Category Archives: Grahams

Mershell Graham and Fannie Mae Turner Marriage License – June 11, 1919

Grahams, poetry & literature, Turner,

On June 11, 1919 Mershell Graham and Fannie Mae Turner applied for a marriage license in Montgomery, Alabama. They were married by Rev. E.E. Scott at First Congregational Church in Montgomery on June 15.  I have no photographs of the marriage or memories that were handed down. I could find no record of their marriage license in the Montgomery Advertiser. They seemed to have no section devoted to “News of the Colored Folk” as some newspapers did.

Mignon, Jean, Hattie, ?,?,?,Emma Topp, Mershell, Fannie
Moses McCall on Belle Isle.

Soon after the ceremony my grandparents left and returned to Detroit where Mershell was working.  I assume they took the train, which would have been segregated at that time. They roomed with friends from home, Moses and Jean Walker. There were other roomers, all of them saving up to be able to purchase their own homes.

To read Mershell’s letter of proposal read  The proposal To read Fannie’s letter of acceptance read –  The acceptance 

I found several marriage related, handwritten poems in my grandparents papers and have printed them below. I wonder if they read these during the ceremony or exchanged them.

The gift
Yes, take her and be faithful, still, and may your bridal bower,
Be sacred kept in after years, and warmly breathed as now,
Remember tis no common tie that binds your youthful hearts
Tis one that only truth should breath and only death should part.

Remember tis for you she leaves her home and mother dear,
To have this world with you alone, your good and ill to share,
Then take her and may future years mark only joys increase
And may your days glide sweetly on in happiness and peace.

The Brides Farewell

Soon, soon I’ll go – from those I love
You, Mother, Sister, among the nest,
Where I will often think of you,
Far in the distant west.

Farewell, Mother, though I leave you
Still I love you, Oh! believe me
and when I am far away
Back to you my thoughts will stray.
Oft, I’ll think of you and home
Though in other lands I’ll roam.
Yes, though miles may intervene,
I will keep thy memory green
Mother, sister, from my heart
Thoughts of thee shall never depart.

Mershell Cunningham Graham Junior – June 10, 1921 – November 2, 1927

Grahams

Mershell Cunningham Graham Jr was born at 7:45 pm on June 10 in 1921, a Friday, He was the first son and second child of Mershell and Fannie (Turner) Graham.  He was delivered at Dunbar Hospital by Dr. Turner.  Mershell was a big baby, weighing 8 1/2 pounds. He joined older sister, 14 month old Mary Virginia.  Twenty months later his younger sister, my mother Doris, joined them.

Mershell was an active boy, falling down the clothes chute and breaking a window  during a game of “who can hit their head against the window the hardest” with his younger sister, Doris.  In family photographs, he shows no fear of the ferocious puppy or the family chickens.

On November 1, 1927, he was hit by a truck on his way back to school after lunch. He died just after midnight on November 2.  My sister, cousins and I grew up with warnings to be careful crossing the street and to remember what happened to Mershell.

Mershell and Toodles – 1923
Mary Virginia, Mershell, Doris, Fannie, some chickens.
At Belle Isle outside of the Flower House with father and sister – 1925.
Doris, Mary Virginia, Mershell and Toodles

My mother wrote on the page of practice writing above “Mother teaching him to write his name.”

Related links  –  Births, Deaths, Doctors and Detroit Part 1;   1940 Census – the Grahams – Supplemental Material;   Go Bury thy sorrow – complete words and tune.

1940 Census – Frank and Mary Elkins Family

1940 Census, Grahams, ,

In the 1940 Census, the Frank and Mary Elkins family was living at 3045 Anderdon Street in Detroit, Michigan. The rent was $30 a week and they had lived in the same house in 1935.  Everybody in the household had been identified as “W(hite)”, that was crossed out and “Neg(ro)” was written over it. Unfortunately, no household on this page has the person who provided the information to the enumerator identified.

Frank Elkins at work.

The father of the family, Frank Elkins, was 57 years old and had completed 4 years of high school. He worked at an auto plant as a  courtesy driver. One of his granddaughters has informed me that he worked as a driver for Graham Paige Motors.

Three Marys - daughter Mary, mother Mary and my Aunt Mary V. Graham.

His wife, Mary, was 47 and not employed outside the home. She had completed 2 years of High school. She had made $50 in the last year outside of wages or salary.  Daughter Mary was 21 and single.  She had completed 4 years of high school and was not enrolled in school. She was not employed outside of the home.

Mother Mary Elkins and son Frank “Bud” Elkins

Young Frank was 19, single and had completed 1 year of college. He had attended school sometime since March 1, 1940. He was not employed.  His daughter, Dee Dee, remembers that Frank graduated with honors from Cass Technical High School and went right to work, starting  Elkin’s Electric Company.  He tried to join the Electricians Union, but they barred Black folks from joining.  In 1941 Frank and my aunt Mary V. Graham were married at Plymouth Congregational Church.

Cost of Attending Wayne University in Detroit in 1940

1940 Census, Grahams
From top left  – my mother Doris Graham; from 1940 Wayne Bulletin; Old Main at Wayne; my mother’s transcript.

In February, 1940 my mother entered Wayne University. She received a full scholarship from the Detroit Board of education and a scholarship from the Delta Sorority for an an additional $100.

How much did it cost to attend Wayne in 1940?  For residents of Wayne County, which my mother was, tuition for a full time student was $50. There was a $10 fee for entering freshmen.  Textbooks would have been $5 or under.

When I went to Wayne from 1964 to 1968, tuition came to about $300 a year. Text books were still about $10. By the time my daughter attended during the 1998 – 1999 school year, tuition and fees were $3,708 a year.  She says one book could cost $50. All of us lived at home and commuted, so had no housing costs.

My granddaughter Sydney, who is a freshman at Georgia State University and lives on campus. She could hardly believe these numbers. I just looked and tuition and housing this year, is over $20,000.

Fannie Graham’s Journal Entries -1940

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I published a longer post that included this information (without the actual pages) along with entries from my grandmother’s other journals  in 2010. I am only including information from 1940 this time.

Feb. 5, 1940
Dear God and Little Book: the mail has just brought us the long looked for letter from Wayne University and the Board of Education that Doris has received the yearly scholarship to Wayne… I shed tears of joy… for more reasons than one or even two and the main reason is she deserves it for being such a sweet little “trick”…even if we do say so ourselves.

February 12 – Doris’s birthday – 17 today. We had a nice dinner, cake, ice cream and gifts for her from all.

March 12, my birthday, among all a purchase certificate from JL Hudson’s from our daughters and dad

April 3 – Mary Virginia is 20 today. We had nice dinner cake and ice cream and gifts from us all – also Aunt Daisy never forgets with money.
Dad celebrates Christmas day.

April 12-The Grahams were enumerated. No mention in the Little Book.

June 7, 1940 Doris received $100 scholarship from the Deltas today… Isn’t that grand! It served 2 years.

June 10 — Mary Virginia has just gotten (through Jim and May) a good job at the County Bldg — God is so good to us. and today our Mershell Jr would have been 19 if he had lived – but we still say – God knows best.

1940 Census – Where We Lived in Detroit

1940 Census, Cleages, Grahams, , , , , ,

Several days ago Cassmob’s of Family history across the seas blog had an interactive map of places she’s been writing about in Papua, New Guinea. I immediately went to Google Maps to figure out how to do it myself. Below is a map of places my family lived during the 1940 Census in Detroit. If you click on the blue markers it will tell you who lived there and how they are related to my grandparents.


View 1940 Detroit, Michigan – Where we lived in a larger map

Detroit is divided by Woodward Avenue into Westside and Eastside. My Cleages are all clustered close on the Westside, which is also where I grew up. The Grahams are more spread out on the Eastside. Plymouth had a vibrant youth group program in the 1930 and that is where my parents met. The old Plymouth Congregational Church was urban renewed in the late 1970s and moved location but in 1940 it was located at Garfield and Beaubien, right in the middle of what is now the Detroit Medical Center.

There is a way to insert pop up photographs too which I am going to figure out next.

1940 Census – The Grahams – Supplemental Material

1940 Census, Grahams, Investigations, , , ,

After I finished writing about my Grahams in the 1940 Census yesterday, I looked at some maps of the enumeration district. Here are some photographs I put together from Google maps showing what the area looks like now and what streets were included in their enumeration district.  My cousin Barbara and I visited the area in 2004 and it looked just like this.

The Enumeration District is outlined in red. My grandparents house is the “A”. The yellow line traces the route to the elementary school.

An ariel view from google of my grandparents block. Their house was located where the “A” is. There used to be an alley but it is now overgrown as they don’t maintain alleys in Detroit any more.  The Jordan house and the Graham house shared the enclosed space. There was another alley next to the Jordan house which is included inside the fence.

The site of my grandparents house. Now a storage area.

Unmaintained side alley next to the house site.

The factory across the street from my grandparents house.

Thomas Elementary school. The school my mother and her siblings attended. Now deserted and burned.

Looking down the street from elementary school toward the ruined Packard plant. My Uncle Mershell was hit and killed by a truck on the way back to school with his older sister, Mary Vee after lunch. I think she always felt she was somehow responsible.

1940 Census – The Grahams

1940 Census, Carnival of Genealogy, Grahams, Investigations, , ,

The 1940 census was released yesterday. Today I was able to find both sets of grandparents, with my parents still living at home, the only great grandparent still alive, three families of cousins  and my in-laws who were married and living in their own home with the first of their twelve children, baby Maxine. Today I am going to write about my mother’s family, the Grahams.

The Grahams – Fannie and Mershell 1930

My grandparents were enumerated on April 12, 1940.  They lived, as I expected, at 6638 Theodore Street in Detroit. The entire enumeration district was white with the exception of my grandparents and their next door neighbors, the Jordans.  Just noticed my grandparents and family were enumerated as “white”. Among the adults over 40 was a mix of naturalized citizens from Italy, Poland, Canada, Switzerland, England, Germany and natural born citizens from the southern United states. There were a few people who had filed their first papers towards gaining citizenship and a few “aliens”. The younger adults and  the children were almost all born in Michigan. The majority of people in the district had lived in the same place since 1935.  Among the workers on my grandparents page were  a janitor, two maids, a laborer at a spring factory, a bender at an auto plant,  a checker at a dress shop, a grinder at an auto factory, a delivery man for a print shop, a stock clerk at an auto factory, a stenographer, a time keeper at a machine shop, a manager for a coal and ice concern and a salesman for a radio concern.

My grandmother, Fannie, was the informant for her family. She and Mershell were both 50. He had completed 8th grade. She and 20 year old daughter, Mary V., had completed 4 years of high school. My mother, Doris was 17 and had completed 4 years of high school and was attending college.  Mershell had worked 52 weeks as a stock clerk at an auto factory and earned $1,720 during 1939. Mary V. was working as a stenographer at a newspaper office and had earned nothing in 1939. They owned their own home which was worth $3,500 and had lived in the same house in 1935.

Above Doris and Mary V. in front of Plymouth Congregational Church.

Did I learn anything new from this census? This was the first time I looked at the whole enumeration district which gave me more of an overview of the neighborhood. I did not know that my grandfather completed 8th grade. I always heard he taught himself to read because he never attended school.  I wonder which is true, did he teach himself to read and my grandmother just said he completed 8th grade or did he go to school.  No big surprises, mostly seeing in the record what I already knew.

 For more information about the Grahams, their enumeration district and photographs of what the area looks like now Supplemental material about the neighborhood.  A photo of my mother, aunt and uncle – Bird’s Eye View, 1940 photograph.  My grandmother’s mother and sisters – 1940 Census – Jennie Virginia Turner.  A map of where my family lived in Detroit during the 1940 Census – Where We Lived.  My grandmother Fannie’s 1940 Journal Entries. My mother at Wayne State University in 1940.

 Source 1940 U.S. Census. State: Michigan.  County: Wayne. City: Detroit. Ward:15. Enumeration District: 84-862. Household: 331. Sheet Number: 16-A. Date: April 12, 1940. Head of Household: Mershell Graham. Informant: wife, Fannie Graham.  To see the census sheet for the Graham Family – click.