband who died in 1892.)
1918 – Daisy taught school at Booker Washington Elementary
1919 – Daisy taught school at Booker Washington Elementary
1920 Census – Precinct 7 (part of) 19 January 1920 Montgomery Alabama
Address 712 Grove Street
Jennie Turner – age 52 – Widow Seamstress (54)
Daisy Turner – age 25 clerk at grocery (30)
Alice Turner – age 11 – attended school, can read and write.
1921 July 31, photo taken in Windsor, Ontario with Beulah and Robert Pope
1922 Nov. 23 Letter from Victor Tulane, he’s shipping Gr.Turner’s things to Detroit.
1924 Oct 11 – Certificate of Survey for Theodore applicant Fred L. Marsh
1920’s – Undated photograph of seamstresses at Anis Furs.  Jennie, Daisy and Alice are all in the photo.

1930 Census – Precinct 57 3 Apr 1930 Detroit, Michigan
Address 4836 Harding
Jennie Turner – age 62 – owns home. Worth $7,000  Widow. Not working (64)
Daisy Turner – age 30 – single Head portreress at a Fur Store (40)
Alice E. Turner – age 21 – single. Not working
1954 March 28 – Mother Jennie dies. Alice continues to live with sister Daisy in same house.
1961 November 24 – Daisy dies after a days illness. Alice moves in with her sister Fannie and her husband Mershell.
During this time Alice is diagnosed with schizophrenia.
1963 SSN issued 365-48-4560
1964 August 18 – Alice made her best/last cake (Entry in Fannie’s bible)
1966 April 18  Alice’s Aunt Abbie becomes ill and is moved to a nursing home. Dies on this date.
1968 Summer – Family moves to a flat with Doris (Fannie’s daughter & Alice’s niece)

1973 September 6 – Brother-in-law Mershell Graham Sr dies (Alice’s brother-in-law)
1973 – Sister Fannie has a stroke and is moved to a nursing home. Alice is moved to senior housing.

1974 August 13 – Sister Fannie Mae Turner Graham dies.
1974 September 27 – Guardianship of Alice Turner, a mentally incompetent person, to niece Doris
1982 April 30 – Niece Doris dies and guardianship turned over to niece Mary V.
1994 November 16 – Alice dies after being in failing health.
1994 November – Cremated and ashes buried in mother Jennie’s grave in Detroit Memorial Park Cemetery.

Finding Alice

Allen, Investigations, Photographs,
Robert Pope, Jennie V. Turner, Beulah Pope (back) Alice Turner, my Aunt Daisy.

August 18 was my Great Aunt Alice’s birthday.  I decided to do a quick post about her. Found a few photographs.  Wrote out my memories. Something wasn’t right. I wrote a cousin and my sister asking for their memories. They both sent them and of course all of our memories both overlap and are different. I found my mother’s memories. I looked for more photos. I looked for documents. I realized some of what I “knew” I couldn’t document. So, I’ve spent the last week trying to figure Alice’s life out when there is no one left to ask about particulars. Now I’m working on a timeline to incorporate both the facts and the memories and the contradictions. Today I dug out a photograph I vaguely remembered as being of Alice and my great grandmother Jennie in Canada. As soon as I found it, I realized that the young man and one of the other women were also relatives. The woman behind my great grandmother was her youngest sister, Beulah Allen Pope and her son, Robert is the young man in the front. I recognized them because Robert’s daughter sent me a photograph of them that must have been taken the same day because they are wearing the same clothes.  The photo is dated “July 31, 1921 Toronto Windsor, Canada.” I did not realize they were there so early. More wondering and looking.  I have ordered Alice’s Social Security application and death certificate hoping to find more information.

Photo sent by cousin Ruth. Taken in Detroit.

Trip to Jekyll Island

sepia saturday

Usually I do not post photos from the present but, when I saw the theme for this week’s Sepia Saturday was a Georgia live oak and I had just returned from a trip to Jekell Island, GA with photos of Georgia live oaks with Spanish Moss dripping off of them it was too good to pass up.

My daughter photographing the same live oak. Wish we’d gotten a better shot. Next time.
Corner of the veranda where I sat and waited for my daughter to finish her meetings. Note the live oak in the background.
Daughter in the Atlantic Ocean.
Me in the Atlantic Ocean.
Our toes just touched the water.

The Angel Oak

To finish up, here is a postcard from my collection.  We actually visited this 1,500+ year old oak in 1975 but did not get a photograph!  Hard to believe. Click this link to learn all you ever wanted to know about the Angel Oak.  For other posts of trees of all types click SepiaSaturday.

Alphonso Brown – Marriage Certificate

Allen, Investigations,
Aunt Abbie, Fannie, Mershell (my grandparents), Alphonso, Henry, Me, Doris (my mother)

Aunt Abbie, my great grandmother’s sister, lived with my grandparents , Fannie and Mershell Graham since the time I was born. Aunt Abbie’s son, Alphonso, came to visit her sometimes during the summer. My mother told me that he never married and lived alone in New York, as did his brother, Earl.

While looking through New York records for anything I could find about Alphonso or Earl, I came across a marriage record for Alphonso Brown and Helen Wilson. I immediately sent for a copy.  It arrived today.  Aunt Abbie’s son was indeed married Dec. 17, 1928 to Helen Wilson in New York.  More family information/memories proved wrong.  This is my second bachelor uncle to actually have been married.

Past is Present – Springfield Massachusetts 1948 – 1950

Cleages, Photographs, , ,
 

Here are three combined photographs using Google Images with photographs of my family superimposed on them.  I am participating in World Photography Day on August 19, through the Family Curator website with these photos.

 
This a photograph of my mother, Doris Graham Cleage, standing on the porch of the parsonage at 210 King Street.  This was taken in 1946, Several months after I was born.
 
St. John’s Congregational Church on the corner of Union and Hancock Streets in Springfield, Mass. My father, Rev. Albert B. Cleage Jr, is sitting on the porch. This was around 1948.
 
The last photo was taken on the Community house/parsonage that we lived in after the house on King Street was sold. I am on the left, a little girl from church is in the middle and my sister Pearl is on the right.  This was taken in 1950 soon before we moved to Detroit.

Dinner Time

52 weeks of personal history, Cleages, memories, ,

I remember being three years old. My parents and I ate dinner together while my younger sister, Pearl, played in her playpen, wearing her favorite fuzzy blue hat.  The dinner table was in the living room/dining room of the parsonage of St. John’s Congregational Church in Springfield, Massachusetts where my father was the minister.  I used to hide my food under my chicken wing bones because I was never very hungry.  I thought nobody noticed.

Pearl in her tam. 1949, Springfield, Mass.

When my sister was older, the four of us ate meals together.   We moved to Detroit when I was 4 and lived in two other parsonages. The first was on Atkinson we had a small dining room and ate there for all meals.  My father’s parents lived down the street and he was often there for dinner leaving my mother, my sister and me eating alone.

The dining room on Atkinson. My mother is standing. You can see the back of my father’s head. His brother Louis is on the left. His brother Hugh is on the right and you can just see his sister Anna’s curl and chin. I guess Henry took the photo because he isn’t in it.  I wonder why they are all at our table and where Pearl and I are.  I remember those little fat turquoise salt and pepper shakers and the glass sugar and creamer.  About 1952.

 The next house, which was on Chicago Blvd, was huge and shared with the church. We always ate in the kitchen.  My father teased me about being so skinny and told me I needed to eat more before I went down the bathtub drain or stuck in the chair because my bottom was so thin. When I was 8 years old I had my tonsils removed. I told my mother my fork wasn’t heavy any more.  I started eating.  There was roast beef and sliced tomatoes, chicken pot pies and oatmeal.  I only remember eating one meal in the dining room.  It was the Thanksgiving dinner right before my parents separated and we moved.   My mother started teaching at the same elementary school I attended.

My mother, my sister and I moved to an upper  flat on Calvert. What was supposed to be the dining room, was made into the television room and we ate our meals in the breakfast room while watching the pigeons nesting near the roof next door.  We named one of them Bridie Murphy.  We ate family style with bowls of food on the table that we served ourselves from.  There was no free for all.  “Please.” and “Thank you.” and “You’re welcome.” were expected and used.  My mother cooked but my sister and I set the table and took turns washing the dishes and clearing the rack and table, usually with much whispering about who’s turn it was to do what. We whispered because my mother said she didn’t want to hear any arguing about it.  I took cooking in junior high school and learned to make pineapple muffins which I made often. I remember fried chicken, mashed potatoes, jello salad and green beans.

When I was in 7th grade we moved to our own house on Oregon St.  The kitchen was too small to eat in and we ate in the dining room which was pretty crowded with a piano, the dining room table and chairs and my mother’s desk (See photo below).  My sister and I soon added cooking one meal a week to our dinner chores.  I don’t remember what I cooked, aside from biscuits. I remember Pearl cooked a lot of hot dogs and corn bread.

My mother remarried when I was in high school and we all ate dinner together unless Henry was working late.  He and my uncle Hugh had a printing shop at that time and often worked through the night.  I remember Henry saying how important it was for a family to sit down to dinner together because it might be the only time of the day they spent together.  As we got older there were interesting dinner table conversations about politics, what happened that day and more politics.  Dinner continued to be a meal shared by all who were home as long as I lived there.

Not dinner, but this is the dining room of the house on Oregon Street about 1962. From left, my mother with the braid, sister Pearl, aunt Gladys, Me, my father.

When I was raising my own 6 children we ate together, although my husband was often working and did not get to eat with us. We continued to have meal time discussions and to serve family style. Now that my children are grown with their own families and dinner tables, my husband and I eat still eat our meals together at the table.  Television has never been a part of our mealtimes.

My husband Jim eating at our present table in the dining/kitchen/living room. 2010.

The prompt: Week 32: Dinner Time. On a typical childhood evening, who was around the dinner table? Was the meal served by one person, or was it a free-for-all? What is dinner time like in your family today?

Airports and Answers: Some Thoughts on Lighting by Pearl Cleage

Grahams, memories,

Today, a guest post from my sister, Pearl Cleage, written about our mother. Doris Graham Cleage.

Doris Cleage 1923 – 1982

My favorite memory of my mother takes place in one of my least favorite environments: the airport. The Detroit airport at that. I had just flown in from D.C. and the plane was rolling slowly toward the gate, giving me ample time to worry about the next three days.

In the best of times, arrival and departure gates are not great places to play out complex emotional moments. The lighting is terrible and you’re surrounded by strangers. If you’re leaving, it’s too late to start any significant conversation, but not yet time to kiss and say good-by. If you’re arriving, first there is the interminable wait to actually deplane, the impatient jostling of people in the jet way, anxious to get to the concourse so they can jostle their way down to baggage claim, if they were foolish enough to check one.

Once there, those like me being met by friends, lovers or family members try to accomplish the almost impossible task of hugging hello without bumping noses while juggling belongings and trying not to get trampled by the jostlers who are now breathing down your neck as the bags begin to tumble to the carousel and for the merest fraction of a second, you wonder if the trip was even worth it.

And then I saw my mother. She was standing at the agreed upon meeting place, surrounded by a crowd of people, all anxiously scanning the new arrivals just like she was and my first thought was: When did she get so tiny? At just under five foot two, she was dwarfed by the people on either side, even standing between them on tiptoe, searching the sea of strangers for her baby’s face. She looked worried and frazzled and, in the weird way that happens with post-middle aged parents who are seldom seen, suddenly older; more fragile; more vulnerable.

The fragility is what startled me. When had this change occurred? How long had it been since I had actually laid eyes on her? Too long, I knew, but the distance was necessary to insure my emotional survival. I loved my mother, but like most of the women on both sides of the family, including me, she had a mean streak that could manifest itself in harsh judgments about any and everything. That made moments like the one we were now approaching even more fraught with emotional peril since the last thing I needed was a critique of my behavior. I was just emerging from a series of ill-conceived moves both professional and romantic that resulted in a tearful phone conversation during which my mother asked me the worst question in the world: What were you thinking? The next three days were supposed to give me an opportunity to respond.

Please, God, I thought, let this be a good visit. By that I meant one with a relative lack of family drama (possible, but if past is truly prologue, not likely), and maybe, if I was very patient and very lucky, a moment or two where my mother and I could sit together and talk calmly like two grown women about where we were in our lives.

Even as the thought of such a conversation popped into my head fully formed, I knew it wasn’t going to happen. My mother was not a share your deepest secrets kind of woman. She didn’t solicit your opinion because she truly didn’t care what you thought, a trait I admired even while it terrified me. She married brothers, but was so unconcerned about the resulting gossip that I never even knew her behavior was perceived as scandalous until I heard two women discussing it in the seat behind me on the bus all the way home from ballet class at Toni’s School of Dance Arts.

Like the song says, she had paid the cost to be the boss, and while there was in my mother a deep disappointment at some of the ways her life had turned out, she was prepared to live with the consequences of her decisions without complaint. Heart to heart discussions of what she might have done or said differently held no interest. On the contrary, such unsolicited opinions were certain to evoke a look of such amazed indignation and displeasure that all you wanted to do was take back your feeble offering and beg her humble pardon for having had the temerity to make a suggestion about how she lived her life.

But I had a plan. I would ambush my mother with a fresh pot of peppermint tea in a sunny corner of her kitchen. I would put on a record of Leontyne Price singing Puccini, confess my sins and gently begin to pick her brain.  I wanted that conversation. No, I needed it. My life was undeniably a mess and I had exhausted my ideas about how to make it better. The moment, I decided, had arrived for my mother to tell me the womanly secrets and ancient female coping mechanisms she’d been withholding until I was ready.

Well, I was ready now. There were so many questions I needed to ask; about her, about me, about whether or not work was worth the risk and love was worth the pain. You know, those questions. The problem was, where to begin? With her journey or mine? My mother was an archeologist trapped in the body of a first grade teacher. She longed to ride camels and see the pyramids of Egypt, but had to settle for the west side of Detroit and a few weeks in Idlewild at the end of the summer, having cocktails lakeside with well manicured doctors wives, all the time dreaming of the shifting white sands of the Sahara.

Could I ask her how it felt to see so much less than you could imagine? Could I ask her why she did it? Could I ask her how she had survived the loss of all those adventures and the stifling of all those dreams? Could I ask her if she thought I could survive it, too? And last but not least, could I ask her if she still loved me even in the midst of all my flopping and floundering and foolishness?

So there it was at last. I had buried the lead, but then my mother spotted me and however long it had taken to stumble upon the real question, her face at that moment was the real answer. There was so much absolute, unconditional, unequivocal, pure, joyous love shining in her eyes as she threw up her hand and hurried toward me that the force of it made me stumble and I almost dropped my bag.

Now I am not a mystical person, but I felt my heart crack and open that day to welcome the gift she was giving me and I understood that there is only one answer to all the questions that were driving me crazy: love/love/love/love/love.

Suddenly the fantasy conversation I’d been hoping for was just that – someone else’s fantasy. My mother and I didn’t need a cozy sunlit corner and a steaming pot of peppermint tea. We had each other. Then we bumped noses and she hugged me so hard she didn’t seem fragile at all anymore, which is, of course, tangible proof that the power of love can strike anywhere, anytime. Even when the lighting is absolutely terrible.

____________________________

Another post about my mother you may find interesting- GrowingUp – In Her Own Words,

Then and Now – Atkinson 1953

Cleages, Photographs, Saturday Night Genealogy Fun, , ,

The “Saturday Night Fun” assignment from Randy Seaver at Genea-Musings (along with some of the fine results) can be found here.  It involved picking out a photograph to use in this challenge for August 16 by the Family Curator.  For the original challenge you hold up an old photograph and match it up to the present day scene.  This means you have to be in the area.  Unfortunately, I live far from the sites of my past and that of my ancestors so I was am not able to do this exactly.  I also was not able to just choose my photo and let it go at that. Here is what I did.

The parsonage now and us back in 1953.

In 2004 I spent a day driving around Detroit taking photographs of places where I used to live and of other houses family members lived in.  The angle of this house fit almost perfectly with the photograph taken in 1953 of my father with my little sister Pearl and me.  We are in front of the parsonage on Atkinson. My father was the minister of St. Mark’s Presbyterian Church, two blocks up the street on the corner of 12th Street and Atkinson.

My sister and I shared the bedroom on the upper left.  We used to look out of the side window into the attic of Carol and Deborah. They were our age and lived next door and got to stay up much later then we did. They had a wonderful playroom in the attic.  I taught Pearl to read by the streetlight shinning into our bedroom.  I don’t know why we waited until we were supposed to be in the bed to teach and learn reading.

On our other side lived Eleanor Gross with her family. Eleanor was a teenager and babysat with us during the rare times our parents went out.  My paternal grandparents lived down the street and I have a 2004 photograph of that house which I think I will mix with one from the 1950’s.  I was trying to think of someone still in Detroit that I could get to take a photo from the proper angle of St. Mark’s. I like this assignment!

The Ruff Draft – July 30, 1991

Newsletters,

In 1991 my family began putting out a newsletter, The Ruff Draft.  We had recently started homeschooling and the purpose of The Ruff Draft was to both give real writing opportunities to Ayanna, Tulani, James and Cabral, and to show the relatives they were learning something. Here are 3 pages from the July 30, 1991 edition.  What I noticed while looking through it this morning was how similar the News Shorts on page 3 were to the News Shorts in the papers in the early 1900’s where I have found information of births, weddings and at home celebrations for my grandparents.   We stopped publishing when the writers graduated and moved on to bigger things away from home.