Then and Now – Atkinson 1953

Cleages, Photographs, Saturday Night Genealogy Fun, , ,

The “Saturday Night Fun” assignment from Randy Seaver at Genea-Musings (along with some of the fine results) can be found here.  It involved picking out a photograph to use in this challenge for August 16 by the Family Curator.  For the original challenge you hold up an old photograph and match it up to the present day scene.  This means you have to be in the area.  Unfortunately, I live far from the sites of my past and that of my ancestors so I was am not able to do this exactly.  I also was not able to just choose my photo and let it go at that. Here is what I did.

The parsonage now and us back in 1953.

In 2004 I spent a day driving around Detroit taking photographs of places where I used to live and of other houses family members lived in.  The angle of this house fit almost perfectly with the photograph taken in 1953 of my father with my little sister Pearl and me.  We are in front of the parsonage on Atkinson. My father was the minister of St. Mark’s Presbyterian Church, two blocks up the street on the corner of 12th Street and Atkinson.

My sister and I shared the bedroom on the upper left.  We used to look out of the side window into the attic of Carol and Deborah. They were our age and lived next door and got to stay up much later then we did. They had a wonderful playroom in the attic.  I taught Pearl to read by the streetlight shinning into our bedroom.  I don’t know why we waited until we were supposed to be in the bed to teach and learn reading.

On our other side lived Eleanor Gross with her family. Eleanor was a teenager and babysat with us during the rare times our parents went out.  My paternal grandparents lived down the street and I have a 2004 photograph of that house which I think I will mix with one from the 1950’s.  I was trying to think of someone still in Detroit that I could get to take a photo from the proper angle of St. Mark’s. I like this assignment!

The Ruff Draft – July 30, 1991

Newsletters, , , ,

In 1991 my family began putting out a newsletter, The Ruff Draft.  We had recently started homeschooling and the purpose of The Ruff Draft was to both give real writing opportunities to Ayanna, Tulani, James and Cabral, and to show the relatives they were learning something. Here are 3 pages from the July 30, 1991 edition.  What I noticed while looking through it this morning was how similar the News Shorts on page 3 were to the News Shorts in the papers in the early 1900’s where I have found information of births, weddings and at home celebrations for my grandparents.   We stopped publishing when the writers graduated and moved on to bigger things away from home.


 

Poppy’s House by Dee Dee McNeil

Grahams, memories

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.

© Dee Dee McNeil

Albert and Pearl (Reed) Cleage

Cleages, , ,

Last week Megan and Jim Heyl were kind enough to do some cemetery sleuthing for me. In spite of the rude and unhelpful attitude of the office staff, they found the groundskeeper to be helpful. He located the sod covered headstones of my paternal grandparents.  The Heyls dug them out and replaced them on top of the sod so that they are now showing. More on Detroit Memorial Park Cemetery in the future.

1883 - Husband - 1957 Dr. Albert B. Cleage

My grandparents graves are left of center, front.

Pearl Doris Cleage 1889 In Loving Memory 1982

T is for Theodore Street

52 weeks of personal history, Family History Through the Alphabet, Grahams, Houses, ,

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 neighborhood 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.

Fannie Mae Turner, Enumerator 1910

Grahams, Investigations, Turner,

After reading   My Grandfather was an Enumerator on the blog ABT UNK, I decided to write something about my grandmother Fannie M. Turner who was  an enumerator for the 1910 US Census in Montgomery, Alabama.  She was 22 and lived with her mother and younger sisters in Montgomery, although not in the district she enumerated.  Her grandmother Eliza Allen lived in the district. It was looking at the entry for Eliza that I first noticed that my grandmother was the enumerator.  Recently I found a newspaper article online about the appointed census takers that said in part:

“Montgomery – City – Whites: Albert S. Ashley,  E.F. Davis, James C. Westbrook, Leopold Loab, Thomas Robinson, R. Brownlee Centerfit, Charles S. Spann, Louis Lyons, Edgar W. Smith, Mrs. Fannie B. Wilson, Handy H. McLemore, Thomas M. Westcott, Alto Deal, Miss Gene Finch, Frank G. Browder. Negroes–To enumerate negro (sic) population only–Gertrude V. Wilson, Eli W. Buchanan, Fannie M. Turner, David R. Dorsey.”

Fannie M. Turner began work April 15, 1910 and enumerated her Aunt Abbie and her Grandmother Eliza on pg 2. She finished on April 26.  Mrs. Fannie B. Wilson (white) completed the enumeration of Montgomery, Ward 4 by counting the white residents on several pages after that.  As noted in the newspaper article, Negro enumerators could only count Negros.  I wonder how that worked. Did my grandmother go to the door, note that they were white and tell them someone else would return to count them later? Did the neighbors alert her?  Since she was already familiar with the neighborhood, did she already know where the white people lived or did all the white residences live in the same area?

My grandmother was a working woman who managed her Uncle Victor’s grocery store from the time she graduated from State Normal School until she married my grandfather in 1919.  Wish I knew the stories she must have had to tell about that two weeks of counting the citizens in Ward 4.

Jeanette McCall McEwen

Allen, sepia saturday

Cousins Annie Lee and Jeanette with their sons.

 With youngest son.

  Jeanette and husband Robert


Jeanette was born on February 18, 1897 in Montgomery, Alabama. She was the youngest of the six children of Edward and Mary (Allen) McCall.  Her oldest brother, James McCall was the blind poet in She was owned before the war by…. Her father, Edward McCall, was the cook and turn-key at the city jail. Her mother, Mary Allen McCall, was a seamstress.  Jeanette attended Alabama State Normal school, a primary through high school for African Americans in Montgomery that all of her siblings and cousins attended.

Jeanette’s best friend was Stella Brown, who later married her older brother Roscoe McCall. Jeanette attended Rust College in Holly Springs, Mississippi and met her husband, Robert Anderson McEwen there.  By 1920 Robert and Jeanette were married and living in Chicago as roomers.  On January 2, 1920 she gave birth to her first son, Robert Jr.  Robert Sr. worked at the post office.  By the time their second son, Raymond, was born  on December 16, 1923, Robert was a dental student.  Jeanette did not work outside of the home.

By 1930 Robert was a dentist.  Jeanette died December 22, 1931.  I do not know the cause of death yet. You may see another photograph of Jeanette here.  Robert remarried before 1938 to Ethel, last name unknown at this time. He died June 29, 1938.   You can see more car related (or not) Sepia Saturday offerings here.

“Horse Jumps through Automobile Windshield”

Montgomery Alabama, One Place Study,

Horse Jumps through Automobile Windshield

Considerable Excitement Attends Runaway On Court Square Tuesday Afternoon.

Much excitement and some damage was the result of a run-away horse crashing into an automobile in front of Alex Rice’s store on Court Square late yesterday afternoon.

The horse, which was pulling a buggy, became frightened on the first block of South Court Street and dashed toward Montgomery Street.  An automobile belonging to Theo Meyer was parked in front of Alex Rice’s and the front feet of the horse went through the wind shield.

Beyond sustaining several minor cuts, the horse was unhurt and the damage done to the automobile, too, was small.

Victor Tulane was owner of the horse.

Montgomery Advertiser; Montgomery, Alabama · Wednesday, January 27, 1915 The GenealogyBank