Their backyard was full of flowers, as you can see, with a bird bath in the middle. My grandfather is holding an apple off of the apple tree just off camera to the right. My grandmother made wonderful applesauce with those apples and lots of cinnamon. The vegetable garden was behind the flowers. They were married on June 11, 1919 in Montgomery Alabama and came directly to Detroit. Both were 70 years old in this photo and had been married for 39 years.
This is one of my favorite photographs of the two of them together. I like the peeling and the white out and even the scotch tape. This one was taken on the side of their house. If we could look in the basement window on the left, we would see my grandfather’s shop which smelled of machine oil and wood and basement and faintly of the pine-sol he sprinkled around. “Lizzie”, the model T Ford is behind them. It was taken 2 February 1941. I bet it was Sunday.
To read my grandfather’s proposal letter to my grandmother, click here. For other Sepia Saturday photographs of older couples and who knows what else this week, click here.
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 hear 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 “Shell” 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
Uri – Me – Phil – Miriam – Me – Miriam – Miriam – MiriamJilo, Tyra- Shirley, Jim, Ife, Jilo & Ife – Me, Jim, Ife, Jilo, Ife – Jim, Ife, Jilo, Tyra
While looking through a box of photographs the other day, I came across some negatives from the 1970s.
The first strip was taken in 1970, when I was a revolutionary librarian at the Black Conscience Library in Detroit. I was pregnant with my first daughter, Jilo. Uri grew up to be an engineer. Phil later confessed to being a snitch, Miriam is Tyra’s mother. I was 23.
The second strip was made in 1974 in Atlanta. Shirley was visiting from Detroit, as was Tyra. Jim, my husband, was a printer with the Atlanta Voice. I was at home full time. Ife, my second daughter, was about to turn one year old. Jilo was 3. Tyra was 2. I was 26.
Although this is not a clock, which was the theme for this weeks Sepia Saturday, it does reflect time. You can see more timely entries here.
Kris ((me) and my sister, Pearl at our Cleage grandparents house with our “mashies” and Easter baskets. 1953
Memories of Easter – dying eggs in my Graham grandparent’s basement on Easter Saturday with my sister and cousins. Easter baskets with jelly beans and chocolate eggs and one big chocolate Easter bunny. Tiny fuzzy chicks. The year someone gave us 4 or 5 real chicks that died one by one in their box in the basement. Sugar eggs decorated with wavy blue, pink and yellow icing and a little scene inside. Reading the book “The Country Bunny and the Little Gold Shoes”, new clothes, going to church. Going by the Grandmother Cleage’s after church. What I don’t remember is gathering for a big Easter meal like we did for Thanksgiving and Christmas. I wonder why?
I have some Easter hats here and although you can’t see them clearly, my sister and I are holding some stuffed bunnies. To see other Easter or bunny Sepia Saturday offerings click here.
Today while looking for old Easter pictures, I found a partial answer to the question I asked at the end of my blog post on the migration from Montgomery to points north – Did Lowndes Adams and my grandfather ever see each other again, or keep in touch? I found a photo from 1965 of Lowndes and four of his sisters. I don’t know where it was taken, not at my grandparents house for sure, but it shows they did keep in touch. From L to R we have: Jessie, Maude, Jane, Alice and Lowndes.
Here is a list of household members in the 1900 census. James M Adams 53 Ida Adams 41 Sarah Adams 18 Emaline Adams 16 Maud Adams 13 Ida Jessie Adams 12 Lowndes W Adams 9 James Russel Adams 6 Alice Adams 3
Although Jane doesn’t appear in this census, she does appear in the 1910 census as an 8 year old.
A few weeks ago, a cousin from a “lost” branch of my grandmother Pearl Reed Cleage’s family found me through Ancestry.com. Her father and his siblings grew up thinking they were of Italian descent. My cousin was trying to find out what ship they came over on when she discovered they weren’t Italian, they were African American and my cousins. Since then we have been exchanging information and photographs. The newest one from her is the top photo. It shows her great grandmother, Louise Reed Shoemaker, with two girls. There is no information on the photograph. The photograph on the bottom is a photograph from my grandmother’s collection of Lillian Louise and her brother Hugh Reed’s children. The girls look a little older in my cousin’s photo but to me it’s clear they are they same people, even though they weren’t able to get a good scan yet.
After reading the letters my grandfather’s friends wrote to him in Detroit from Montgomery, I wondered what happened to those he left behind. Did they stay? Did they leave? I know that my grandparents never returned to Montgomery once they married so I wondered if he ever saw any of them again. I didn’t find them in the photographs in the backyard of the house on Theodore but, if they had moved to Detroit there wouldn’t have been any backyard photos. Those were reserved for out of town guests.
Lowndes, Rufus and Lewis with Lowndes niece,Edoline Speigner.
The six young men mentioned were Lowndes Adams, Robert Blakley, Rufus Taylor, Lewis Gilmer, Edgar Speigner and Nathan. I was able to follow them with varying degrees of success. There were twists and turns and connections and dead ends. And always more information to look for and check. Today I decided to write up what I have found so far.
Lowndes William Adams was born February 11, 1893, in Montgomery, Alabama to James and Ida Adams. James was a grocer. Lowndes was the 5th of 7 children. They all were educated and several of his sisters were teachers. Lowndes worked as a stenographer and later was the branch manager of an insurance company. He never married and shared his home with his widowed mother, several sisters, nieces and nephews. He was in Montgomery in 1930. He died in Detroit in 1977. My grandfather died in 1973. I wonder if they had a chance to spend time together.
Lowndes older sister, Emma Lena, married Edgar Speigner before he registered for the WW 1 draft in 1917. Edgar was born September 17, 1882, in Montgomery. He and his brother Charles were raised by their mother, Carrie Taylor who was a cook. Tall and stout, he worked as a pullman porter all of his adult life. Edgar and his wife Emma, raised four children. He died in 1954 in Montgomery, Alabama.
Rufus Taylor was born January 19, 1886 in Montgomery. His parents were Jordan and Fannie Taylor. Rufus was a cousin of Victor Tulane. Victor was married to Eliza and Dock’s daughter, Willie Lee. Rufus lived with the Tulane family for many years and worked in the store first as a clerk and then as a salesman. He remained in Montgomery and married Nan Nesbitt Jones. As far as I know he had no children but helped raise Nan’s son, Albert, from her first marriage. Nan Nesbitt was the niece by marriage of another of Dock and Eliza’s daughter, the youngest, Beulah. That is, Nan was the stepdaughter of Beulah’s husband’s sister. (Are you confused yet?) Rufus died in Montgomery at the age of 51 in 1937.
Mystery woman, Rufus Taylor, his wife Nan.
After posting Migration Story Part 3 last week my cousin, Ruth (who is not related to Nan) asked her cousin (who is related to Nan) if Nan was married to Rufus Taylor, who was Victor Tulane’s cousin and my grandparent’s friend. The answer was, yes, Rufus was Nan’s third of four husbands. After Rufus died, Nan married a Mr. Murphy and ended up in Ohio, where she died in 1988.
I believe Nathan was Nathan Nesbit, a cousin of Nan but have not been able to follow a trail, yet.
Lewis Abram Gilmer was born in Alabama on May 18, 1885. I’m not sure if he was born in Montgomery but he was raised there by his parents Louis and Carnelia Gilmer, along with 7 siblings. His father was a porter, a butler and a chauffeur. Lewis worked as a bank messenger in Montgomery. He and his wife, Annie, had four children. The oldest was born in 1919 in Montgomery. The second was born in1924 in Mississippi and the two youngest were born in 1925 and 1927 in Detroit, Michigan. Lewis worked as a porter at a department store in Detroit. He died there in July, 1969. I tried to find a link between Lewis Gilmer and Ludie Gilmer, who was the son-in-law of Beulah Allen Pope. No luck. Both their wives were named Annie but not the same Annie.
John Wesley Blakley was born January 22, 1893 in Montgomery, Alabama. He married Virgie Dorsette Beckwith, who wanted to leave the south according to John’s letter to Mershell. He was a barber in Atlanta before WW 1 and in Chicago, Illinois afterwards. He and his wife do not seem to have had any children. John was in Chicago in 1942. I have not yet found a death record or census records for 1900, 1910 or 1920 so I do not know his parent’s names or if he had siblings.
You can find part 1 and part 2 by clicking on these links.
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
“Shell and Fan under our apple tree
This is one of my favorite photographs of the two of them together. I like the peeling and the white out and even the scotch tape. This one was taken on the side of their house. If we could look in the basement window on the left, we would see my grandfather’s shop which smelled of machine oil and wood and basement and faintly of the pine-sol he sprinkled around. “Lizzie”, the model T Ford is behind them. It was taken 2 February 1941. I bet it was Sunday.
