San Diego Field Trip: The Whaley House!

Imagine this: You’re all the way across the country on a work trip, it’s your last day away from home, and you have a good few hours to pass until you have to head back to the airport. So you pop onto the website of the local historic district to see if there’s anything of interest, and, holy crap, there is! There’s a historic house with your name on it. Literally.

 

Sounds far-fetched, right? But that’s exactly what happened to me this past Friday, the last day of a work trip to San Diego. You see, that city’s Old Town - known as the birthplace of the state of California - is the site of a building called The Whaley House.

A Washington Weekend: Family, Photos, and Old Family Homes

In my last post, I mentioned that I needed to plan a trip back down to Washington, DC to return some family history materials that had been loaned to me for digitization. Well, last weekend, we made it happen!

And who do I mean by “we?” Well, it wasn’t just me and the cousins I’d hung out with on my last visit (Barney, Shelia, and LaVerne) – it turned into a bit of a family affair. Not only did my mom come down with me, but my Aunt Sandra joined us, driving down from NY to Philly and then completing the ride with us. 

My mom and my aunt, on a bench in a park by their old stomping grounds in DC.

 

Photo Friday: Miss Crew, Master of Her Domain

Beuna Nell Crew, 1964-65 Fairmont H.S. Yearbook, Griffin, GA. Courtesy of Mike Kendall and the Griffin Spalding African American History Project.

Earlier this week I posted about my maternal relative Beuna Nell Crew, who taught at Fairmont High School in Griffin, Georgia for almost twenty years. Thanks to the Griffin-Spalding African American History Project Facebook page, its founder Mike Kendall, and his work digitizing Fairmont’s yearbooks and other school material from 1948-49 through at least 1970, I have access to (and permission to use, within reason) a treasure trove of pictures illustrating Beuna’s time at the school.*

The Education of Borden Scott: Graduating from Meharry

On March 20, 1908, The Nashville Globe wrote, “The invitations of the faculty and the graduating class of 1908 of Meharry Medical, Dental and Pharmaceutical College for the forty-second anniversary of the institution, are out to score of friends of the faculty and the students.”

Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress. <https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn86064259/1908-03-20/ed-1/seq-4/>

Visiting the Cooper-Thomas Cemetery, Burke County, GA

**This looks like a long post, but it's full of pictures!**

Last July, my mother, sister and I traveled to Georgia to meet up with her siblings and extended maternal family at the Cooper-Cummings Family Reunion. While there were lots of nice moments at the reunion, some of which are pictured here, the highlight for me was absolutely getting to visit the family cemetery on our final day in Georgia.

Driving toward the cemetery, in Burke County, Georgia.

Cooper-Cummings 2016 Family Reunion in Photos

My first cousin once removed (aka, my mom's first cousin) and several generations of his family. Courtesy of L. Whaley.

This time last week, I was in a car somewhere between North Carolina and Philly, on my way home from the Cooper-Cummings Family Reunion in Augusta, Georgia. (Why North Carolina, then? It's a long drive - we did it in two days. We're not road warriors, lol!)

Photo Friday: Bowling Highliners, 1957-1958

This Photo Friday, it's another photoset taken from my Grandma Doris' albums, which I am slowly (s-l-o-w-l-y) in the process of digitizing. These were taken about 6 years before this set of bowling photos, and look to be from an end-of-season banquet and awards ceremony, probably in Washington, DC or Maryland.

That's my Grandma second from left, pictured with (L-R) Roland Stribling, J. Gray, Cecilia Petty, and Joe Franklin.

In addition to the original photo above, Grandma Doris also had an article from a bowling newsletter (from whichever association this event was held for), that described the bowling season a bit:

It reads, in part:

After thirty-three weeks of excitement and close competition another most successful season of bowling has been concluded, To add to the interest in the league of twelve teams only three games in the won column separated the first and seventh place teams when the final results were determined.

Trophies were presented to each member of the teams that finished in the first three positions. The champion Highliners (shown above left to right) Roland Stribling, Doris Mathis, John Gray, Cecilia Petty, Capt. and Joseph Franklin, League President.

The climax of the season was a banquet paid for with league funds. Each member and his or her guest had an abundance and variety of foods and beverages to choose from and dancing to the accompaniment of a 5-piece band.

To round out this set, here's a glamour shot of my grandmother, with all her trophies from the evening:

I love the glamour of these photos - the floor-length gown, the gloves - and it's a feature of many of the photos I've come across in her albums. She was never rich - she made many of her own dresses - and she wasn't part of Washington, DC's African American elite, but the circle she was a part of and the era in which she did all of this socializing provided her with opportunities to doll up, opportunities she certainly made the best of!

(Doris Shepherd was a fixture of DC's bowling world for decades. Click "bowling" in the word cloud to the right to see related posts.)

Let's Celebrate Bertha Elizabeth Kilson, Class of 1936!

It's graduation season and for the past two Wednesdays, I've been highlighting relevant fun finds from the Kilson branch of my family tree. I started with Samuel Dennis Kilson's 1933 high school yearbook and continued with a 1931 article about the 8th grade graduation of his little sisters Bertha Elizabeth and Eleanor Frances Kilson. This week I'm highlighting Bertha's senior year yearbook, from 1936.

The great thing about finding yearbooks in genealogical research is that they can give you insight into a person's personality and interests that you just can't get from vital records like birth, death and marriage certificates. Here's Bertha's listing:

Check her out, in the upper right corner, right at the top of the page. Like her older brother Samuel, Bertha - or Lib, as she apparently was known - took the General track of high school courses, as opposed to Commercial, College Prep, or Scientific. (Note: This wasn't a track that all black students were pushed into, and, as you can see above, it wasn't solely black students who took it.)

Bertha E. Kilson school photo

Also like her brother, Bertha kept her school commitments pretty light, but she was actually a bit more engaged than he was: she participated in Biology Club in her sophomore year, and French Club in her senior year. In fact, most of the students on this page were in Biology Club together - can you picture them dissecting frogs in a classroom? And Bertha would have been in French Club with the Class of 1936's "Most Friendly" person, Dorothy Levitsky. Were they friends?

In fact, I do wonder what the Kilsons' social relationships were like. The high school was integrated, but Salem itself wasn't exactly a mecca of racial harmony and equality. (See here for a post about the KKK in Salem in the 1920s and 30s, and here for an outside blog post about segregation in Salem.) And you can see that Bertha - the only visibly black student on this page - is also the only student on this page who did not sign this yearbook. Are those things related?

However, look what her classmates wrote about her: "With youth and jollity by her side." When you compare it to what they wrote about other seniors, like Comley Link, who "minds his own business and plods along," or Esther Mae Lamb, who was "a living illustration of responsibility," you definitely get the sense that Bertha brought some joy and levity to her class body, and that they appreciated it.

If Bertha had made it to her 25th Reunion in 1961, I wonder how her classmates would have greeted her. Unfortunately, she passed away in 1953. But her classmates hadn't forgotten her:

So, congrats to Bertha Kilson, Salem High School Class of 1936 - gone, but not forgotten!

Photo Friday: Is This Samuel Kilson at Grant Street School?

At the end of Wednesday's post, I mentioned that it was possible one of the Kilson brothers was pictured in a 1922 photograph of students at the Grant Street School in Salem, NJ. Well, I had to follow up.

You can find the full picture here. I showed it to my mom and she thinks the boy in the lower right hand corner is Samuel Kilson, who would have been about 8 the year this photo was taken. Here's a side-by-side comparison using a photo that my Great-Grandmother Katherine Sheppard / Shepherd had of her cousin when she passed:

Photo on left cropped from blog.nj.com, originally provided by Salem County Historical Society.

I'm also wondering about the boy in the upper left corner. What do YOU think?

We also scoured the image to see if anyone looked like Carl Kilson, who would have been about 9, but didn't see any strong options in the original photo. Here's what we used for comparison:

Again, what do YOU think?

Photo Friday: Bowling Tournament, Minneapolis 1964

In between my active research, my major genealogy project is to digitize my late Grandma Doris (Reid / Mathis / Shepherd)'s photo albums. We brought 29 of them home after cleaning out her apartment in April 2015 and I have  S-L-O-W-L-Y been going through and scanning images. They are such an interesting look into her life, her family, some of my biological grandmother's family (the Coopers), the world of bowling, Washington, DC, and several decades that I didn't get to experience (namely, the 50s - early 80s). As I go through this process, I'll be using the Photo Friday heading to post some of my favorite photos, starting today!

This is my Grandma Doris (far right) posing with members of her Washington, DC bowling team at a Women's International Bowling Congress competition in Minneapolis, Minnesota in 1964. Two things: 1) I love the jaunty set of her hat, 2) She is one pretty lady!

And here is another team from Washington, DC - they probably all bowled together frequently back at home. Check out the lady in the shades - she is too cool for school!

If you didn't already know, bowling was one of Grandma Doris' passions, so there are A LOT of bowling photos in these albums. Be warned :) And click "bowling" in the word cloud to the right if you'd like to see related posts.

Photo Friday: Our Alabama Cousins

Three weeks ago today, I was waking up to my first full day of hanging out with my Birmingham, Alabama cousins. The extended family of my paternal grandmother's dad, discovering their existence and actually meeting a few of them had been the highlight of my Alabama research trip the month before, and now I was getting to spend some real time with them!

I stayed with my cousin - technically, my second cousin, once removed - and her family. (Confused about that relationship? This chart will help! My great-grandfather Steve Evans/Theodore Johnson and her grandmother Jannie Mae Evans were brother and sister.)

It was a lovely trip. Not only did I meet 4 generations of the extended family, get to eat some of their delicious cooking and hear some of their memories, I also got to look at family photos, get copies of funeral programs for individuals who had passed, explore some of the areas where our family lived, worked and played, and see sites that were important to Alabama - and our nation's - Civil Rights history.

You can see some of my Civil Rights history and outdoors photos over on my other blog, www.ARunsAway.tumblr.com. But I've saved my family photos from that trip for here.

My host, her husband, and their grandson.

My cousin with two of her sisters, up from Montgomery, AL

A few of the kids and grandkids, all smiles!

Another of the kids, my third cousin, who would like you to know that he doesn't always take his shoes off and fish in creeks!

A double relation by marriage, he's in his 90s and remembers my great-grandfather leaving Alabama!

Two generations of double relations, they dug in their memories and helped solve a genealogy puzzle!

I'm so glad I added a second Alabama trip to my schedule - it was absolutely worth it to have this experience. And now, as my grandmother said to me when we chatted during this trip, a fire has been lit and we need to get the branches of our family - spread at least between Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois. Michigan and Alabama - together for a reunion! Whew, boy!

Photo Friday: New Castle Cemetery

One of the stranger pleasures of genealogical research is visiting cemeteries. Having spent so much time trying to understand a person’s life – or to even find out if a person existed or was related to you at all – it can be frustrating to not know a person’s final resting place. It’s like you’ve come so close to really truly finding them, but can’t! But when you do find them, you feel like you know them a little bit better. You’re often in their community, maybe seeing sights that were part of their daily life, and even in death, you’re learning more about them based on who is laid to rest near them.

All of which is what made it so cool that my newfound Evans cousin took me not only on a tour of one of the ancestral towns, New Castle, when I visited Alabama last month, but also to the cemetery there, where the family has a small plot. So for this Photo Friday, here are a few snaps from that day: 

Spruce Street leads up to New Castle Cemetery, a small community burial ground that is still in limited use today. 

Looking back towards the entrance of the cemetery, from the Evans Family plot.

A (somewhat wonky) partial panorama looking from the corner entrance of the cemetery. The family plot can be partially seen at the far right.

My great-grandfather Steve Evans / Theodore Johnson was apparently one of about 14 children. While he is laid to rest in West Virginia, several of his siblings rest here.

Janie Mae (Evans) Smith was, I've been told, the oldest of the Evans children. She is the one with whom Steve and his brother Henry were living in 1930, and it is with her descendants that I connected on my recent trip to Alabama. She shared family stories freely with her granddaughter, and it is thanks to them both that I am able to learn things that the documents themselves can't tell. 

Janie Mae had two children with her first husband, William Dyle. This is their daughter, Veola Dyle Rodgers.

A close-up of the photo from Veola's headstone. She was James and Laura Ann Evans' granddaughter, and my great-grandfather's niece.

Janie Mae and William Dyle's son, Coleman Dyle. Below "US ARMY," his headstone reads:

WORLD WAR II
SEP   14   1923
JAN  13   1990

This is the marker for Sarah (Evans) Paymon, Steve and Janie Mae's sister. She and her husband Archie lived across the street from each other near a church at the top of a hill in New Castle.

Sarah's husband Archie Paymon rests nearby. They were married on November 18, 1923, according to Jefferson County, AL records. Several of their children eventually moved to Detroit, Michigan in search of better economic opportunities.

This is the headstone for Marshall Evans, another of the Evans siblings. Following in his father's footsteps, he became a minister, and was known to some of the family as "Uncle Bishop." He is one half of the "two brothers married two sisters" duo, my great-grandfather Steve being the other brother, Steve's wife, my great-grandmother Beatrice Harris, being one of the sisters, and Lillian Harris being the other. Though they did not stay together, Marshall and Lillian had a daughter together, and her descendants now live primarily in Illinois.










Visiting this cemetery may actually have been the best part of my trip to Alabama. I am so grateful to my cousin for making this happen, and I'm looking forward to hanging out with her again!

Photo Friday: New Castle, Alabama

Before I boarded my train back from Birmingham to New Orleans, my newfound Evans Family cousin scooped me up from my hotel and took me on a whirlwind tour of one of the coal mining communities where our shared ancestors had lived in the early-to-mid 1900s.

New Castle, north of Birmingham, along the L&N Railroad. Image Credit below.

New Castle, Alabama is located about 10 miles north of Birmingham and, since about 1870, has housed various coal mining operations that included company-owned homes, stores, schools, and churches for the miners and their families. The mines are no longer in operation today, and the houses are now owned by individuals, including some that are still in the hands of Evans relatives. 

Here’s a look at some of what I saw:

 New Castle Road is the main road through town and connected the community to other coal towns to the southwest and northeast.

Overlooking a portion of New Castle from one of the highest points. The area has been mostly reclaimed by woods now, but you would have seen large machines, great coal heaps, and many more houses and other buildings back in the day.

The New Castle Post Office, this used to be a gathering place for the community, where both mail and hot pieces of news were picked up.

One of the original camp houses (from my cousin's early years). Time, weather and abandonment have taken their toll.

Mt. Joy Baptist Church, which sits at the top of a hill overlooking the community. This was one of two black churches in the community. My great-grandfather Theodore Johnson (Steve Evans)'s sister, Sarah, lived on the same hill, and her husband, Archie, lived across the street. She was, I was told, an eclectic woman!

Eastern Star Missionary Baptist Church, the other black church serving New Castle. Several family members were ministers, but they were Methodist and did not preach here.

One of the Evans Family houses, my great-grandfather's sister Janie Mae and her daughter Veola had it built.

Another of the Evans Family homes, still showing some of the bones of the original camp house.

The Louisville & Nashville Railroad (LNRR) tracks through New Castle. These and smaller spurs throughout the area moved people and coal to and from the mining towns to Birmingham with its coke and steel plants, south through Montgomery and Mobile to Mississippi and New Orleans, and north to Nashville, Louisville and Cincinnati, where they could connect to other points. 

My cousin also took me to the Evans Family plot in New Castle cemetery - I think I'll post those as my next photo Friday. Getting to see, stand on and walk the land where my ancestors and their families lived and hung out was an awesome, awesome experience and I'm grateful to my cousin for being so excited to make it happen.I can't wait to visit again and see the other towns we're connected to - Bradford, Majestic and Dixiana, I'm looking at you!

Map Credit: This image was modified from a map in "The Birmingham District: An Industrial History and Guide" by Marjorie Longenecker White, published by the Birmingham Historical Society in 1981.

Census Sunday: Beatrice Harris in the 1930 Census

Seeing my ancestors and relatives in historical documents is really exciting for me. They were there, then, doing something! They existed not just to me and my family, but in some way, to the world. I love uncovering the layers of their lives.

The very first document that I found on my paternal great-grandmother Beatrice Harris was the 1930 Census, also known as the Fifteenth Census of the United States: 1930 Population Schedule. Taken every 10 years and released to the public 72 years later, federal census records are a great way to track families and individuals over time. At their most basic, they tell us where people were living when, who they’re living with, where they’re from, and how old everyone is. Depending on the year, we can also learn what they do for a living, whether or not they can read or write, how many children they gave birth to, whether they are veterans (and in which war they fought), whether they own or rent their home, what they pay in rent, what they earned in the previous year, and more. Treasure trove of info.

Here’s a snippet from the page listing Beatrice in 1930.

So what did I learn?

Jefferson County, AL

First off, she’s living in the unincorporated town of Majestic, Alabama. Located in Jefferson County in north-central Alabama, Majestic was a coal town just north of Birmingham, which was a huge population center and major economic powerhouse in the South because of booming coal, steel and iron industries, supported by a thriving network of railroads.

Ardenia (Jackson) Harris and daughter Lillian

Beatrice is 16 years old and living with her mom, 33-year-old Ardenia Harris, and her 14 year-old sister Lillian. Ardenia – my grandmother’s grandmother – is married and has been since she was 16, but her husband (whom I would assume is still Solomon Harris, as they married in 1914) is apparently not in the household. Where’s Solomon? Ardenia’s obituary notes that he died before her – perhaps they were in Majestic because he worked in the coal mines and something happened to him while they were living in that community? She was remarried by 1935. Or perhaps he’s elsewhere in the community – while I’ve had no luck name-searching him in 1930, I’ll go back and browse page-by-page to see if he can be found that way.

In addition to the three women of the family, there’s also a baby in the house, Robert Johnson, listed as Ardenia’s grandson. He’s listed as only 4 months old! (While this census doesn’t specify, we know that this is Beatrice’s son, my grandmother’s oldest brother.) So that’s three generations in this one record!

But wait, there are other people in the household, as well!

Four boarders, men who rented rooms in the house and perhaps took meals cooked by Ardenia or her daughters, are living in the home. Given the absence of a husband, it seems this is how Ardenia was able to support her family and make ends meet. Well, hello there, entrepreneurship!

Census taker's notes on Ardenia's occupation and industry, 1930 Census.

There’s 44-year-old Will Austin, a widower from Florida, plus 20-year-old Lawrence Roy or Ray, 21-year-old Luzzill Ross or Rass, and 19-year-old Marshall Evans, all single and all from Alabama. All were coal miners. I wonder, was it fun and exciting for these teenage girls to live in the same building as these single men? Or was it scary and uncomfortable?

What else do we learn?

• Ardenia is renting their home in Majestic, for $6 a month. This would be about $85 in today’s money.
• Everyone in Beatrice’s family is listed as having been born in Alabama, as are all of their parents. In fact, the vast majority of folks in this community, black and white, were from Alabama.
• Neither Beatrice nor Lillian had a job (at least one that they told the census taker about), but neither had they been in school at any point between September 1, 1929 and April of 1930. However, both girls, as well as their mom Ardenia are listed as being able to read and write. 

Interestingly, this is the only Census record that I can find for Beatrice. Since she was born in 1915 and census records are available up to 1940, I should be able to find her both in 1920 and 1940. But I haven't. Yet. But this just makes me even more grateful that I was able to find her in this one - it's an interesting snapshot of what her life looked like as a teenager, and it's a jumping off point for a few stories I'm going to be exploring later on.

Do you know anything about the family's life in Majestic, AL? Or where Ardenia's husband is? Please share! 

Talented Tuesday: Louis Shepherd, Bowler!

Today’s post is inspired by the Talented Tuesday genealogy blog prompt over at Geneabloggers.

Most stories you find on here about bowling are going to be about my Grandma Doris, who spent most of her life outside of work bowling, thinking about bowling, organizing bowling events, teaching kids how to bowl, or traveling to bowling tournaments. But, her husband, my Granddad Louis, was also a bowler.
 

 

He played on a men's team in Washington, DC that also included my Uncle Valton Reeves (the brother of the husband of Granddad's first wife Elnora Cooper's sister Lila Cooper - I know!). He wasn’t as deeply involved in the sport as Grandma Doris was, but their shared love of bowling was one of the lynchpins of their relationship. Together, they often drove here and there across the country to tournaments, taking the youngest two children (my mom and aunt) with them. And the kids remember more than a few evenings where they were responsible for dinner while Mama and Dad were at a bowling event.

Apparently Granddad had some success, too! Check out this picture of him (center) holding a trophy at one of his competitions.

I wish I had more details for this picture – where and when it was taken, for example, though I’d guess this is the 1960s – but this is a case of what you see is what you get. In any case, a tip of the hat to Louis Shepherd, bowling trophy winner!