I can’t believe I missed my own blogiversary! On May 24 I forgot to celebrate my 4th year of blogging. Somehow it seems like I’ve been doing them for longer than 4 years. I have published 704 posts during that time. What did I do with my time before that? It is really hard to remember. I never even had read a blog before I started mine. I found a whole alternate reality into which I have been fully absorbed.
My sister sent me this postcard while I was waiting for my 4th daughter to be born. The midwife had given a date a month before my actual due date so there was an extra lot of waiting through the Mississippi summer of 1978 until she was finally born September 26.
9-12-78
They had their hair bobbed awhile ago, but promised they wouldn’t cut it again until after the baby comes! You see them now, don’t you?? Hang in there!! Love – Pearlita
The story of Tulani’s birth – written shortly after she was born in Jackson, MS September 26, 3:36AM Tuesday (If you don’t want to read the details of a birth, stop right here.)
The midwives I used when my 3rd daughter was born had moved out of town. The two I found were not like the others. Neither had children of their own. They were scary about everything. They said the head was small and they hoped it wasn’t encephalic. To me! They wouldn’t believe that when I said conception probably occurred and placed the due date a month early, then said they didn’t want to do the delivery because I was overdue. They didn’t hook me up with a support doctor, so Jim called the doctor I had used as back up last time and she agreed to do it, although she fussed about the midwives not having a back-up doctor.
Woke up with contractions. Sat up to see if more were coming. They were. Woke up Jim, who timed a few – coming every 5 minutes. I was real glad. Labor was starting the day before the two week deadline ran out. Had dreaded dealing with that after fearing every abnormality possibly connected with pregnancy during this 9 1/2 months. Now, Jim called someone else to see if the kids could spend the day there since the other people worked. Then it was almost 10 o’clock so he suggested we call the doctor since the contractions were so quick. I was doing deep regular breathing which I did until transition, but blowing out rather harder than breathing in. I asked if he was sure we wanted to go in so soon since we probably had a 9 hour wait ahead of us. But finally I agreed. He called the doctor who was off that night and another lady doctor fills in for her. She said we better come on since fourth babies may come pretty quick.
I threw up once or twice as we were getting ready to leave. All loaded up and left. Dropped the kids down the road. Carrie Ann came out and said she hoped it came quickly so I wouldn’t still be waiting around in the morning. I said I hoped so too. But was mentally resigned to 9 hours of labor and didn’t expert to deliver until around 9AM.
Got back on highway. Had regular contractions all the way there. Pretty strong. Not looking forward to 9 more hours of labor but glad to be in labor. Threw up or gagged once or twice. Finally got to the hospital around 2AM or a bit before. Jim took me in and upstairs – a guard pushing the wheelchair. I was still breathing the same way, sometimes rubbing my stomach, had no back labor, during final 6 weeks of pregnancy had been told the baby was in posterior position and would cause a long labor by midwife.
On the delivery floor was wheeled into a labor room by one of the nurses on duty. There were 2, a white RN and a black LPN. I asked if the birthing suite was available and it was so we went there – a combination labor and living room where delivery can take place without being moved. I took off my clothes and peed and got into bed while Jim went to check me in. The white RN (while I was peeing) asked if I was having natural birth. I said yes and she (not trying to be unkind) made some comment like “ooohhhhh honey, that’s good, if you could stand it”. I told her I’d done it 3 times and I was sure I could. Glad it wasn’t my first. Continued this while continuing to have regular and strong contractions.
Got into bed and was shaved just a partial and checked. No enema and 5>6 cm’s dilated. I couldn’t’ believe I was that far along. Jim returned. The doctor came in. A little white lady, a bit older than I (I was 32), not 40 yet. She asked if we’d had any special plans we’d discussed with Dr. Barnes. We said just no drugs and keep the baby with us. She said you had to have a special nurse present to keep the baby.
She went back out. The RN kept making dumb comments, trying to be friendly. She said she’d be ready for delivery about 3AM. Ha! I thought. Told me to tell them if I felt like pushing. I felt like pushing a bit, but kept quiet, remembering last time and how I’d pushed mildly for hours before the real push. Then she must have checked me or the doctor did and said I could push when I felt like it. Contractions were almost continuous. So on one or two more pushes I had to push and did. The waters broke and I told them. The RN started saying “sit up, you can’t push laying down!’ I was in the middle of a push, and I was saying “just wait a minute, just wait”. So after that push everyone was rushing around getting ready for the birth. It was about 3AM. They had me sit on some little plastic seat to make it easier to catch the baby.
So, I started pushing, which was a relief. The rests between contractions were longer. I said now they’d probably stop. The doctor said rests were usually longer during 2nd stage. They started seeing head. I pushed harder and finally, actually 15 or 20 minutes I felt that big head coming through and down and made noise as I pushed. There was no pain through the cervix this time, like when Ayanna had her arm up, but the head against the perineum felt like I was going to pop. I was not relaxed. I saw that hair down there on the head, but the main feeling was yikes, I’m going to pop. The doctor said let the contractions deliver and don’t push, so after a years wait (not really) a contraction came, I panted and the head came out. I pushed and it all popped out. For some reason I didn’t look in the mirror while this was going on. But I immediately looked after she came out. And she was squirming around while the doctor suctioned her nose. Didn’t look like much mucus. Was no blueness to her. She gave a short cry. They cut her cord and I picked her up and she was a regular, whole baby, without even a club foot (smile).
Then Jim went to the nursery while they weighted her and examined her. He brought her back because her temperature was stable at 99 already. She nursed a bit then they took my blood pressure and said it was low so took the baby. Jim held her awhile. Then they pushed my uterus (ouch!) and some clots came out. Not firm enough so pushing and shot of pitocin, drip of something else. They didn’t hear about nursing firming up the uterus. Any way I went to sleep and didn’t bleed to death.
Because my family seemed to socialized mainly with each other and a few long time family friends, I saw a lot of my aunts and uncles. When I was growing up, we spent every Saturday with my mother’s sister, Mary V. and her daughters at our maternal grandparents. We all rode over and back together. We also lived down the street and went to the same school so we saw her often.
My father’s family was very close and worked on political and freedom causes together through the years. We all went up to Idlewild together. Uncle Louis was our family doctor. My first jobs were working with Henry and Hugh at Cleage Printers. I babysat one summer for Anna and Winslow. I worked at North Detroit General Hospital in the pharmacy with Winslow. I worked with Gladys and Barbara at the Black Star sewing factory. My mother married my Uncle Henry years after my parents divorced so he was like a second father to me. I raked their memories for stories about the past for decades.
I had 4 aunts and 5 uncles, by blood. Two of my uncles died when they were children so I never knew them. All of my aunts married so there were 4 uncles by marriage. Three, Ernest, Frank and Edward, were eventually divorced from my aunts. I didn’t see them very much after that. Ernest lived in NYC and only appeared now and then so I didn’t know him very well beyond the fact he was very good looking and polite. Uncle Frank, who we called ‘Buddy’, was a an electrician. I remember him taking us to Eastern Market and boiling up a lot of shrimp,which we ate on soda crackers. And a story he told about a whirling dervish seen in the distance that turned into a dove. Edward, who we called Eddie was a doctor and I remember little about him except he was quiet and when I had a bad case of teenage acne, offered to treat it for me. Uncle Winslow was there to the end. I saw him often and I felt very connected to him. He had a wicked sense of humor and liked to talk about the past when I was in my family history mode. None of my uncles were married during my lifetime so I had no aunts by marriage.
We didn’t call our aunts and uncles “aunt” and “uncle”. We called them by their first names only. I did know two of my great aunts, my maternal grandmother’s sisters, Daisy and Alice. I knew one of my 2 X great aunts, Aunt Abbie. She lived with my grandparents until she died in 1966. Aunt Abbie was Catholic and I still have a Crucifix that she gave me.
I remember calling Daisy “Aunt Daisy”, but Alice was just “Alice”. Aunt Daisy had a distinctive voice and she laughed a lot. I remember going to dinner at their house once, and going by on holidays.
There were a host of great aunts and uncles that I never met but I knew from stories about them so that I felt like I knew them. Aunt Minnie and Uncle Hugh were my paternal grandmother’s siblings. I must have met several of my paternal grandfather’s siblings but I was small and don’t remember them, Uncle Jake, Uncle Henry, Aunt Josie and their spouses. And on the maternal side I heard so much about my great grandmother Jennie’s siblings that I felt I knew them too. When I started researching, these were not strangers – Aunt Willie, Aunt Mary, Aunt Beulah, Aunt Anna.
We didn’t call any of my parent’s friends ‘aunt’ or ‘uncle’. Not surprising since we didn’t call our own aunts and uncles, ‘aunt’ and ‘uncle’.
I haven’t participated Saturday Night Genealogy Fun lately but I came across this one and it seemed interesting so here is a tally of my 1st cousins, 2nd cousins and several degrees of removed cousins. I am several weeks late but you can find the original challenge at the link above.
1) Take both sets of your grandparents and figure out how many first cousins you have, and how many first cousins removed (a child or grandchild of a first cousin) you have.
My father had 6 siblings.
His three brothers had no children.
His oldest sister had one son.
His second sister had four children.
His youngest sister had two daughters.
I have seven first cousins on this side.
I have 14 first cousins once removed on this side and 15 cousins twice removed here.
My mother had three siblings. Both of her brothers died as children. Her sister had 3 daughters.
I have three first cousins on this side, six cousins once removed and 15 cousins twice removed.
This makes a grand total for me of ten first cousins, 22 first cousins once removed and 24 cousins twice removed.
2) Extra Credit: Take all four sets of your great-grandparents and figure out how many second cousins you have, and how many second cousins once removed you have.
Second Cousins are the children of your parent’s 1st cousin and the grandchildren of your grandparent’s siblings (your granduncles/grandaunts).
My maternal grandmother had two sisters. Neither of them married or had children.
My maternal grandfather, Mershell Graham, had four siblings.
Crawford and William disappeared from the records after 1880.
Jacob and Abraham died childless.
Annie had 4 children. My mother had four first cousins. That gives me four first cousins once removed. Between them they had 20 children, giving me 20 second cousins.
My paternal grandmother Pearl Reed Cleage had 7 siblings.
My father had 29 first cousins on his mother’s side. He had 63 first cousins once removed on his mother’s side. Josie’s Branch disappeared. That gives me 63 known second cousins on this side.
My paternal grandfather Albert B. Cleage had four siblings.
Henry had four children. They had a combined total of three children.
Edward had six children. They had a combined total of seven children.
Josie had five children. They had a combined total of 22 children.
My father had 15 first cousins on his father’s side. He had 29 first cousins once removed. That gives me 29 second cousins on this side.
So, on my father’s side I have 43 first cousins once removed and 93 second cousins. On my mother’s side I have 4 first cousins once removed and 20 second cousins making a combined total of 47 first cousins once removed and 113 second cousins.
Then I realized that all of my parents second cousins were my second cousins once removed. So, I have been updating and looking at my ancestry tree. I think I’m about ready to take a count.
In June of 1980 my sister Pearl and her daughter visited us in our home on St. John’s Road Mississippi. My husband, Jim, took this photo of both of us and our children. The one with her eyes closed is Pearl’s daughter. I thought it would be interesting to take an entry from her journal, as it appears in her new book “Things I Should Have Told My Daughter – Lies, Lessons & Love Affairs” by Pearl Cleage and, since I wasn’t keeping a journal at the time, take old letters and put something of what was happening in my life at the time.
Pearl had recently moved to her own apartment, leaving her husband and devoting her time to writing and figuring out freedom. From Pearl’s journal about her life in Atlanta …
“June 5, 1980
I have just discovered the only advantage to freelancing. You get to be stoned while you earn a living. Unfortunately, that is also true of rock and roll stars, actors who are lucky enough to be cast in Robert Altman films, Rastafarians, and particularly foolhardy circus preformers. I think it also applies to the construction crews that do most of the renovations that I know about. It also applies to artists of all kinds, but since I was talking about freelancing, which is a way of making money, let’s leave the art out of it, shall we?”
Meanwhile, several states over in Mississippi…June 17, 1980 from a letter to my father
Dear Daddy,
How’s it going? It’s hot, hot, hot here. It’s been a strange weekend. Kibibi – the 25 year old woman who lived a weird summer with us at Luba when we first came to MS was shot 3 times in the head by her 10 month baby’s daddy during an argument. It was such a ridiculous, unexpected, stupid thing.
I remember Kibibi sister’s husband coming up the stairs of the house on stilts and telling us about the shooting. Given that the civil rights violence had barely ended, it seemed horribly sad that she was shot to death by her daughter’s father.
You can read more about my life during this time in R is for Route 1 Box 173 & 1/2
My sister and I running by the dunes at Ipperwash, on Lake Huron in Canada. It was 1960. I was 14 and would start Northwestern High School in September. Pearl was 12 and would start McMicheal Junior High School. The lake is in the background but the strange distortions at the top make it difficult to tell what is there.
My mother and Uncle Henry had been trying to find a place to spend weekends and vacations out of Detroit. That weekend we had driven through various towns and country to reach Ipperwash. There was a wide beach and cars could drive on it. The beach itself was all open to the public. I remember the house we looked at was like a big farm house and had beds all over, in the attic and in the several bedrooms. We spent the night at a cabin the realtor had and left early the next morning. They decided not to buy there because of the cars on the beach and the public.
I remember driving either there or home through a rainy day, looking through the window at the towns we drove through, everything summer green, but grayed by the gloomy day.
The Ipperwash Crisis – While looking for photo of the beach, I found that during WW 2 the Canadian Federal Government expropriated the land of the Stoney Point First Nation with promises to return it after the war. The war ended, the land wasn’t returned. In 1995 members of the Stoney Point First Nation occupied the land in protest. There was a cemetery located in what was now called the Ipperwash Camp. During the protests an unarmed member of the protesters was shot and killed. The land was to be returned to the Stoney Point First Nation but it hasn’t been completed yet. You can read more about it at the link above.
I found this postcard in my Cleage family photographs. She is not a relative. Her family lived down Balch street from my Grandparents while they lived in Kalamazoo. Her father and my grandfather also belonged to some of the same groups. The Dunbar group for the uplift of the Race was one of them. My grandparents moved to Detroit in 1915 but must have kept in touch with the Pettifords.
Marion was the third child of Joseph Pettiford and the first child of Joseph and his second wife, Mary A. Brown Pettiford. All of the children were born in Kalamazoo. I was able to fill in some of the questions using Ancestry.com but it was when I started looking through historical newspapers that I found out much to flesh out the bare bones of the family.
Joseph Wilson Pettiford was the son of Young Pettiford who was the son of Edmund Pettiford, born in 1795 in North Carolina into a community of free people of color. The family moved to Ohio, where Joseph was born, and later to Indiana, where Edmund died.
By the 1890s, Joseph and his family were living in Kalamazoo, MI. Located in the SW corner of the state in Berrien County. He worked as a custodian (not a janitor, he informed the local paper) in the county Courthouse for over 20 years. It was an elected position. He was very active in the Masons, holding local and state posts. Both he and his wife were active in 2nd Baptist Church. He could cook up a good possum dinner, according to the local paper, The Kalamazoo Gazette.
In 1922 Mary Pettiford suffered a fatal stroke while out fishing with her husband near South Haven. Her funeral was well attended. Marion was listed among the children and that is the last I can find of her. In 1928 Joseph died. Unfortunately the obituaries after 1922 are not online for the Kalamazoo Gazette. I’m sure it was a long one after all his years at the courthouse and perhaps it mentioned what happened to Marion.
I checked the 1930 census, the 1940 census. All of her siblings in the 1930 and 1940 census. The marriage records online at Ancestry.com and FamilySearch.com. I checked newspaper articles at Ancestry and at GenealogyBank.com. So far, no luck. I will continue to check back now and then and report any new findings.
Eighth Grade Graduates Exercises at Vine School
The eighth grade graduates of the city schools will hold their graduating exercises at the Vine Street school auditorium, Friday morning at 9:15.
For more information and photos of the early Pettifords, Weavers and other free people of color visit – The Weaver Settlement
For a beautiful picture of an extended Pettiford family reunion in 1935 – Pettiford reunion photo from 1935
This is the modern dance group at Northwestern High School in Detroit in 1964. The photo is from my year book. There is my sister Pearl, 3rd from the left, first row leaning back. She was in the dance group all through high school and also participated in the All City dance group and even contemplated a career in dance but writing won out. Ms. Carty was their advisor/teacher.
Pearl remembers “I remember this number. It was to “Elijah Rock” and we thought the costumes were so cool. Choreography was great, too. We had a whole Martha Graham thing going!
“I think Craig Carter took it from the track that ran around the gym so he was looking down at us“
For this year’s April A-Z Challenge I blogged everyday using items taken from the letters written by my grandfather to my grandmother from 1907 to 1912, starting with “A” and moving right through the alphabet to “Z”. I even managed 2 bonus posts on Sundays that were related to the theme. Doing them out of chronological order to meet the necessary letter bothered me until someone pointed out that I would have overlooked some of the words that gave the letters more context, as in H is for Henry Hummons or Q is for Questions.
This year was much easier for me than last year. I think having a theme and material that was already there, did it. It probably helped that I did little else everyday this month besides work on the blog. I managed to visit quite a few new to me blogs and got some new visitors. Now, if I can just use May to put these letters into a print ready form, I will be happy. The header for this post is a picture of just some of the descendents of Albert and Pearl Cleage taken in 2012.
Pearl and Albert with their children and 3 of the grandchildren. My sister and I were at our other grandparents and the youngest 4 were not yet born. Their backyard at 2270 Atkinson, Detroit, MI – 1952.
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Dr. Albert B. Cleage Sr and son Albert Jr – about 1912. For this year’s April A-Z Challenge I am blogging everyday using items taken from the letters written by my grandfather to my grandmother from 1907 to 1912, starting with “A” and moving right through the alphabet to “Z” during April.
My grandfather did go to the Zoo in 1909 when he was traveling between Detroit and Buffalo while working on the Steamer Eastern States.
July 3, 1909 (Enroute to Buffalo, Steamer Eastern States)
My Dear Pearl:
…Yesterday while Lewis and I were walking up the street in Buffalo, whom did we see standing on the corner (as if lost) but Miss Berry of Indianapolis, her brother and his wife and a Miss Stuart an Indianapolis teacher. Well to be sure we were surprised and they too seemed agreeably so. We spent the day with them taking in the zoo and other points of interest. They visited our boat and we showed them through it…
However, it is KalamaZOO that I am more interested in as this is the last letter in the A – Z Challenge and also the last letter my grandfather mailed back to Pearl, now his wife, and little Albert, in Indianapolis as they planned their relocation. My grandfather calls my father “Toddie” in the letter. This is a nickname he kept among family and friends for the rest of his life. This letter is addressed to a house on N. West Street, several blocks from the one on Fayette Street.
June 10, 1912 (From Kalamazoo, MI to Indianapolis)
My dear Sweetheart
I am awfully tired and lonesome. Have not as yet been able to find a suitable place for either office or residence. I am trying to find a place to suit both purposes but so far have been unable to find either. However by the time the things get here I’ll find some place to put them and just as soon as a find how much I am going to have to pay for rent will send you some money so that if you get the things all ready you can leave any time the first of next week. Hope ere this reaches you are much rested and feeling fine. Please do not worry and fret yourself sick about what some people may say. Take care of yourself and baby and get some man to pack and fix the things for you. I expect to secure a place tomorrow if possible.
Did Mamma and Ed leave Wednesday? Did Richard go with them? Tell Toddie to give you whole lots of bites for daddie. I would give five dollars to hear him say: – “Ite man” tonight
Remember I’ll try to send you some money by Monday. How are the people paying you, I want to see you all awfully bad.
Write often to your Albert.
___________________
From Michigan Manual of Freedmen’s Progress. Published in 1915. Page 53.
Albert B. Cleage was born in Loudon County, Tennessee, May 15, 1883. He graduated from the Henderson Normal and Industrial College in 1902, from Knoxville College in 1906, and the Indiana School of Medicine in 1910. He was appointed as intern at the city dispensary at Indianapolis and served there as house physician and ambulance surgeon. He began private practice in Kalamazoo in 1912 as the first African American doctor and practiced and lived at 306 Balch Street.
