This is a double exposure that I found in my Cleage photos. It was probably taken by my grandfather since my father was only about 8 or 9 years old. It is in the batch with other photographs taken in Athens, Tennessee around 1919. There seem to be sheets on a clothesline in the foreground. Athens is in the foothills of the Great Smokey Mountains and was my Grandfather Albert B. Cleage Sr’s hometown. He took his family back for a visit most summers when they were growing up.
There are links to other photos from trips to Athens below.
#1 During the 1960s my Uncle Louis and various family members and friends traveled to Mexico. They stayed in out of the way hotels and places. Louis became very proficient in Spanish and was happy to talk to any of us in Spanish. Unfortunately, I never was invited on any of these trips. The above photo is an unmarked photo from the Cleage collection. I think it was taken in Mexico. Then again, maybe it was taken in Michigan in the country during the 1940s.
#2 I posted this article about a horse jumping through a windshield in 2011. Thought I would give it another go. Victor Tulane was my great grandmother’s sister Willie’s husband. He was a successful Montgomery businessman.
Horse Jumps through Automobile Windshield
Considerable Excitement Attends Runaway On Court Square Tuesday Afternoon.
Much excitement and some damage was the result of a run-away horse crashing into an automobile in front of Alex Rice’s store on Court Square late yesterday afternoon.
The horse, which was pulling a buggy, became frightened on the first block of South Court Street and dashed toward Montgomery Street. An automobile belonging to Theo Meyer was parked in front of Alex Rice’s and the front feet of the horse went through the wind shield.
Beyond sustaining several minor cuts, the horse was unhurt and the damage done to the automobile, too, was small.
In September of 2012 members of the family met in Detroit to celebrate my Aunt Gladys (my father’s sister) 90th birthday. On Memorial Weekend we again gathered, this time to celebrate my Ernest’s and Susan’s 25th wedding anniversary. Some of the same people were at both, some were at one and not at the other. It was wonderful to see cousins and cousins spouses, once again at a celebratory event. The younger cousins are getting to know each other. The aunts are getting a chance to see each other and older cousins are getting a chance to see each other outside of facebook! I hope we can continue to meet often to celebrate family. Often enough that the children will not just know they’re family, but feel it.
Cleage family members who gathered at Ernest and Susan’s in May of 2013 – cousins, aunts, children, grandchildren, spouses.
I hope I didn’t leave anybody off. If I did, please advise and I will add them. The header photo is from the September gathering, put them together and you have almost the whole Albert and Pearl Cleage branch of the family. One day maybe we can get those missing family members there too!
Hattie Ruth’s daughters, granddaughters and great grands
This chart is adapted from the 23andMe website.
Susan Rice Regan is the earliest name I can call for this line. She was born into slavery about 1833 in Virginia and later brought to Tennessee. She gave birth to two sons and three daughters. Her sons were Henry Rice and Philip Ragan. Her daughters were Anna Celia Rice, Sarah Sallie and Mollie Ragan.
Her daughter Anna Celia Rice, my paternal paternal grandmother was born into slavery in Virginia or Tennessee about 1855. Celia had 4 sons, including my grandfather Albert, and 1 daughter, Josephine (also called Josie). MtDNA is passed from the mother, to the daughter, to the grandaughter to the great grandaughter in a straight line. Although sons receive their mothers MtDNA, they do not pass it on to their children. Their children will receive their own mother’s MtDNA. So, I am going to be talking about daughters of daughters in this post.
Celia Rice Cleage’s MtDNA passed through her daughter to her daughters, to their daughters and on and on and on.
Josephine married James Cleage, (from a different Cleage family) and had 5 children, 2 sons and 3 daughters, Henrietta, Lucille and Hattie Ruth. My cousin Felix, a descendent of Hattie Ruth, shared a chart of family members with me about five years ago. There are probably more family members out there since then. Additions and corrections welcome!
Henrietta had 1 son and 3 daughters, Margaret, Hortense and Ruth. I don’t have any information about their children. Lucille had 2 sons and 1 daughter, Mary, who had 1 son only. Hattie Ruth had 5 daughters, Vivian, Betty, Beverly, Marion and Erma.
Vivian had 2 daughters, Josephine and Laura. She had 7 grandchildren, 11 great grandchildren and 1 2xgreat grand at the time I received my list.. I don’t know how many were daughters. Josephine had 2 sons. Laura had 5 children, 2 boys and 3 girls. She has at least 2 granddaughters.
Betty had 3 daughters, 2 lived to adulthood. Sandra had 3 daughters, Bernita, Jamiliah and Aisha. Bernita had 5 daughters. Jamiliah had 1 son and 3 daughters. Aisha had no children. Charlene had 2 daughters and 5 granddaughters.
Beverly had 1 son and 2 daughters, Tanya and Kim. Tanya has 1 daughter, Danelle. Kim has 2 daughters, Mahogany and Celeste.
Marion had 2 sons and 2 daughters, Alma and Ruth Anne. There were 5 grandchildren, but I don’t know how many were daughters of daughters.
Erma had 3 sons and 7 daughters, Beatrise, Marcella, Haleema, Fatima, Aleah, Ameena, Leshia. I don’t know the breakdown of her 16 grandchildren, but I know there were some granddaughters.
Susan Rice Ragan’s two younger daughter’s each had one daughter each. Sarah/Sallie married first Henry Hale and they had two sons and a daughter, Blanche Augusta Hale. Blanche had three sons had no daughters. Mollie married Grant Hodge and had a son and a daughter, Dora Hodge. Dora had no daughters.
***** Special thanks to my cousin Denora for permission to use the photograph above of Hattie Ruth’s daughters, granddaughters and great grands. And to Felix for the information in the chart. And to Tanya for getting her DNA tested. Family makes it happen.
About 1940 my uncle Louis was in St. Louis as an intern at Homer G. Philips Hospital. He sent my grandmother in Detroit this telegram on Mother’s Day. These photographs were taken a few years later.
“The air was cool at night. I stretched out my arms in the moonlight and flew. I raced and raced in the cool night expanse, on the largest stage in the world. Around me the mountains ribbed the sky. Under my feet lay the beat of a full symphony orchestra.”
— Agnes De Mille, Dance To The Piper, pg 174
The Hollywood Bowl.
This excerpt below is from a letter written by my father to his parents and siblings in Detroit. You can see my mother hanging up clothes and my father smoking during that same time, up in the header photo.
2130 South Hobart Blvd. #4 Los Angeles, 7, California September 2, 1944
Hi Folks:
It’s Sunday afternoon…hot as usual…Everything goes along about as usual (the poor get poorer and the rich get richer)…
We went to the Hollywood Bowl last night to see the incomparable “Ballet Theater”…Russian Ballet by S. Hurok. The Bowl is way out in “West h—” from were we live. It took over an hour on the street car to get there… and the last mile took about half of the time… the street-car would move about an inch and wait for ten minutes and then move another inch. We were late…as usual… but in plenty of time to see all we cared to see. The Bowl is a dished out place down in between some mountains…with thousands of seats rising up the mountain sides in front of the stage. The place was jammed! We had the cheapest seats, naturally, which Doris purchased through the Red Cross for a slight reduction…but by climbing over the backs of the seats…very undignified…we managed to sneak into the next higher priced section..where we could see the performers… after a fashion…the section where we belonged …ran on and on…up the mountain…and the people on the stage must have looked like little ants or something…which was just as well…considering the nature of the performance. The dancing was about what you would expect Pee Wee, Gladys and Barbara to put on after a week-end of rehearsal out in the barn. Romeo and J. went on and on for hours…The people sitting next to us…who apparently had never heard of Shakespeare…decided the dance must be about an Egyptian princess or something. “Fancy Free” which was supposed to be terrific…dragged on and on and on…long after the dance was finished. All in all it was quite an evening. We left before the last extravaganza in order to catch a street car before the mob…ran a block and a half…and finally caught what they humorously call street cars out here..and made our way home…
Several weeks ago I read a post on Sheryl’s blog A Hundred Years Ago, about a school play put on in 1913 in which her Grandmother acted the part of Chloe, the maid, in black face. It wasn’t a minstrel show, but there was some discussion about what was accepted in those days and what is accepted now. I googled “minstrel shows” and found photos and articles which show minstrel shows occurring as late as the 1960s in the US. I didn’t realize how many schools, scouts and civic groups put on ministrel shows and plays using black face.
Later, I was looking through my father’s letters home to Detroit while he was a minister in Springfield, MA and I saw the article below about a church that was going to put on a minstrel show in 1947 in Springfield . The NAACP was trying to convince them that this was a bad idea that perpetuated stereotypes about black people that were not true. My father wrote the article below which appeared in the newspaper, The Springfield Republican.
Click to enlarge
Black face and minstrel shows. Click to enlarge.
The first link below goes to a page about blackface and racism, in the past and in the present, with links. The other pages are articles and pictures of minstrel shows from 1901 to 1967. I was surprised that there was a television show in Britain called “The Black and White Minstrel Show” that broadcast until 1978.
This photo comes from my Cleage stash and features Alice, my Uncle Henry’s first wife, reading a Thrilling Comic. How did she happened to be reading it? Did she enjoy comics? Love thrillers? Was she posing (or posed) for the photo? Was the comic book laying around because that is where Henry got his short story ideas? Judging by her eyes, she does look mildly thrilled.
Thrilling Comics
“Thrilling Comics was one of the longest runs the publisher had. It ran for eighty issues. The issues themselves featured many different kinds of comic stories like the standard superhero story as well as westerns, detective, stories, comedies, comic strips, short stories and many more.” The series started in 1940 and ran through 1951.To see all the covers for the 80 issues, click Thrilling Comics.
Click to see more thrilling or newsy Sepia Saturday posts.
In my fourteenth post for the April A-Z Challenge, I am going to share a Nostalgic interview I did with my Uncle Henry Cleage in 1994. I’ve done several posts about the Freedom Now Party before. At that time I didn’t know how to embed the actual audio interview. I figured it out yesterday and so, here it is!
I wish my interviewing skills had been better when I recorded this. Obvious things like, turn off the radio and go to a quiet room. I edited out as much of the extraneous noise as I could. Henry and I were sitting in the living room of my house in Idlewild, MI. You can hear the sounds of the kids getting dinner on the table and hollering at the dog in the background. In 1994 my youngest 4 were all at home and we were homeschooling. Henry lived about 4 miles away and often had dinner with us.
An interview with Henry Cleage about the Michigan Freedom Now Party.
This is my third post for the April A-Z Challenge. I am blogging every day in April using the letters of the alphabet as prompts. Today I am going to write about Samuel Cleage’s building operation. Samuel Cleage owned the plantation where my Cleage ancestors were held as slaves. When he died, the slaves were divided between his sons. I am writing about the time before this today.
Samuel Cleage, who spelled his name “Clegg”, was born in Lanchaster County, PA in 1781. He moved with his parents and siblings to Botetourt County, VA. After his parents died he moved with his family and slaves to McMinn County, TN.
Samuel Cleage
As I was getting ready to write this I realized that he didn’t just get on the train and move, that they must have traveled by wagon down well worn, but primitive roads. Not only was he moving his whole little community of married children and slaves, 339 miles through the Blue Ridge Mountains, he also carried the tools of his trade – whatever he needed to build brick houses. As he traveled he would convince farmers along the way that they needed a fine brick home to go with their fine farm. For payment he accepted slaves, gold or livestock. They say that some of these houses are still standing. I can’t imagine how long it took the group to travel this way. A fully loaded Conestoga wagon, the usual method to move through the mountains in the early 1800s, could travel 5 miles a day. That would take about 4 months if you traveled straight through. They didn’t. They were stopping and building brick houses. And they had to make the bricks! How could that work? All sources agree that by the time he reached McMinn County, Samuel Cleage was a very wealthy man, both in slaves and gold. I think I will have to check into this a little further. Here is a description of the way traveling worked. To read more, click the title.
First the word, Conestoga, America’s first big truck. It was made in Conestoga, Pennsylvania, and it was one huge wagon: 26 feet long, 11 feet high, with the capability of carrying 8 tons. Pulled by five or six horses and followed by as many as a dozen packhorses, the Conestoga wagon became any traveling family’s best friend.
It became the expected sight along the road known by many names: the Warrior’s Path, the Carolina Road, the Valley Pike, the Great Philadelphia Wagon Road, or simply the Great Wagon Road.
With a body the shape of a swaybacked horse, Conestogas could float across a river as long as the wheels were taken off. And those wagons were so heavy and laden with a family’s every possession, they created deep wheel ruts all along the Great Wagon Road…
I outlined the section of the Wilderness Road they would have taken to Knoxville, TN, where the road turns west. At that point they would have continued south to Athens TN in McMinn county.
Above I mentioned that they had to make the bricks before they could build the houses. “They” being the highly trained and skilled slaves that were traveling too. It was not easy to make the bricks. And it wasn’t a quick process. Here is how Joe Guy described it in his book “The Hidden History of McMinn County” There is also a link to this chapter in the title.
Samuel Cleage, the itinerant contractor who traveled into the Tennessee Valley from Virginia in the 1820’s, is generally credited for the construction of several historic homes and buildings in East Tennessee, especially in McMinn County. While it is true that Cleage was the driving force behind his construction business, it is important to remember who, in fact, was actually performing the labor.
Besides livestock and gold, Cleage was often contracted to be paid in slaves after having completed a house or building. Many of Samuel Cleage’s slaves later adopted the Cleage name when they obtaining their freedom, and several black families in East Tennessee still trace their lineage to these Cleage slaves. Cleage was a wealthy landowner besides being a builder, and so he used his slaves almost exclusively as bound workers in his construction business. One of the duties often exclusively regulated to the slaves was brickmaking.
By the time Samuel Cleage was involved in building, the art of making brick had been around since 3500 BC. Essentially, 19th century brickmaking involved five steps: winning or digging the clay, preparation, molding, drying, and firing.
East Tennessee is well known for having the natural clay useful for brick production. Once dug by the slaves (normally in the fall), the clay was exposed to the weather so that the winter freezes could break the clay down, remove unwanted impurities, and allow it to be worked by hand. In the spring and summer, water was added and the clay was worked by the slaves’ hands and feet in large open pits until it obtained a smooth consistency and most of the rocks and sticks were removed.
The clay was then taken to the moulding table, where the slave designated as brickmoulder directed several assistants in the process. A skilled brickmoulder would work at the moulding table for twelve to fourteen hours, producing 3500 to 5000 bricks in a day. A clot of clay was rolled in sand and “dashed” into a sanded mould, which prevented the clay from sticking. Once the clay was pressed into the mould, the excess clay was removed from the top of the mould with a flat stick. Moulds ranged from single to six bricks at a time, but single brick moulds were often desired because even the slave women and children could be employed in carrying the “green” bricks from the table to the drying area. The “green” bricks were then stacked and dried for about two weeks.
Once most of the moisture had dried out, Cleage’s slaves stacked the bricks in a kiln, or clamp. Rows of bricks were built up to construct tunnels, which were filled with wood and set fire. For two to five days the bricks were cooked, the slaves feeding the fires and getting very little sleep. After the bricks cooled, the slaves removed them from the clamp and sorted them as to their degree of quality, the best being chosen for the building’s outside walls. Bricks which were closest to the fire sometimes received a natural glaze from the sand that fell into the flames, and were used in the interior courses of the walls. Some bricks would be left with a salmon color, were only slightly underfired, and made for good insulation in the inner parts of the walls. Bricks that were over burned, cracked, or warped were called clinkers and were saved to be used in garden walls or paths.”
After arriving in McMinn County, Cleage picked out a spot and built the house below, which is still standing. The black and white photographs were taken during the 1930s. The color photo is more recent. I read an article online that described the renovations the new owners were carrying out to make the house livable again. Unfortunately, I cannot find the article again.
This is a double exposure that I found in my Cleage photos. It was probably taken by my grandfather since my father was only about 8 or 9 years old. It is in the batch with other photographs taken in Athens, Tennessee around 1919. There seem to be sheets on a clothesline in the foreground. Athens is in the foothills of the Great Smokey Mountains and was my Grandfather Albert B. Cleage Sr’s hometown. He took his family back for a visit most summers when they were growing up.
