Tag Archives: #Albert B. Cleage Jr

The Whole Bunch – 1922

Cleages, sepia saturday, ,

Today I spread all my Cleage photos out on the table and began putting them into order by number or date.  While I was doing this, I found another photograph in the sequence that I posted about twice this week.  Click here to see the photo of my grandparents, where I speculate that it was taken soon after their marriage.  Several people wondered what he was holding over his shoulder.  Click here to read about my discovery of the numbers on the back of most of the photographs.

I can see the people more clearly in this group photograph but, it is in bad shape.  Starting from the left, are two headless women and I don’t know who they are. The little girl is my Aunt Barbara, next to her is my Uncle Hugh, Uncle Louis, Uncle Henry, Theodore Page (who looks like he has a double), a mystery girl, and the FLAG that my grandfather held over his shoulder.  Behind them are, an unknown man, my great grandmother Celia Rice Cleage Sherman, her son Jacob, my father Albert “Toddy”,  three people I don’t know then my grandfather Albert B. Cleage Sr.  In the background are some other people.  I don’t know who they are or where they are.

Click here to read other Sepia Saturday stories and to join in with a Sepia Saturday post of your own.

Missing Christmas Carols 1944

Advent Calendar, Christmas, Cleages, Grahams, Letters,
"Missing Home at Christmas Collage"

Christmas 1944 was my parents second Christmas together. My father, Albert B. Cleage Jr (Toddy) had taken a year off from the ministry to take classes in film making at UCLA.  He planned to use it later in the church.  My mother, Doris Graham, was working as a social worker and apparently taking a class too.  They were living in Los Angeles, Ca, missing Detroit and their families. In the montage we have in the top/center my mother, below her is my father.  The house my mother grew up in is the big photo of the house on Theodore, below is their Los Angeles apt.  The last photo is my mother’s parents Mershell (Poppy) and Fannie (Nannie) Graham.  This is a letter my mother wrote home Dec. 17, 1944.

 

December 17, 1944

Dear Folks,

 

Just a line to let you know we’re ok.  Hope you all are well

It’s almost midnight and we are both (as usual) trying to get some school work done that we left until the last minute.  Toddy has a paper due – and I have a book report.

Here it is – almost Christmas, but it doesn’t seem like it at all.  No snow – no cold weather – no nothing.  People out here don’t even sing Christmas carols on radio church services or anything.  We heard you all have lots of snow.  Well – guess I’d better go back to my book.  

Merry Christmas

and a Happy New Year.

Love,
Toddy + Doris

Related Posts

Christmas Day 1944 – Part 1
Christmas Day 1944 – Part 2
Christmas Day 1944 – Part 3

More from Elections of yesteryear – 1965 Cleage for Council

Cleages, memories,

Family  and church members accompanied my father as he signed up to run for City Council in Detroit, MI in 1965.  We all have on our Cleage for Council buttons.  That’s him in the front with the bow tie.  I am looking melancholy over on the left.  My cousin Ernie is in the striped sweater.  Rev. Hill’s ( assistant pastor) wife in the back with the hat.  My grandmother (Pearl Cleage) looking happily proud on the right.  This followed the Freedom Now Party loss in 1964 and the 3 + 1 campaign in 1963  and preceded the run for the 13th District congressional seat in 1966.

My father did this himself using a stylis on a blue stencil. It would be run off on a mimeograph machine.

These campaigns were run as educational, not to win.  Not that that wouldn’t have been a welcome surprise.  My family talked politics morning noon and night.  Not just talked, lived.  Two of my uncles started a printing business and for years the family and friends put out The Illustrated News, an eight sheet pink paper where they wrote  about the issues of the day, mostly local but as this was the time of the civil rights movement, bombs and demonstrations and riots, there was also some national news.  I remember riding in sound cars, passing out information at the polls, silk screening posters, leafleting.  The summer of 1966 I spent lots of time with Jim, who is now my husband, campaigning. We capped it off by attending a “Victory Party” for Ken Cockrel, who hadn’t won. Those were the days my friend…

Printed at Cleage Printers on the large press.

Printed at Cleage Printers on the small press.

An Ancestral Home on Google Maps

Cleages, Saturday Night Genealogy Fun, , ,
910 Fayette Indianapolis Indiana – two story house on the right- Google maps

I decided to accept the  Saturday night challenge. After looking and not finding anything but parking lots and weed covered land where my ancestors used to live, I found 910 Fayette standing. For several years I was confused about which house it was because the houses in Indianapolis were renumbered and it turned out it was the two story house on the right and not the little gray/blue one on the left.

My father, Albert Buford Cleage, Jr, was born in this house on June 13, 1911. His parents had married the year before after Albert completed his medical training and received his physician’s license. The three Cleage brothers, Jacob, Henry and Albert and wives Gertrude and Pearl shared the house until the following year when Albert opened a practice in Kalamazoo Michigan and moved his family there.