Pearl Cleage – then and now.
Happy Birthday Pearl!
Category Archives: Photographs
13 Years Old, Mary Virginia Graham, 1934
A photograph of my aunt Mary Virginia Graham standing on the front steps of the house on Theodore in Detroit. She was named for both of her grandmothers. The writing on the photo says “13 yrs Mary Virginia 1934”. A double exposure shows my mother sideways, overlapping.
This photo looks like it was taken the same day at Belle Isle, which was 5 miles from the house. The dresses are the same. My mother is standing the same way that she in in the double exposure.
Other posts about Mary V.
Mary Virginia Graham Colorized
Christmas Memories
Mary V’s Shoes
Old County Building and Mary V. Elkins
1940 Census – the Grahams
Three Generations – 1939
And a post about the house on Theodore
Girls Riding a Bike, From the Porch of 5397 Oregon, 1962
One of my uncle Henry Cleage’s photographs from the porch of our house at 5397 Oregon in Detroit. Below is a photo of the house and porch from which he took the photos. They were developed at Cleage printers, where Henry and Hugh had a full dark room.
I do not know who the little girls are. I have memories of riding bikes when I lived here, but no photographs. I remember going bike riding all around the neighborhood with my cousins, Dee Dee and Barbara. We rode in the street, which I wasn’t supposed to do. My sister and I used to go bike riding too but we usually had a destination – the library or my grandmother’s house. I lost that bike when I left it unchained outside of a store on W. Grand Blvd. We were on the way home from the Main Library.
You can read more of my memories of my bicycles in this post – “Biking at Old Plank Road, 1962”
Letter from Albert B. Cleage to Pearl Reed. March 18, 1910.
3/18/10
My dear Sweetheart:-
How did you spend St. Patrick’s day? It was a lovely day sure and also has today been beautiful. How are you? Have you gotten entirely well. I hope that pains and aches with you are now “past history.”Does your mother seem to be improving?
These are busy days with me. Examinations for the close of the winter term begin Monday and will last one week after which comes a ten or twelve day’s vacation.- What can I do with so much time all by my lone self.
Do you remember that last year we planned a day’s outing in the country and I thinking the day appointed, too bad did not show up? And also how you got angry with me? See how well I remember. That has been one year ago but it to me certainly does not seem so long. You did go to Brookside with me, which was the beginning of several very pleasant trips which will always be sweet sweet memories to me. My vacation is about 10 days off and it may be yet that you will be able to take that trip which we planned last year.
Mrs. White, I believe goes to Lincoln Hospital tomorrow to be operated upon Monday. Mrs. Brady – Little Marcum Mitchell’s grandmother died at the City Hospital this morning.
Of course I selected that negative which you liked better, others whose opinion I asked were about equally divided. I send you the other which is fast fading.
Be careful for yourself. The things you said in your last letter were surely the product of a melancholie mind – such moods are not good for you. Cheer up!! Of course, God in His wise providence might call your mother home, and ’tis he alone who can cause me to cease loving you. So wake up from your dream – you shall nurse, not patients for someone else, but (__?__) for yourself – Won’t you like that better. Yes, I believe you will – Ha! ha!
Your Albert
{Had better burn this letter up}
My grandparents, Pearl Reed and Albert Cleage, exchanged letters for several years while they were courting. The letters go from 1907 when they met to 1912 when they were married, my father had been born and they were moving from Indianapolis, IN to Kalamazoo, MI. Unfortunately I do not have copies of my grandmother’s letters, just my grandfather’s. You can read more of Albert’s letters to Pearl and what else was going on when he wrote them, by looking at the Index of blog posts I wrote for the A to Z Challenge in 2014. Scroll down past the posts for 2017, 2016 and 2015 until you reach 2014. Perhaps I should give each year’s index a separate page.
At one point, this letter refers back to a letter from a year ago. You can read it here at K is for Kenwood.
Pearl Doris Reed Cleage – 1884 – 1982
Thinking about my grandmother Cleage today. She would have been 133 if she were still living. Pearl Doris Reed Cleage, born in 1884 in Lebanon, Kentucky and died in 1982 in Idlewild, Michigan.
Links to other blog posts about Pearl Reed Cleage
Dr. Albert B. Cleage and Miss Pearl Reed Wed
1940 Census – The Albert B. and Pearl (Reed) Cleage Family
Pearl Reed Cleage With Baby Henry
Unknown Boy On Stairs
Another unlabeled photograph from my Cleage collection. Photographer one of the Cleages. Taken in Detroit. Probably in the 1940s.
Unknown Singer
This photograph is from my Cleage photos and is unlabeled. I do not know which one of the Cleage photographers took the photo. I would date it in the 1940s.
More 5397 Oregon Then and now
My father, then Rev. Albert B. Cleage Jr, me, my mother Doris Graham Cleage, my step-father and uncle Henry Cleage. Summer of 1966.
Sitting on the couch, braiding my hair with my mother and sister Pearl. 1963. My son James walking across the room summer of 2017.
I had just come in from the Association of Black Students’ Symposium at Wayne State in February of 1968.
Other posts about 5397 Oregon.
Detroit Then and Now – Other then and now photographs
“O” is for Oregon Street – Memories of living in the house on Oregon.
Through the Years
St Mark’s United Presbyterian Church 1951 & 1953
In 1951 our family moved from Springfield, MA to Detroit, where my father, Rev. Albert B. Cleage, Jr., was called as pastor of St. Marks United Presbyterian Community Church at Twelfth and Atkinson. My paternal grandparents lived several blocks up Atkinson. The parsonage was right down the block from them. He was there until 1953 when there was a church split. My father and 300 members started a new church that became Central Congregational Church and finally The Shrine of the Black Madonna.
Here are links to two blog posts about these events, Moving Day – Springfield to Detroit 1951, A Church and Two Brothers .
Below are some then and now photographs of St. Mark’s and the parsonage at 2212 Atkinson.
