Yesterday I added slave documents to Frank and Juda Cleage’s timelines. Without these additions, there would only be the 1866 Marriage record and the 1870 Census. I have been unable to find them after 1870. I am still hopeful that more information will become available.
Here is a silhouette of my cousin Warren Evans in about 1951. He was born in 1948 and looks about 3 to me. I don’t know who did the cutting, as there is no signature.
Fast Forwarding to November 2014 Warren Evans was elected Wayne County CEO with 72% of the vote.
Earlier posts about Warren: Warren Evans – Then and Now and Warren’s Christmas Birthday Party.
In 1880 my great grandfather Louis Cleage was 28. His wife Celia (Rice) Cleage was 24. They were farming in Loudon County Tennessee. They had been married for 8 years and were the parents of four children – 7 year old Josie, 5 year old Jacob, 3 year old Henry and 1 year old Edward. Louis’ 20 year old sister, Tennessee lived with them along with 5 year old Louseny. Their 5th child, my grandfather Albert, would not be born until 1882. None of the adults could read or write. The children were too young to attend school.
The 1880 Agricultural Census Schedule that includes Louis Cleage are in poor condition. Parts of it are unreadable because they are blackened. Other parts are pale and blurry making them difficult to read. This is the information I could make out. He rented his land for shares of his crops. He had 15 tillable acres and 5 acres in woodland and forest. The farm, buildings, land and fences were worth $150. Farm implements and machinery were worth $125. The livestock was worth $125. He had 1 milch cow and produced 25 lbs of butter in 1879. I was unable to read if he had any swine, chickens, mules or horses, I hope he did. He had no working oxen. He planted 25 acres of Indian corn, yielding 100 bushels. He planted 5 acres of oats, yielding 25 bushels and 5 acres of wheat that yielded 25 bushels.
As I was going over the 1880 Agricultural Census for Louis Cleage, I noticed some differences with my 2X great grandfather on my mother’s side, Joe Turner in Lowndes County, AL. When I compared population censuses, farmers who owned enough land to be included in the agricultural census were further apart in Lowndes County. There were many farm laborers enumerated in between. The farmers in Loundon County TN were right next to each other in the population schedule. Farm holdings were also smaller in Loudon County than in Lowndes County, AL. I may go into this more in a future post.
By 1991, The Cleages were back in Athens, McMinn County. This post Louis Cleage – Work Day Wednesday follows Louis through the following decades as he worked in the mines of Birmingham, AL and as a railroad hand.
Last week while looking for a photograph of a fisherman for Sepia Saturday, I came across this photograph of a man carrying a woman on a sandbar in the river or creek that ran through the Meadows. I talked about the Meadows in last weeks Sepia Saturday post Hugh Fishing At the Meadows.
I don’t know who the couple is but I have put out a call and will post the information if/when I get it. Here is a photo of the same couple walking through the Meadows.
And here is a photograph of them walking on a ridge, the sky behind, the future before, and now so very far in the past.
I have used some of this information before but the photographs are all first timers.
These photographs were taken at “The Meadows” near Capac, St Clair County, Michigan around 1939.
My Aunt Gladys remembers that her father Dr. Albert B. Cleage Sr and a bunch of fellow doctors bought it. It was to be a place where everyone could get away and the kids could meet and play… big house on the property with a porch that wrapped around 2/3 of the house… dances on the porches… near Capac Michigan… they sold it later. She kind of remembers parties on the porch… a getaway other than the Boule or Idlewild … her brothers and their friends spending a couple weeks at the meadows during the summer and brother Louis packing the provisions.
Some entries about the Meadows from Hugh’s brother Henry’s diary, several years earlier in 1936.
August 29 Meadows
Arrived at meadows at about 7:30 (getting dark) Had seen Velma before I left – I have her ring now – after had gotten our trunk in – we went down to creek – other’s brought some wood up and started a fire – I stayed down watching the creek and the farm – as it was dark they worried and came and got me.
August 30 Meadows
Sunday Richard’s club gave a picnic – we played ball off and on all day. Daddy came out and brought Bobby – wrote two letters – Velma and Carolyn. Bobby deliver them.
Last night when the others were in bed Morrow, George, Paul, Hugh and I sat around camp fire and sang – Nice but a little chilly (Benard’s parents came out)
August 31 Meadows
After breakfast some of us went swimming – after that we all worked on a raft till dinner – chopped heavy logs from a fallen tree – tied together with grape vines and barrel wire – after dinner went & christened it “Frogy Bottom” & launched it – it immediately sank – logs were too heavy – were we mortified – the same group sat around the campfire again sang after dark.
September 1 Meadows
“Gee! but I’m blue, and so lonely, I don’t know what to do, but dream of you!” (a song I like to sing out here)
Boys are playing horse shoes just after dinner – we fished and swam today – George caught a pretty large bass and I, trying to throw him across river to Morocco – threw him in.
I like to get on the hill and look down towards the creek in the evening and watch – The other nite I was there, Morocco, George, Hugh and Benard were chopping wood. Louis and Paul were sitting further down the hill with their arms full of wood – It was almost nite – The faint light from the west gave the scene a surreal quality – The grass uneven, the rolling land, the giant trees, the creek, all outlined in this light and the boys too reminded me of an illustration in the book “Tom Browns School Days.”
October is Home Coming Month for the church I grew up in. At the time of this banquet on October 9, 1966, the church was known as Central United Church of Christ. Later it became the Shrine of the Black Madonna. Looking over the room, I can’t find myself. I was a junior at Wayne State University and lived at home so I don’t know why I wasn’t there. Maybe I just made myself scarce during picture making. Or maybe I had a lot of homework due the following Monday and pleaded out. I don’t remember ever helping serve or dish up the food. Now that I think of it though, I don’t see my cousin Jan either. Where were we? My sister Pearl was a freshman at Howard in DC so that explains her absence. But enough rambling.
The Banquet is taking place in the Fellowship Hall immediately after the morning service. Services started at 11:30AM. My father preached for about an hour so 1 really would be right after the service. The sermon that week was a part of a Series that extended over several weeks. Women are circulating around bringing plates to the table. Unfortunately there is no clock showing in these photos, so we don’t know what time it was.
By banquet time the next year, after the 1967 Detroit Riot, there would be afro hair styles here and there. This year there are quite a few hats, everybody still in their Sunday best, eating and waiting. There are real plates and glasses and silverware being used. I wonder if there was a dishwasher in the kitchen or if after waiting table the women washed all those dishes by hand.
And from that day’s service “Just a Closer Walk With Thee” sung by Mahilia Jackson. Of course she didn’t sing at our service but this is the same version we used.
Last week I had several photographs of my Aunt Mary V. colorized. This week I have a colorized photo of my father’s sister, Barbara Cleage Martin. This photo is printed on thick, off white paper. I believe one of the Cleage photographers took and developed the photo. Which family member, I don’t know. It was taken in 1943 when she was 23 years old.
Police brutality was a problem in 1963, as it is today. Today I am sharing an issue of the Illustrated News that covered a demonstration held in front of the Detroit police station, then at 1300 Beaubien. The protest was against the killing of Cynthia Scott, an unarmed woman. She was shot in the back. The demonstration was peaceful and there was no interference by the police. The article says there were 2,500 people at the protest. Also “We wonder if a grand jury investigation might not clear the air and throw some light upon the police brutality practiced on Negroes and why such shootings never come to trial.” And that is something people are still wondering today. There was no investigation and the officer was not charged. Click on all pages to enlarge enough to read them.
My cousin Barbara Lynn Elkins was born in Detroit, Michigan on January 28, 1948. She was the second child of Frank Lawton Elkins and Mary Virginia Graham Elkins. Her first home was on MacDougal St. on Detroit’s East side. Later they moved to Calvert, a few blocks from where we lived. She attended Roosevelt Elementary, Durfee Junior High and Central High School. She had two sons, Frank and Ahmad. She lived in the East Village in NYC for several years during 1969 – 1970 before returning to Detroit. She worked for many years at General Motors before they moved the plant to Texas. Through the years she took care of over 100 children as a foster mother. She died October 14 after a long illness. Below is Barbara’s Person of the Month article from 1991.
I am going to compare how my grandparents lives differed in the everyday things from mine. I’ll use 1923 (which is when my grandparents and family moved into the house I remember) most of the time but sometimes the 1950s creep in there. I can remember how different things were even when I was little in the 1940s from today.
For breakfast I had oatmeal with raisins, cooked in a stainless steal pan on a gas stove. Water from the faucet. Oatmeal from a cardboard container with a plastic top, milk from a waxed cardboard carton stored in the electric refrigerator. My grandmother used a long legged gas stove. They still kept it in the basement when I was growing up. My grandfather cooked the holiday turkeys in it. They had to light the burners and oven with a match. More about kitchens in the olden days – Transitioning into the modern kitchen
Back in 1923 my grandparents would have had an ice box to keep food cold. The ice man would have delivered the ice. Milk was in glass bottles. Leftovers were kept in china containers with matching tops. I remember a green one. Or in glass bowls with cloth tops with elastic around the edges to put over the container. Our leftovers are in glass dishes with plastic tops that always end up splitting. We also use plastic containers that once held take out from the Chinese restaurant. She kept her butter on a saucer in the cupboard so that it would be ready for spreading. I do the same with mine. They kept chickens in their Detroit backyard so eggs came from them. We buy ours at the supermarket.
Washing dishes – I use a plastic dish pan. My grandmother (and so did we) used a metal one. I would still if I could find one. I fill another container with rinse water. So did she. She saved leftovers, cut them small and put them outside on the bird feeder. I throw mine in the plastic garbage can lined with a plastic bag. It goes outside to the big plastic bin after dinner. A full days garbage fit in a small metal can that had a step on opener. They wrapped it up in newspaper and took it out to the metal garbage can. There was a towel rack on the back of the basement door and a continuous towel hung there. We have a rack on the wall and hang smaller towels over them.
Washing clothes – I use a small washer/dryer. My grandmother used a wringer washer and hung the clothes up on lines in the basement. By the time we came along, she had an electric wringer washer but that is as far as she was willing to go. When I was small, we had a wringer washer too. It wasn’t until my mother retired that they got an electric dryer. I like to hang my wash outdoors but haven’t hung any lines since we moved here, so it’s the electric dryer.
I spend lots of time working on computer research – nothing to compare with in my grandmother’s time.
Listening to the radio – Actually I’m listing to the radio via my computer while I type this. During the 1950s my grandmother listened to a small radio in the kitchen. She listened to the radio soaps and baseball games. I am listening to BBC4. Metamorphasis by Kalfka right now. In the evening my husband and I sometimes watch programs on our screen. It isn’t actually a television but a large computer screen that we have connected to a device (Hulu) that allows us to watch movies and old TV programs from Amazon and Netflix and PBS. It comes in via our internet. There was no television in the 1920s.
Grocery shopping – We drive to the supermarket and picks things off of the shelf. We also belong to a urban farm where we pay a certain amount and get vegetables in season. My grandfather had a garden and they had an apple tree. My grandmother made the best applesauce from the apples. I sometimes make applesause from boughten apples but cannot match hers. They kept chickens in 1920. I don’t know if they had milk delivered to the house in glass bottles like we did in the 1940s and 1950s but I’m thinking they did. It seems from reading Got Milk? that milk in Detroit began to be pasteurized in 1916 and that milk men gradually replaced the milk peddlers that arrived with containers of milk from which they spooned into the housewives pitcher raw milk.
A grocery store in 1920 Detroit. In the 1950s, I remember walking to a poultry market with my grandmother where she picked out one of the living chickens kept in crates around the room, they killed and plucked it for her. In the 1950s my grandfather bought ice cream from a dairy in the neighborhood. It was always vanilla ice cream. The kind we get at the store doesn’t match the taste.
We sleep in a queen size bed, wooden frame. My grandparents slept in a brass double size bed in 1923. They had headboard lights that hung over the bed frame so that they could read before they went to sleep. Or turn the light on when they woke up in the middle of the night. I use my kindle to read on before I go to bed and often wish I had one of those lights. Read the story of the brass bed here Dollhouse Update.
I almost forgot the bathroom! We have three bathrooms in this small house. Mine is the size of a closet, containing a stall shower, corner sink and toilet. There is no window. My grandparent’s bathroom was a full size room that was a bathroom. It had a claw foot tub, a toilet, a sink, a cupboard and a kerosene heater to warm up the room before baths. The window looked out on the neighbor’s house, but it wasn’t so close you could hear them talking. My cousin Dee Dee made up a story that the tub was magic and that it could go up through the ceiling somewhere magical, not the attic we knew was up there. They always used floating ivory soap for bath soap. I do too. And they used lava soap at the sink to get the grime off. It was a gritty gray soup.
For more about the house on Theodore, T is for Theodore Street.
