This photograph was taken in the alley beside my grandparent’s house on Theodore in Detroit in 1937. My grandfather, Mershell, was 47. He stands here with his daughters dressed for church. He worked at the Ford Rouge Plant, taking the street car to work everyday and saving the car for going to church and other weekend activities. Mary Virginia, my mother’s older sister, was 17 and a senior at Eastern High School, on East Grand Blvd within walking distance of the house. She graduated in June and in September went to Business College where she excelled in typing. My mother was 14. She graduated from Barbour Intermediate School that year and joined her sister at Eastern High School. Here are their report cards from that year.
Meanwhile, a lot going on in the world in 1937. The montage below contains photographs of some. The Memorial Day Massacre when Chicago police shot and beat union marchers who were organizing at Republic Steel Plant. Ten workers died. Amelia Earhart flew off and disappeared. The German Luftwaffe bombed Guernica, Spain during the Spanish Civil War in support of Franco and inspired the painting of the same name by Picasso . The Japanese invaded China, killing and raping thousands. Roosevelt was re-elected. The Hobbit was published. Gone With the Wind won the Pulitzer prize for Margaret Mitchell. The first animated full length film, Snow White came out. An anti-lynching law was passed. The Golden Gate Bridge was completed and opened with a day for pedestrians to walk across. Buchenwald concentration camp was build. The Hindenburg exploded and burned. King George VI’s coronation took place. Auto workers in Flint, Michigan won recognition for the UAW after a prolonged sit down strike. The Mississippi and Ohio Rivers flooded leaving devastation and death behind. Ethiopia was now in the hands of fascist Italy.
What was going on in 1937
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Photographer DeeDee behind worried Barbara, Poppy with Pearl & me (Kristin) laughing.
My cousin Dee Dee is the seven year old who took the photograph for Three in a Wagon. This photo was taken the same day in my grandparents backyard. Barbara still has her pistol and Pearl is still holding her pad and pencil plus Barbara’s boot which is hanging open by her right side. I seem to have traded the doll for a tin of powder?
My grandfather, Mershell C. Graham sitting on the porch railing of his unofficially adopted family’s home in Montgomery, Alabama in the early 1900s. Mary Graham seated in the rocker and her son John Clifton seated on the stairs.
The dollhouse Poppy, my grandfather made me in the 1950s when I was 9 years old was the envy of my sister and cousins in it’s prime. A few days ago I read on The Magpies Nestabout her project to fix up her daughter’s old doll house and it inspired me to do the same with mine. I asked my husband to dig it out of the long, narrow closet where it has been for the past 4 years. Poor house! It went through my childhood and then my children’s childhoods and being stored for years and years and it is much the worse for wear. Right now the poor dollhouse looks like one of those falling-to-pieces houses. Houses with a grand past that have been divided into rooming houses or just left to rot.
I have started my rehab by tearing off the contact paper wallpaper and removing the third story where the wood was rotting and scrubbing the whole thing down. I want to keep the gist of the house but make some changes I’ve always wanted to make, like adding stairs and returning it to the two-sided access dollhouse it used to be. I will post more photos as the work progresses.
There is a box of furnishings that I haven’t had the heart to look at yet. I doubt if any of my original furnishings have survived this long but I hope there are some good pieces in there.
After writing about my grandparent’s house the other day, I came across this poem my cousin Dee Dee wrote. She said I could post it, so here it is.
In the collards - Pearl, Barbara, Poppy, me 1952.
POPPY’S HOUSE
By Dee Dee McNeil
Snow ice cream
from the window sill.
A kerosene stove
for the bathroom chill.
A tub with feet
like lion paws
clung to the floor
with porcelain claws.
A house that smelled
of sachet bags,
of moth cakes, greens,
and fresh bleached rags.
A house that rang
of happy things
with warmth that only love can bring.
Poppy’s house.
This post continues a series using the Alphabet to go through streets that were significant in my life as part of the Family History Through the Alphabet Challenge. For this post I am bringing back a post I did a year ago for 52 Weeks of Personal Genealogy. The house at 6638 Theodore was my Graham grandparents house.
My maternal grandparents were Mershell and Fannie Graham. We called them Poppy and Nanny. They bought their house on Theodore Street on the East Side of Detroit in 1922 when my grandmother was pregnant with my mother, Doris. They lived there until the neighorhood became increasingly violent and they experienced home invasion and shots fired into the house. That was in the summer of 1968 when they bought a two family flat with my parents near the University of Detroit. So they lived in this house for 46 years.
When I was growing up we used to pick up my cousins on summer Saturdays and spend the day at my grandparents. We had Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners there and backyard meals for the summer holidays.
There was a front porch across the front but by the time we came along there was no porch swing and we never sat or played in the front. The front door had a full window. the window to the right of the front door was the “hall way” it was divded from the living room by wooden pillars. On the hall side there was a table that held the high school graduation photos of my mother and her sister, a lamp and underneath a brass bowl that held last years Christmas cards. Next to it was my grandmother’s rocking chair. The door to the kitchen was behind that and the stairs to the second floor were behind the table. At the foot of the stairs, beside the single window, was a table with the telephone. The telephone sat on a small table my grandfather built, on the landing. During the day, it came down to the little table and at night it went back to the landing. But wait, I think I can show you better then tell you. Downstairs on the first and upstairs below. No photos taken upstairs. There was a great basement too that included my grandfather’s workshop, a large converted coal furnace and a pantry.
When my grandparents moved in 1968, the people who owned the factory across the street bought the house and tore it down. This is what the spot looked like last time I was in Detroit taking photographs of family places.
To read more about the Brass bed and see a photograph of it – Dollhouse update.
My sister recently found a stash of old family photos that she had forgotten she had. She was nice enough to bring them over to me to add to the collection. Among those photographs were these of my maternal grandfather, Mershell C. Graham called Poppy by us. When these photos were made, he was Shell and apparently quite dapper.
In the first picture we see him perched on a fence with a tower in the background. It looks sort of like a bell tower.
In the next photo MC seems to be holding an umbrella and wearing tails. On the other hand it looks like it’s pretty big for an umbrella. In the back is a wooden fence, but not the same one as in the tower photo. There are several people walking up and down the street too.
In the third photo my grandfather is swinging in the woods. In the background there is something that could be a house or other building.
These photos were around 1916 in Montgomery, Alabama. I think.
The last photo I include because they are such a cool looking couple. I know nothing beyond they were my grandfather’s friends.
I am feeling fine today and I hope that this will find you and all at home well. I am off from my work today. No, not sick just felt like taking a bit of rest and too it has been raining all day and it was such a fine day for sleep before taking my midday nap I had to talk a little to my sweetheart, I only wish I could here her voice and be made to feel happy. Dear I don’t know anything of interest to write about just now. Things are pretty quiet in Detroit, the factories are all getting ready for a big after war business and I think this city will get her share of it. I am sorry that your mother has been sick, I hope she is O.K. and her self again.
Miss Snow formerly of Montgomery now Mrs. Kelly of Detroit lost her husband last week, I think she will bring the body home for burial. They have him now in storage until she is ready to leave for home with him. Now dear I wrote you sometime ago and told you that I had something to tell you when I saw you, but I just can’t keep it any longer, what I want to tell you dear is this, I feel as if I have tried a single life long enough and now I am going to ask you to become my wife. Now dear, if you will commit to the above request let me know right away and I will write and ask the permission of your mother to marry you, and with her consent we will then fix the time of the wedding. Now I hope you won’t let this shock you any, and please answer me as soon as possible, if we should get married I shall want you to come to this city to live after the wedding, so dear while you are considering the questions of marriage you may also consider the question of residing in Detroit, also.
Mershell C. Graham
Now dear please don’t keep me waiting too long for an answer to this letter, as I am over anxious to hear what your answer will be. Remember me kindly to your mother and sisters, with lots of love and many thousand kisses I close, looking to receive an early and favorable reply
Really I had begun to say little mean things about you, for it did look like you were going to take as long to write as you did when you first landed in Detroit. You may know what a pleasure it is at all times to receive a letter from a friend and pal.
Well, Cliff and Chisholm are there and how do they like Detroit. Tell Chisholm I know he will conserve a week looking at the skyscrapers and be sure to hold him when he is taken out to the lake. It was a great surprise to know that he left with Cliff, as no one seemed to have been aware of his leaving until several days back. Of course there is no need of advertising your intentions, but he and Cliff both got away without my knowing.
We have been having some real cool weather for this time of the year, and it has caused everything to be unbalanced somewhat.
Yes, I thought strongly of leaving this place on account of the depressing standing of our business and since it has changed for the better, I think I’ll stick a little longer. I thought that my leaving would have been compelling from that point of view.
Edgar is home now, the Pullman Company gave him a run out of here to Mobile so he has transferred here. He told me that he saw you and so many others that he knew and all seem to be getting along fine.
Would you believe me if I say that John Blakey, Lewis Gilmer, Rufus Taylor and myself are the only boys here and we look “motherless.”
Say, I want you to write me if you should see anything that you think may interest me. Have you payed any attention along the typewriter lines; and should you see anything in the papers concerning this particular line of work – send it to me.
Was in Pensacola on April 29 to see my sister. Had a dandy time, and went out to the Navy yard and saw some of our latest methods of war-fare. Tell Chisholm and Cliff to write me sometimes, and my regards to Charlie Anderson and wife in fact, all of my friends that you come across. Now I am expecting to hear from you real soon. With best wishes from us all,
Your chum, Lowndes
Lowndes Adams, Rufus Taylor and Lewis Gilmer
Montgomery Ala Feb 27/1918
My Dear Pal; Your letter of a few days ago was received, and I can assure you that a line from my old friend was highly appreciated. I remember writing you some time ago and for some reason I did not hear from you until now, but failing to put my address on my letter naturally would leave you in doubt as to where to write me, all of which I am very sorry. I was indeed glad to hear that you and the other boys were all enjoying the very best of health and that the government has used good judgment in classing all of you in class A-1 and I only want you to know that when ever you all get there, you can rest assured that you will have the opportunity of seeing me for I am now in the old city taking my examination, they passed me all OK. So you can see it is very likely I shall soon be somewhere in a training camp, I do wish however that it was possible for me to train somewhere in the Northern camps instead of the southern camps. I am sure you understand why. I shall leave tonight for Atlanta where I shall wait until they are ready for me to report for duty. I was out to see your Mother Monday afternoon. Found her looking and feeling the very best of health and was very glad to see me and to know that I had heard form you. Of course she is worried over the thought of you boys having to go to the army, but said that if there was no way to keep out of it, why she felt she would have to make some sacrifice which is indeed a fine spirit. I also stopped by Gwen and her mother’s. They were both looking fine. She was sick when I was here Xmas so I didn’t get a chance to see her and of course you know I couldn’t leave the city without seeing the Fairest Lady of the land. Glad to say that she is looking just fine said that she would like so much to see you.
Montgomery is as dry as a chip. There is really nothing doing here, all of the boys of our push have gone away with the exception of four Adams, Taylor, Gilmer and Nathan. Mack; I wish it was possible for me to say just at present whether or not I will be able to come west or not this spring or even in the summer but as things are arranged now it is hard for me to say. But if I am not called in to service real soon, why I shall have more time to think it over.
I am doing nicely in Atlanta. I have the 5th chair in a 12 chair shop, which, of course is the largest shop there. So far as getting along OK why I really have no reason to complain, but there is a desire to have that privilege to breath for once in life one deep breath of pure free atmosphere as a man, as well as meeting again with old friends.
I wish to be remembered to Cliff and Chisholm and to you all. I hope your every efforts will be crowned with success.
Trusting that I shall hear from you again real soon, I am your friend, J.W. Blakely, #8 Central Ave. Atlanta, GA
Today I am transcribing my Grandfather, Mershell C. Graham’s funeral program. I’ve been looking for my grandfather’s funeral program for several months. It wasn’t in the binder, where it should have been, or in the box with the not yet filed funeral programs. Today, while looking for something else, I found it. It was in my file cabinet in a folder having nothing to do with anything relevant. The poem was written by my sister, Pearl Cleage.
Mershell Cunningham Graham standing beside his corn patch.
Poem For My Grandfather
(for M.C. Graham)
The handing down of things worn smooth between your fingers. The handing down of parts of you in hurried kitchen ceremonies. The smell of biscuits and the smell of heirlooms. A story about trains. A whisper of hard times and magic in the face you hold so close to mine and smile. The handing down of things. The handing on of you…
By Pearl Cleage
In Memorium
Mershell C. Graham Thursday, September 6, 1973, 12 Noon Plymouth United Church of Christ 514 Garfield Detroit, Michigan Rev. Nicholas Hood, Pastor
Order of Service Processional…… Hymn …… Invocation ……. Scripture ……. Hymn ……. Eulogy ……. Benediction …….
Interment Detroit Memorial Park
In Charge Charles T. Cole Funeral Home
Honory Pallbearers Friends of Mr. Graham
Active Pallbearers Members of the Men’s Club
Mershell C. Graham was born December 25, 1887, in Coosada Station, Alabama. He received his early Christian training in the First Congregational Church of Montgomery, Alabama. He met his beloved wife, Fannie Mae, in the church. They celebrated their 54th wedding anniversary in June of this year. They had four children and shared a long and beautiful life.
He was one of the founders of Plymouth United Church of Christ and was a devoted member of the church all of his life. He served as treasurer for many years and was Trustee Emeritus. He was retired from the Ford Motor Company after over thirty years of service and was a member of the U.A.W. and the N.A.A.C.P.
Mr. Graham passed on September 3, 1973, at his home at 16260 Fairfield. He leaves to mourn his loss his wife, Fannie, his two daughters, Mary Virginia Graham Elkins and Doris Graham Cleage; five grandchildren Doris Diane Elkins; Kristin Cleage Williams; Barbara Elkins; Pearl Cleage Lomax and Marilyn elkins; and six great-grandchildren; Maricea McNeil; Harry McNeil; Frank Elkins; Lonnie Elkins; Jilo Williams and Ife Williams.
He was preceded in death by his two sons, Mershell C. Graham Jr and Howard A. Graham.
