Another Picnic – Summer 1921
Tag Archives: #Pearl Reed Cleage
Seven Generations of L3e2a1b1 – My Grandmother Pearl’s MtDNA
Although I inherited DNA from my paternal Grandmother Pearl Reed Cleage, I did not inherit her MtDNA, which goes through the maternal line, from mother to daughter to granddaughter etc. I had to convince one of my father’s sisters to be tested. My Aunt Gladys agreed. Oral history told us that my Grandmother’s mother’s mother was a Cherokee Indian, however, her MtDNA L3e21b1, originates in Sub-Saharan Africa. No Native American DNA showed up at all, in either my MtDNA or my autosomal (total) DNA.
Clara Hoskins is the first woman in this ancestral line that I can name. She was born about 1829 in Kentucky. Her daughter, Annie Allen, and her 5 granddaughters were also born in Kentucky. From there, the family moved to Indianapolis, IN and on to Benton Harbor and Detroit Michigan and spread out from there to California, Illinois, Windsor and Toronto.
Annie passed her mtDNA to all of her 8 children but because it passes from mother to daughter, only the five daughters passed it on to their daughters. The son’s children received their mother’s MtDNA. Those 5 daughters birthed 15 granddaughters, who birthed 12 known great granddaughters. Josephine’s daughter Bessie, disappeared so I don’t know if she had children. From those 12 great granddaughters I have 11 known 2x great granddaughters.
There are several lines that I lost about here. I can only vouch for 1 3x great granddaughter but there are possibly others from those 5 unknown to me lines. Hopefully, someone will let me know. This makes a total of 42 known descendents with Clara’s MtDNA.
Anna’s oldest daughter, Josephine, had one daughter, Bessie, who ran away from home in her youth and was never heard from again. Unfortunately, I don’t know Josephine’s married name so I can’t try and find Bessie. She last makes an appearance in the 1900 census living with her grandmother in Indianapolis, Indiana.
Lillian Louise Reed Shoemaker had a son and a daughter, Mildred, who had 1 son only.
Sarah Reed Busby had 5 daughters. Elleretta had 2 sons only. Margaret had 2 daughters, Sarah and Arlene. Sarah had a daughter. Queen had 1 daughter, Elaine, who had 2 daughters, Marina and Lori. Lori had 1 son and 1 daughter, Alexis. Marina had 2 daughters, Sinclaire and Sidne. These daughters are all still in school. Sophia had 1 daughter, Bernadine, who had 1 son only. I have no children for Marie.
Minnie Reed Mullins had 5 daughters. Helen had 2 sons and 2 daughters, Patricia and Joyce. Patricia has 1 daughter, Anastasia. Joyce has 2 daughters, Elizabeth and Kristinia. I don’t know if either of them had children. Georgie Anna had 1 daughter, Barbara Anne. I don’t know if this daughter had any children. Hughie Marie had 1 daughter, Patrice, who has 1 daughter, Katherine, who has no children. Minnie had 1 daughter, Deborah Anne. who has no children. Barbara Louise had 4 sons only.
My grandmother Pearl Reed Cleage had 3 daughters, Barbara, Gladys and Anna. Barbara has 1 son only. Gladys has 3 sons and 1 daughter, Jan. Jan has 1 son and 3 daughters, Shashu, Jann and Sadya. Shashu has 1 son and 1 daughter, Lyric. Lyric is too young to have children. Anna has 2 daughters, Anna and Maria. Anna has 2 sons and 2 daughters, Liliana and Sophia. Liliana has 1 toddler daughter. Maria has 2 children by adoption who will not share her mtdna.
Mother’s Day Telegram -1940
About 1940 my uncle Louis was in St. Louis as an intern at Homer G. Philips Hospital. He sent my grandmother in Detroit this telegram on Mother’s Day. These photographs were taken a few years later.
G is for Grandmothers
This is my seventh post for the April A-Z Challenge. I am going to write about my grandmothers and Good Housekeeping magazine’s October, 1912 issue about their “Composite Reader”. I read a post over at Shery’s blog, A Hundred Years Ago, this morning. It got me thinking about my grandmothers and also wondering what the rest of the article said. I found it in the Cornell University Home Economics Archive. Some other articles in the magazine were:
- The Woman of the Future by Thomas A. Edison: About the wonders that electricity will bring to women and final enable them to be raised up to the level of the superior male mind because their housework will be negligible and actually engineering.
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Mirandy on the Love Test by Dorothy Dix: An article written in what is supposed to be the dialect of a black woman, gives advice. I could not get through the whole article for being irritated.
- Practical Eugenics – letters responding to an earlier article which I could not find. Mostly talking about stopping the birth of “imperfect” children or to stop children from being born to “imperfect” parents.
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The Ideal Suburban Home of the Near Future: by Sarah Louise Arnold, talks about ideas for communal apartment living that may come before moving to that ideal small house in the suburbs.
Some of these articles reminded me of a book my grandmother Fannie had called “Ideal Home Life” which was written in 1909. There were article in The Indianapolis Recorder written during that time that also talked about simplified and gracious living. Instead of eugenics, they concentrated on “uplift” and had articles about ways to teach those who didn’t know the proper way to keep house and raise children, how to do it.
What were my grandmother’s doing at this time?
Pearl Reed Cleage was born in Lebanon, KY in 1884. In October of 1912, she was 28 had been married for almost two years to Albert B. Cleage Sr. Her mother, Anna Allen Reed, died the previous year. Pearl had one son (my father) who was about 17 months old. They lived in Kalamazoo, MI where my grandfather had opened a medical practice. While they lived in Indianapolis, IN, my grandmother’s name appeared in the newspaper quite often for singing at church and civic events. I found no such articles in the Kalamazoo papers. Her growing family probably put an end to that. I hope she was still able to sing in her church choir. My Uncle Louis was born in August of 1913.
Fannie Turner Graham was born in 1888 in Hayneville, AL and was 24 years old in 1913. She moved to Montgomery with her mother and sister when she was four and was still living there in 1912 with her mother and two sisters. She was managing her Uncle Victor Tulane’s grocery store. In 1911 she was a member of the Progressive Twelve Club. They seem to gather for sewing and socialization. She attended First Congregational Church services with her family. It wouldn’t be until 1919 that she married my grandfather, Mershell Graham.
Postcard To My Grandmother From Her Niece – 1909
This postcard was written to my grandmother, Pearl Reed, after a visit to two of her sisters in Benton Harbor, MI in 1909. Pearl was 23 and her niece was about 15. I wonder why she chose a picture of the Ohio Penitentiary.
Dear Pearl,
I am glad you got home and I worst (sic) you were here know (sic).
Margaret Busby
Miss Pearl Reed
2730 Kenwood
Indianapolis, Indiana
I didn’t have any castles in my photo stash, but this morning I remembered this postcard of the Ohio Penitentiary that my grandmother Pearl’s niece sent to her in 1909. Surrounded by stone walls, like the castle below, it is my entry for Sepia Saturday 171. I did post this in 2010 but I don’t think anyone ever saw it, so here it is again. The Penitentiary was demolished in 1998. To see photos of then and now – including a photograph that shows a little tower – go to Old Ohio Penitentiary.
Grandmother Pearl Reed Cleage’s Birthday
Today would be my grandmother Pearl Reed Cleage’s 127th birthday. She was born in 1886 in Lebanon, KY and died in 1982 at the age of 96 in Idlewild, Michigan. Here is a photograph taken in 1929, on the side of the house on Scotten Ave. in Detroit. My grandmother was 43. Anna was 5 and Gladys was 7.
Looking Over the Fence 1937
This is my grandmother’s page from the “Black Album”. The photographs are the actual size you see if you enlarge the photograph above. They seems to have been cut from a proof page. Every member of the family except the youngest, Anna, had a page. Judging by the ages of the people in the book I think they were taken about 1935 – 1937. My grandmother would have been about 50.
The prompt this week shows a man facing away from us and leaning on the top of a truck. In my photograph my grandmother is leaning on the backyard fence of the house on Scotten. There is a spade in front of her and a pile of leaves behind. It looks like she was working with her plants. I remember my uncle Louis telling me once, after she was dead and he was old and not very well, that his mother always had the most beautiful flowers and that she would save the geraniums from year to year and they thrived. We were sitting in back of his cottage in Idlewild and looking at the geraniums and petunias his sister Gladys had planted in some flower boxes. The house on Scotten is a vacant lot now. Strangers live in the cottage in Idlewild.
Baseball, Summer of 1922- Sepia Saturday #136
I have posted this photograph before as part of my discovery of the numbers on photographs as a means of sorting and dating them. My father’s cousin, Theodore Page, is 
ready at the bat while my father, “Toddy” seems oblivious to the fact that he could have his head knocked off when Theodore goes to hit the ball. The photograph was taken in the summer of 1922, probably at Belle Isle, an island park in Detroit. The day was an outing for the extended Cleage family.
My uncle Henry loved baseball and often described the game in terms that made it seem like a work of art or a piece of music. My mother’s mother used to listen to games on the radio. I never liked playing the game – I could not hit the ball. I didn’t like watching it, compared to basketball, baseball games seem so long and slow moving.
Some other posts about this day at the park:
Albert and Pearl (Reed) Cleage
More information about Yesterday
Idlewild 1953
We were at my uncle Louis’ cottage in Idlewild. I remember my grandmother reading to us from the book “Told Under the Red Umbrella” that summer. The electricity went off during a storm once and she read to us by the kerosene lamps until the lights came back on.
1940 Census – The Albert B. and Pearl (Reed) Cleages
In 1940 my grandparents and family were living at 6429 Scotten at the corner of Moore Place. They owned the house and it was worth $5,000. They had lived in the same place in 1935 and in fact had been there for over 20 years as all the girls in the family were born in that house. My grandfather was a medical doctor in private practice at the Cleage Clinic. The amount of money he made in 1939 was a crossed out number, replaced with “0”. He was the informant, that is he is the one that talked to the census taker and gave them the information on the form.
My grandfather was 56 years old, born in Tennessee with plus 5 years of college. My grandmother was 50, born in Kentucky with 4 years of high school. My father was 28, born in Indiana, had plus 5 years of college and was absent from the home. All the other children were born in Michigan. Louis was 26, had plus 5 years of college and absent from the home. Henry was 24 and had 5 years of college. Hugh was 21 and had 2 years of college. Barbara was 19 and had completed 1 year of college. Gladys was 17 and had completed 4 years of high school. Anna was 15 and had completed 2 years of high school.
All of the children were in school. Anna was still attending Northwestern High school. Gladys had graduated in 1939 and was a freshman at Wayne State University. Henry, Hugh and Barbara must have been at Wayne. Louis graduated from Wayne State medical school in 1940 and was doing a residency at Homer Philips in St. Louis. My father graduated from Wayne in 1938 and was in the seminary at Oberlin College.
Source: 1940 U.S. Census. State: Michigan. County: Wayne. City: Detroit. Ward 14. Enumeration Districe: 84-787. Sheet number: 11-A. Head of household and informant: Dr. Albert B. Cleage. To see the census sheet for the Albert Cleage family click HERE.
I hadn’t realized that one of my grandmother sisters and all of my grandfather’s living siblings lived within walking distance of their house. I have labeled their houses, Northwestern High School, Wingert Elementary School and the Cleage Clinic. I sort of knew this, but I didn’t realize it until I mapped it out after finding everybody in the same neighborhood. In future posts I will share what I learned about each household in 1940.