This week’s Sepia Saturday features an old airplane. I have two photographs of a small, old plane in my Cleage collection. Unfortunately there is nothing written on the back of either photo and I can’t recognize anybody in the photo for sure, although the baby in the top photo couldbe my Aunt Barbara. I don’t know where the photo was taken or when. Here is a photograph of my family standing in a field in Detroit, 1920.
My grandfather Albert Cleage holding daughter Barbara. Next to him my father, Albert Jr. In front of him, Henry. In front of all Louis and Hugh. Standing alone to the right is my great grandmother, Celia Rice Cleage Sherman. And I just noticed the background looks similar…car, trees, etc.
For more fabulous photos of old airplanes and other fascinating Sepia Saturday subjects click here.
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 their 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.
