This week I spent hours putting my photographs from the paternal side in order. First by grouping them into piles according to the numbers on the reverse side. After dividing them up by number, I then started dating the files. I was able to determine who some of the babies were in later photos by which siblings were already there and how old they were. I will show some of these in a later post. It’s been slow going and I almost missed Sepia Saturday. However I thought I should make an entry. Above you see some of the piles.
These two photographs have the same number. I have wondered for years if that boy with the stocking cap on standing next to the car was my father. When I saw the photo of my Uncle Louis (on the left) and my father, Albert, with the stocking cap, I saw it was him. There are other photos that have both boys that have different numbers but they appear to be taken at the same time on one of the family’s annual trips to Athens Tennessee, my grandfather’s hometown. One brother, Edward, remained in Athens. The rest of the family ended up first in Indianapolis, IN and then in Detroit, MI.
Last night I posted an undated photograph of my grandparents. I assumed it was taken soon after they were married in 1910. Then one of my daughter’s asked me when it was taken and where it was taken. I went back to my box of Cleage photos to see if I could find some others taken on the same day. After going through quite a few pictures, I noticed that there were numbers on the back of the photographs.
Here is the back of the photo in question. That is my handwriting. I started looking for other photos with the number 573. Voila! I found two. One says ‘Toddy and Theodore Page”, not in my handwriting. Toddy is my father and Theodore Page was the nephew of Gertrude, my great uncle Jacob’s wife. He was living with them in Detroit, according to the 1930 census.
Taking a side trip, I began to look for information about Theodore (Roosevelt) Page. I found him at age 6 living with his parents, Jacob and Anna Eliza Page, and siblings William and Ophelia living on a farm in Mississippi in 1910. By 1920 he was 16 years old. He and his mother were living with sister his Ophelia and her husband, Henry Red, in Arkansas. He worked on the family farm and had attended school in the last year. I’ve been trying to find Uncle Jacob’s wife’s maiden name for years. Maybe finding her sister will help.
The other photo with the number 573 on it is a very blurry group photo. I see my grandmother Pearl on the far left with little Barbara in front of her. Hugh is next to Barbara, My father is in the front row center, next to him is my great grandmother, Celia Rice Cleage Sherman, a little kid, probably my uncle Henry is next. Behind Henry we see Theodore Page. My grandfather is on the end. Is he still holding the mystery object from the other photo?
Now I’ll make another attempt to date the photo. My father was born in 1911. He could be 10 or 11. Barbara was born in 1920. She could be 2. Gladys was born the end of September in 1922. Does my grandmother look pregnant? My estimate is summer of 1922.
With this new information I will begin sorting, and scanning the box of photos in the near future.
My father’s parents at a picnic in 1922. My grandmother was pregnant with my aunt Gladys. My grandfather is holding a flag. I thought I should start my 100 posts about my father with something about his parents. Today a photo, tomorrow some basic information.
It seemed right to start off the New Year off with a photograph of the person this blog is named after. She was born about 1839 in Alabama and died 22 June 1917 in Montgomery, Alabama.
Here I am starting my one and only knitting project. When it was done the edges curled up. It was light blue, very long and wrapped around my head and face during the cold Detroit winters. I added fringe to the ends and wore it all through college. I’m wearing it below in 1969. To see other SepiaSaturday offerings click HERE.
My mother, Doris Graham Cleage at my Cleage grandparents house on Atkinson in Detroit, MI. I don’t know what the occasion was. My uncle Henry probably took the photo.
I’m in the front, my mother is propping up my sister Pearl. My father took the photo in our yard. He was the pastor of St. John’s Congregational Church in Springfield Massachusetts and we lived in the parsonage/community house right next to the church. We moved to my parents hometown, Detroit, when I was four where we still had plenty of snow.
These photographs are in a crumpling album that my father put together back in the 1940’s. He wrote comments on all the photographs. I have to photograph or scan them before they disappear.
One day after dinner at my grandmother Cleage’s house, my aunt Gladys and I sketched each other. Mine was thankfully lost. I’ve kept her’s. I glued it in a scrapbook with rubber cement before I knew better. I should have framed it.
Willie holding grandson Conrad, daughter Naomi looking on.
Tulane photographs found online yesterday.
I worked all day yesterday pulling together records and information to write about why Aunt Willie might have been sitting so far from her husband, Uncle Victor, in my last weeks photo. I was going to use the photo on the left side which was taken on the same porch. I was going to talk about her relative’s memories of her as sad and obessesed with her daughter and her well being. About how her husband’s well known unfaithfulness, the death of two of her three children within three years of each other, the son her husband fathered earlier in the same year they were married and how the son, Victor Julius Tulane, and his mother lived right down the street from them in 1900.
Then I got interested in Victor Tulane’s early history, his mother who was a servant and probably former slave of Louis Tulane in Elmore County Alabama and his son, Horatio Tulane, who was twenty years her senior and Victor’s father. I was going to mention that the Tulane family recognized the relationship. How they were a merchant family and that after Victor packed his bags at age twleve and walked the 14 miles from Wetumpka to Montgomery, he became a very successful merchant too.
I was going to mention that Victor’s son, Victor Julius came to live with the family when he was in his teens and was sent to school in Michigan where he became a chemist. But at that point I decided to google Victor J. Tulane and see if I could find a picture of him because I did not have one. I like to have pictures. I had heard he looked very like Naomi, his half sister, but he had blue, blue eyes. I found two photographs of him, both from Crisis magazine. Then I thought I would look for his father. I found a group photograph with him in the Alabama Archives. I was on a roll, why not try to find a picture of Naomi’s husband, Ubert Conrad Vincent who was a well known black doctor in New York during the 1920’s. He pioneered a medical procedure that is known as the Vincent procedure. Here is where I hit the jackpot. I found an 8 page article from the Journal of the National Medical Association, 1975. That gave an in depth look at his whole medical career with 5 photographs, including one of him and his wife Naomi soon after their marriage. Naomi and Ubert’s daughter told me that they met at a cast party for the first black Broadway musical at the home of Noble Sissle so I looked for a cast photo. Found. Last, I looked for a photo of their residence on Striver’s Row in Harlem. Still there and lookin’ good.
Now I will identify the photographs in the collage above, starting from the bottom left.
Bottom row:
1. The Crisis Jun-Jul 1959. “First Church – Dr. Victor J Tulane (L), chairman of the trustee board of the John Wesley AME Zion church, Washington, D.C., presents chairman Theodore Taylor of the Washington branch a $100 check toward his church’s NAACP life memership. …”
2. “Dr. Vincent in the door of his Sanatorium”.
3. Noble Sissle with chorus girls from the musical “Shuffle Along”.
4. “Dr. Vincent (right at table) assisting Dr. Keyes (?) in an operation at Bellevue.” (Journal of the National Medical Association January 1975)
Middle row:
1. The Crisis Oct 1933 ” Awards To Dr. Victor J. Tulane of the University of Michigan, election to Sigma, Xi, honorary science fraternity. Mr. Tulane was awarded the degree of Doctor of Philosophy by the University of Michigan in June.”
2. A blow up of Victor Hugh Tulane’s head from the group photo above.
3. Skipping over to the group shot on the far right of that row – from the Journal – “Dr. Vincent (right) with (from left) Dr. Marshall Ross, Hon Adam Clayton Powell, Jr, and Mayor McKee.”
Top row:
1.Tuskegee College Board of Directors. Front row center is Booker T. Washington. Back row far right is Victor H. Tulane (Willie’s husband. Naomi’s father)
2. From the Journal “Dr. and Mrs. Vincent shortly after their marriage.”
3. From google street view, the place the Vincents called home.
This week I spent hours putting my photographs from the paternal side in order. First by grouping them into piles according to the numbers on the reverse side. After dividing them up by number, I then started dating the files. I was able to determine who some of the babies were in later photos by which siblings were already there and how old they were. I will show some of these in a later post. It’s been slow going and I almost missed Sepia Saturday. However I thought I should make an entry. Above you see some of the piles.
