Man in a Plane

sepia saturday

I found this photo in my collection. It was dedicated to one of my aunts from what looks like “Tummil”. I do not know who he is or where he’s going or what happened to him.

New information: received this today  “The plane is an AT-6 Texan.  The man in the plane is definitely an officer and possibly a pilot.  The photograph was taken in the states, possibly circa 1940-1950 as that was when the majority of training took place.  TA stands for Trainer Aircraft.  Neither of us recognize the pilot.”

And yet more information:  “Please let your sister know that we are not saying he was not a Tuskegee Airman.  By the fact that he is sitting in an A-6 trainer suggests he was in the Tuskegee program   But right now we have no way of knowing if he graduated or when he was in the program.  If I get a name then all sorts of avenues open up.  We just need to get lucky where someone recognizes him as having been in their class.  We have records of each graduating class.  The first graduating class was 42-C-SE on March 6, 1942.  The “SE” stands for Single Engine so the first class was all  Fighter Pilots.  There were five graduating officers:
Captain Benjamin O. Davis, Jr.
2nd Lt. Lemuel R. Custis
2nd Lt. Charles DeBow
2nd Lt. George S. Roberts
2nd Lt. Mac Ross

There were forty-four Single Engine classes and twenty-one TE (Twin Engine) classes.  The last class to graduate was 46-C-TE on June 28, 1946, 2nd Lt. Claude A. Rowe from Detroit Michigan.  The problem is that there were approximately one thousand pilots who graduated.  Only three hundred (+) went over to Europe.  Of that group at last count we know of forty four who are still living.  But… I know a guy.  He is ninety three and sharp as a tack.  He was attached to Headquarters.  I’m going to send him a copy and see what he says.  By the way, he had to jump out of planes twice during the war.  When I interviewed him he told me all kinds of great stories.  But the last one did make me smile.  I asked him if, at the end he took anything from his plane before he left to get on the boat to come home.  I swear there was a twinkle in his eye when he said, “…Well, you know some of the ladies who built the planes would write their names on the inside of the cockpit in lipstick.  They would also leave their phone numbers.  I made some calls!”‘

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1940 Census – James and Minnie (Reed) Mullins

1940 Census, Investigations, , , ,

Minnie Reed Mullins was my grandmother, Pearl Reed Cleage’s sister.  James and Minnie Mullins were the parents of 12 children. At the time of the 1940 census only the youngest 3 – William, Harold and John – were still at home. Minnie was the informant. The house they rented for $20 a month at 4345 Tireman is no longer there. Here is a shot from Google Maps looking down the street from the now vacant lot.

Looking down the street from 4345 Tireman, which is no longer standing.

In the 1960s I sometimes walked down Tireman on my way to school. At that time the houses were still there. They were a mix of brick and frame two family and single family houses.  My uncle Henry talked about riding his bike down Tireman and out into the country when he was a boy.   The one time my sister and I tried it, we ended up in Dearborn and were called “nigger” by some white teenage boys.  But that is not today’s story.

James Mullins was listed as 75 years old and had not worked during the past year.  He and wife Minnie both had 8 years of school.  She was born in Kentucky and he was listed as born in New York.  I don’t know if Minnie was joking with the enumerator or trying to give them false information on purpose or if it was a misunderstanding.   He was actually born in Georgia according to all the other documents I have. Well, except for the 1930 census where his race was “Indian”, his place of birth was “Cherokee” and Minnie was identified as “white”.  In 1940 everybody living in the household was identified as “Negro”.

Mr. Mullins holding John. William “Bill” and Harold in front, about 1924. Benton Harbor, MI
Minnie Reed Mullins about 1924. Benton Harbor, MI.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A later photograph of William (known as Bill) and Harold Mullins.

William Mullins was 26 in the 1940 Census. He was born in Indiana. He had finished 4 years of high school. He had earned $960 wages in 1939 working 52 weeks as a machinist in an Auto Factory.

Harold was 24 years old. He was born in Indiana and had completed 4 years of high school. During 1939 he worked 52 weeks and earned $936 as a stock boy at a clothing store.

John Mullins

John was 18 years old, born in Michigan and had completed 3 years of high school. He was attending school so he was probably a senior at Northwestern High School. I know that John was also a musician and probably played during this time.

Just looking through other information I have collected for the Mullins family has shown me I need to plan another post where I pull it all together.

 Source 1940 U.S. Census. State: Michigan. County: Wayne. City: Detroit. Ward 14. Enumeration District: 84-788. Sheet number: 1-A. Household # 1. Head of household: James Mullins. Informant: Wife: Minnie Mullins.  To see the census page for the Mullins family click here.

1940 Census – The Albert B. and Pearl (Reed) Cleages

1940 Census, Carnival of Genealogy, Cleages, Investigations, , , , , , , ,
Albert, Pearl, Albert Jr, Louis, Henry, Hugh, Barbara, Gladys, Anna.
6429 Scotten, Detroit, Michigan

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.

1940 Census – The Grahams – Supplemental Material

1940 Census, Grahams, Investigations, , , ,

After I finished writing about my Grahams in the 1940 Census yesterday, I looked at some maps of the enumeration district. Here are some photographs I put together from Google maps showing what the area looks like now and what streets were included in their enumeration district.  My cousin Barbara and I visited the area in 2004 and it looked just like this.

The Enumeration District is outlined in red. My grandparents house is the “A”. The yellow line traces the route to the elementary school.

An ariel view from google of my grandparents block. Their house was located where the “A” is. There used to be an alley but it is now overgrown as they don’t maintain alleys in Detroit any more.  The Jordan house and the Graham house shared the enclosed space. There was another alley next to the Jordan house which is included inside the fence.

The site of my grandparents house. Now a storage area.

Unmaintained side alley next to the house site.

The factory across the street from my grandparents house.

Thomas Elementary school. The school my mother and her siblings attended. Now deserted and burned.

Looking down the street from elementary school toward the ruined Packard plant. My Uncle Mershell was hit and killed by a truck on the way back to school with his older sister, Mary Vee after lunch. I think she always felt she was somehow responsible.

1940 Census – The Grahams

1940 Census, Carnival of Genealogy, Grahams, Investigations, , ,

The 1940 census was released yesterday. Today I was able to find both sets of grandparents, with my parents still living at home, the only great grandparent still alive, three families of cousins  and my in-laws who were married and living in their own home with the first of their twelve children, baby Maxine. Today I am going to write about my mother’s family, the Grahams.

The Grahams – Fannie and Mershell 1930

My grandparents were enumerated on April 12, 1940.  They lived, as I expected, at 6638 Theodore Street in Detroit. The entire enumeration district was white with the exception of my grandparents and their next door neighbors, the Jordans.  Just noticed my grandparents and family were enumerated as “white”. Among the adults over 40 was a mix of naturalized citizens from Italy, Poland, Canada, Switzerland, England, Germany and natural born citizens from the southern United states. There were a few people who had filed their first papers towards gaining citizenship and a few “aliens”. The younger adults and  the children were almost all born in Michigan. The majority of people in the district had lived in the same place since 1935.  Among the workers on my grandparents page were  a janitor, two maids, a laborer at a spring factory, a bender at an auto plant,  a checker at a dress shop, a grinder at an auto factory, a delivery man for a print shop, a stock clerk at an auto factory, a stenographer, a time keeper at a machine shop, a manager for a coal and ice concern and a salesman for a radio concern.

My grandmother, Fannie, was the informant for her family. She and Mershell were both 50. He had completed 8th grade. She and 20 year old daughter, Mary V., had completed 4 years of high school. My mother, Doris was 17 and had completed 4 years of high school and was attending college.  Mershell had worked 52 weeks as a stock clerk at an auto factory and earned $1,720 during 1939. Mary V. was working as a stenographer at a newspaper office and had earned nothing in 1939. They owned their own home which was worth $3,500 and had lived in the same house in 1935.

Above Doris and Mary V. in front of Plymouth Congregational Church.

Did I learn anything new from this census? This was the first time I looked at the whole enumeration district which gave me more of an overview of the neighborhood. I did not know that my grandfather completed 8th grade. I always heard he taught himself to read because he never attended school.  I wonder which is true, did he teach himself to read and my grandmother just said he completed 8th grade or did he go to school.  No big surprises, mostly seeing in the record what I already knew.

 For more information about the Grahams, their enumeration district and photographs of what the area looks like now Supplemental material about the neighborhood.  A photo of my mother, aunt and uncle – Bird’s Eye View, 1940 photograph.  My grandmother’s mother and sisters – 1940 Census – Jennie Virginia Turner.  A map of where my family lived in Detroit during the 1940 Census – Where We Lived.  My grandmother Fannie’s 1940 Journal Entries. My mother at Wayne State University in 1940.

 Source 1940 U.S. Census. State: Michigan.  County: Wayne. City: Detroit. Ward:15. Enumeration District: 84-862. Household: 331. Sheet Number: 16-A. Date: April 12, 1940. Head of Household: Mershell Graham. Informant: wife, Fannie Graham.  To see the census sheet for the Graham Family – click.

Celia Rice Cleage Sherman 1855-1930

Biography, Carnival of Genealogy, Cleages, Photographs
My Great grandmother Celia holding my aunt Gladys. 1923. Detroit.

This post is a combination of information I found through records and memories of my aunts and uncles about their grandmother Celia. She died before I was born so I never had the chance to meet her.

Celia Rice was born in Virginia about 1855. Her father was a member of the Rice family and her mother was enslaved on the Rice plantation.  She was brought to Tennessee when she was small.  By the time I asked, nobody remembered her mother’s name.  She was about ten when freedom came.

My aunt Gladys said that when Celia was a child, she had to walk around in the sun. The masters wife did not want her to be confused with the white children of the family, who she resembled. 

On April 23, 1872 Celia Rice and Louis Cleage were married in Athens, McMinn County Tennessee. They moved to Louden County, TN where their five children were born over the next 11 years. Josephine “Josie” was born in 1873.  Jacob was born in 1875. Henry was born in 1877. Charles Edward was born in 1879.  My grandfather, Albert, was born in 1883. Louis did farm work and Celia did house work.  She was unable to read or write.

My uncle Louis said that Lewis C. worked all day for 50 cents.  Celia worked all week for 50 cents.  He often spent his on good times before he got home.  Many nights he spent in jail – drunk – playing the guitar and singing!

The marriage doesn’t seem to have been a happy one and by 1899 they had split up and Celia married Roger William Sherman, a carpenter, in Athens, Tennessee.  She was 45 years old. By 1900 oldest daughter, Josie, was married to James Cleage (Different Cleage family, not related but off of the same plantation.), a teacher and  they had several children. Jacob was not at home in the 1900 census.  Edward, Henry and Albert were at home and all students. Celia could read. She had birthed five children and all five were living and doing well.

After her husband died, Celia lived with her son Edward and his family in Athens, TN for some years and then she moved to Detroit where her other three sons lived.

My uncle Henry said she used to give him an apple every once in awhile and slip him a nickel.  He was her favorite.  My aunt Gladys says they used to stop by her room sometimes and she would try to show them how to tat and crochet and it was kind of interesting, sitting on her bed, watching.

My Aunt Anna says, Grandma Celia was in Detroit for a while…making the rounds between uncle Henry, uncle Jake and ours….She would get tired of one house and occupants…complain and move to another... there was a Rev. Rice… he was a big shot in the Presbyterian Church… he came to town in a blaze of notoriety….to speak at some church… Granma  [Celia] wanted to go…but Daddy wouldn’t hear of it! His name and picture were in the paper…Anna said she saw the paper and that he looked just like Granma.

My uncle Henry remembers one time his Grandma Celia wanted to go back to Athens.  “….and Daddy said he could not send her to Athens.  And they went on for about ten years and then, pretty soon she said, well, I’m going to Athens if I have to go up and down the street and beg.  He was fussing and hollering and she said ‘I am going to go to Athens.  I am going to go home.’  And finally he had to give her the money to go.  I guess it just gets in you sometimes.  You know, living with us was no picnic.  She had to go and he didn’t have the money.”

I have been unable to find a death record, certificate or burial information for my great grandmother.  She was living with my Grandfather Albert Cleage in the 1930 census.  Going by the Memories of my Aunt Anna, she must have died soon after.

My Aunt Anna remembers being about 5 and in the kitchen when Granma Celia had a stroke.  She was sick for quite awhile before she died. She remembers when Celia died they  laid her out in the living room…Henry was a broken man!  She places Henry at about 13 years old.

Once I worked in a sewing factory

Biography, sepia saturday,
The night I left. Waiting for time to go catch the bus.

I graduated with a BFA in December of 1968 and caught the Greyhound bus out of town right after Christmas. At the time, it was the only way I could figure out to leave home. My true love was living with someone else. My parents would not look kindly on me moving to my own place in Detroit, so I hit the road. I first went to San Francisco. Stayed about a week. The person I knew out there had returned to Mississippi. Decided to head to Washington D.C. where my sister was a student at Howard. I hadn’t enjoyed the 5 day bus ride out so I caught the train east. I stayed in my sister’s dorm room for a week or two, until one of her play writing teachers hooked me up with a friend of his in New York City, a woman from Belgium who taught French at Columbia University.

I caught the train to NYC and took a cab from Grand Central Station to her apartment on Riverside Drive.  I remember looking out of the apartment window one evening, listening to Joni Mitchell singing “I’ve looked at Clouds” coming from another apartment. I stayed with her a week or two, got a job doing clerical work. Met some of her friends. Tried hash. Whoa. Moved to the YWCA when her mother came for a visit. Went through the blizzard of 1969. Got a letter from Jim and decided to go back to Detroit. I took a plane.

"Black Star clothing"
Sewing factory.

Some first thoughts on arriving back were that Detroit was the dirtiest place I’d been. Gray and dirty. I moved back in my mother’s and got a job at the newly opened Church sewing factory. It was just the sort of job I wanted.  I didn’t have to give it any thought so I could devote my mind to planning and plotting other things.  There were only about 4 of us working there, sewing African print “mod” clothes. I felt a connection to my seamstress ancestors while working there.

Several weeks later, I moved out, much to the consternation of my parents, especially my mother, who would have rather I discussed it with her first instead of the late night call I made telling her I wouldn’t be coming home.  After staying in the Black Conscience Library for a few days (there was a living quarters), I found an apartment and discovered it wasn’t that hard to move out and be on my own. I felt a great weight off of my mind, being on my own.  I worked there sewing for almost a year before leaving to become a revolutionary librarian and have my first daughter. I was 22.

Pregnant revolutionary librarian – making “Revolution Begins in the Mind” posters or something.
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Stolen from Africa

Eliza, Fearless females, Investigations, Many Rivers To Cross

Do you know the immigration story of one or more female ancestors? Do you have any passenger lists, passports, or other documentation? Interesting family stories?

africa_americaI don’t have any immigration stories, passenger lists, passports or even the names of the women who came to the United States, probably in the 18th century, against their will from Africa.  Until I took an mtdna test several years ago and persuaded my father’s sister to do the same I didn’t know what part of Africa they were from. We have no oral history of the Middle Passage.

In 2008 my sister received a free mtdna testing kit from African Ancestry.  Since she wasn’t interested, she passed it on to me. The results came back L3e for the haplogroup and they said I shared dna with the Mende people of Sierra Leone.

Later I decided to test again with Family Tree and my father’s sister also tested. My results came back L3e3*.  My aunts came back L3e2*. They said her results were the same as a broad area of Sub-Sarahan Bantu speaking groups.

In 2011 23andMe had a free offer to entice more African Americans to test and I took it. The results came back L3e3b.  Neither of these testers were so specific with a group as African Ancestry was.  They were more general, saying that L3e3b is one of the Sub-Saharan groups. One said they had matches from both Sierra Leone and Ethiopia. One map I found shows the group originating around Ethiopia and migrating out towards West Africa.

Reading online I found that most African Americans in the United States left from a fort on  Bunce Island in Sierra Leone. The photos on the left of the the montage show the fort back when it was being used and then the overgrown, green island and fort as they are today.I also found that most slave ships coming into the United States docked on Sullivan’s Island outside of Charleston, South Carolina.  The people were sold at auction on the north side of the Exchange building in Charleston, shown on the far left side of the photo. Other photos include maps of Sierra Leone and Charleston/Sullivan’s Island, an actual photograph taken in the 1800’s aboard a slave ship, and an old drawing of the auctioning off of slaves.

In 1974-1975 my family and I lived in Mt. Pleasant, right outside of Charleston.  My husband was working for the Emergency Land Fund trying to help black farmers save their land. We often went swimming at the beach on Sullivan’s Island, without knowing that our African ancestors probably landed near there after crossing the Atlantic ocean during the 1700s.

When my oldest daughter was born in 1970 we decided to give her a family name and an African name. I picked a name out of a children’s story we had in the Black Conscience Library. The name was Jilo. We could never find out what kind of name Jilo was or what it meant. After I received the information that Eliza’s line went back to the Mende people of Sierra Leone, I found a list of names and found that the name Jilo comes from  Sierra Leone.

In the spring of 2013 my daughter Ife, her two children and I went to Sullivan’s Island, South Carolina, to see the place where the slave ships landed.

The view of the harbor from Fort Moultrie, South Carolina.

My grandson and I standing by the sign on Sullivan's Island.
Sanding with my grandson next to the sign on Sullivan’s commemorating the entry site for the thousands of Africans that arrived through that port.

To see photos of my mtdna line click My Matrilineal Line and More.

Getting An Education – Fearless Females

Cleages, Eliza, Fearless females, Grahams, Reeds, Turner, , , ,

What education did your mother receive? Your grandmothers? Great-grandmothers? Note any advanced degrees or special achievements.

On My Maternal Side
My 3X great grandmother, Annie Williams,  was born about 1820 in Virginia into slavery. According to the 1880 Census, when she was about 60, she spoke English and could not read or write.

Eliza - my 2x great grandmother

Her daughter, my 2X great grandmother, Eliza Williams Allen, was born in Alabama about 1839 into slavery. She was freed by 1860. According to the 1910 census, she was about 67, spoke English and could not read or write

"Jennie Allen Turner in hat"
Jennie - my greatgrandmother

Her daughter, my great grandmother, Jennie Allen Turner was born free in Montgomery, Alabama in 1866. According to the 1880 Census, she was 13 years old, had attended school in the past year, spoke English and was literate.  I found one of my favorite books at her house “Lydia of the Pines.”

Fannie - my maternal grandmother

 Her daughter, my Grandmother Fannie Mae Turner Graham, was born in 1888 in Lowndes County, Alabama. She grew up in Montgomery. According to the 1900 census, she was 11 years old, at school, spoke English and was literate. My mother told me that when Fannie graduated from high school – State Normal, was offered a scholarship to Fisk but refused it and took a job in her uncles store, which she managed until she married in 1918. Also according to my mother, Fannie could quickly add long columns of numbers in her head.

Doris - my mother

My mother , Doris Graham Cleage,  was born in Detroit in 1923. She graduated from Eastern High School in Detroit and received a full scholarship to Wayne State  where she earned a BA with distinction as a Sociology major in June/1944. She returned to school in 1951 and earned teaching certification. In 1958 she became a masters candidate in education, completing her Master’s of Education Degree in the fall of 1958.  She took postmasters classes in education during a sabbatical in 1963. She also took evening classes  in 1968, when I was a senior at Wayne State.

My great grandmother, Emma Jones Turner (My grandmother Fannie’s paternal grandmother) was born about 1840 in South Carolina into slavery.  According to the 1880, 1900 and 1910 census she spoke English and was literate. I wish I knew more about her. I never heard a story about her. After my grandmother’s father was killed when she was 4 years old, her mother broke all ties with her husband’s family.

On My Paternal Side

Celia - my great grandmother

My great grandmother Celia Rice Cleage Sherman was my grandfather’s mother. She was born about 1855 into slavery in Virginia and brought to Tennessee as a child. She was about 10 when freedom came. In the 1880 census she could neither read nor write. By the 1930 census she spoke English and could read but could not write.  I wonder if my grandfather or his siblings taught her to read when they went to school.

My 2X great grandmother, Clara Green was born into slavery about 1829 in Kentucky. She was my grandmother Pearl Reed Cleage’s grandmother. In the 1880 census she was listed as about 55, spoke English and could not read or write.

Her daughter, my great grandmother Anna Allen Reed  was born  about 1849 in Kentucky into slavery.   According to the 1910 Census she spoke English but could not read or write. Anna’s four older children were illiterate while the four youngest were literate.

Pearl - my paternal grandmother

Her youngest daughter, my grandmother Pearl Reed Cleage was born in Lebanon, Kentucky in 1886. In the 1900 census she was 16 and where it says if you were or were not in school it says “Book 1” I don’t know what that means.  At any rate she was literate and spoke English. My Aunt Barbara told me she finished high school. I remember my grandparent’s house being full of books.

 

 

Going Out – 1937

Biography, Grahams, sepia saturday, Timeline, ,
Mary Virginia, Mershell and Doris Graham

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.

"Events of 1937"
What was going on in 1937
"sepia saturday 118"
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