Memorial Day Memories

Tags

cemetery, Flint, Flint Memorial Park, genealogy, McCombs, Memorial Day, memory, Michigan, Taylor

While I don’t remember doing it every year, I can remember many a Memorial Day visiting the graves of my paternal grandparents.  On some occasions, I went with my Aunt Georgia, and I can remember her showing me how to use a knife to cut away some of the grass that was starting to encroach upon the edges of the headstones.  While I worked on my grandparent’s stone, I believe she worked on that of my Uncle Orvall, her first husband.  We also cleaned around the stone of “Poppa”, my great-grandfather (and my Aunt’s grandfather), Joseph Jeremiah McCombs.  I can remember being shown how to bring up the urn that was a part of my grandparents’ headstone, so we could place the flowers we had brought.

I can remember visiting with my Mother as well.  The area in Flint Memorial Park where my grandparents were buried was near to the area set aside to bury children.  By this time I knew I had a younger brother, Michael, that had died only a few days after being born.  I had wondered where he was buried, and I think I asked my mother that day.  I thought she and I would be walking over to where the children were buried, but I learned that day that Michael was buried at my grandmother’s feet.  No headstone marked the place where he lay.

The last time I visited Flint Memorial Park on Memorial Day, I was alone.  I was in college by that time.  I did the work by myself, cleaning around each headstone.  I think I had picked some early lilacs and had brought them with me (lilacs usually didn’t start coming in on our bushes until June).  I pulled up the urn and placed the flowers and stood there a moment, reflecting on the past before getting back in my car.  I went out that afternoon, not to a picnic or a barbecue, but to go visit my Aunt Georgia.  I would tell her of my visit that day, and listen to her tell me her memories of my father, my uncles, and my grandparents.

 

One Hit Wonders

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adventure, Ancestry.com, investigation, journey, Kentucky, Lawson, Letcher County, Newell, Whittaker

In music, a “one hit wonder” is when a singer or musical group has one chart-topping song.  They have one big hit and that’s it.  However, some of those single hits for one group have gone on to be hits for others.  Still more of them have gone on to be featured in countless collections of hits from their era, or have been immortalized in movie soundtracks.

I personally didn’t know who Bobby Day was, but say the name of his one hit wonder “Rockin’ Robin” and I not only think of the Jackson 5, I also think of one particular hand clapping game we used to play to this tune; the first verse was pretty much the same as the original, but the second was a bit different.  I don’t recall the original lyrics being “Your Daddy’s in the back yard, shootin’ them dice/your Mama’s in the kitchen, cookin’ that rice.”  And, I didn’t know that before a group called the Crew Cuts did the song “Sh-boom”  (aka “Life Could Be a Dream”) that it was a one hit wonder for a group called The Chords.  If you’ve seen Pixar’s movie Cars, then you heard this song playing as the cars were cruising the neon lit streets.

There are plenty of other examples in music of course.  However, the “one hit wonders” that I am referring to in this case are those in our genealogy.  They are children in our families that show up on a single census.  Their presence is a one time occurrence for a single decade’s list, and they are never seen again.

When going through the 1940 US Census, I was looking for a potential one hit wonder in my own family.  When I started looking into my mother’s side of the family tree, I had mentioned the tragic circumstances of her older sister’s death.  Because of when she was born, I knew that 1940 would be the only census on which she would appear.  The question remained though:  would she be on it at all?

The family lore varied a lot on when she had actually died.  Some made it sound like she was just a baby or toddler.  My gut feeling though was that she would have been older.  I made that conclusion based on the story.  If she was trying to go after a bottle of nail polish on a fireplace mantle, I felt she would need to be at least three or four to attempt to climb or reach up to the mantle.

I knew where the family should be at this point, because I was able to find birth records for both the sister and my mother in the same location.  Letcher County, Kentucky is where I started my search.

The hard part was that I didn’t know exactly in what section of Letcher County to start.  I used the 1940 Census Enumeration District Finder created by Stephen P. Morse, PhD  &  Joel D. Weintraub, PhD to show me all the districts for the county.  I then looked at the descriptions.  From the 1930 Census, I knew that my grandfather’s family had lived in Magisterial District 1, which had four possible enumerations districts that made it up.  I decided I’d have to search page by page.

In enumeration district (ED) 67-1, I saw the name ‘Whitaker’ a few times, but almost all the names were unfamiliar.  One name I tucked away for a future date to research because I thought it might be a son of Vetter Whittaker, whose name helped me link up several spelling variations on multiple censuses.  So, not finding any of my family in that district, I went on to ED 67-2.

I was eleven pages in and I almost missed it.  It wasn’t my mother’s sister, but it led me to believe I was on the right track.  It also thoroughly convinced me that somehow, the census takers had decided to make things difficult for me because once again, they were mixing things up on me again.

For the fourth time, they have spelled my great-grandmother’s name wrong! And, they got my great-grandfather’s wrong as well!

The reason I almost didn’t catch this was because both of my great-grandparents’ names are incorrect.  Manford is listed as Langford, and Thenie is listed as Dina!

So, you might ask, how do I know this is really my family?  It’s because of the twins.  However, once again, we have a gender-bending census taker, because Rolie and Trolie Lawson were actually identical twin boys!  Rolie and Trolie (or as I knew them, Uncle Roll and Uncle Troll) were not just names to me.  I knew them both growing up, and they were both down to earth with great senses of humor.

In finding my great-grandparents and two of my grand-uncles, I figured I was starting to get nearer to finding the family.  In fact, on the next page, I found another possible relative.  The name was listed as Esta, but I think it might be Delbert Estes, another grand-uncle.

After that, page after page went by without seeing another familiar name.  Then, turning to my 26th page to review, I found what I was looking for (and more):

The first family listed is my great-grandmother with her second husband, and two of my grandfather’s half-siblings (I think that the last name is Juanita, which means we once again have a census taker that is a sex change artist).  You can see that the census taker probably missed filling in one field, and he was entering things in the wrong spots.  He had to go in and make corrections, and unfortunately, his correction for Juanita made her a boy.

The final line contains the name of my one hit wonder:  Anna (Mae) Newell.  As you can see, she is the only child at the moment.  Not for long though.  You see, my grandmother was a few months pregnant by this time, and before the year was out, she would be giving birth to my Mom.

My grandfather used to tell us about how when Grandma was pregnant with Mom, she would chew ice all the time.  He would say, “All day long she would just be crunchin’ on that ice.  Crunch, crunch, crunch, crunch, crunch!  Sounded like a hog chewin’ on corn!”  I guess she got over it eventually; I was told when she had one of my aunts, it was peaches that she craved.

I was glad to see Anna Mae on the census.  I had already found her birth record.  Seeing another record for her made her seem more real to me.  She had lived.  She would have been about 18 months old at the time of the census, so she would have been walking and talking.  But, I knew at the same time, this young girl would in a few years die tragically.  It was a bittersweet discovery, but one that I feel helped me make a deeper connection to the aunt I never knew.

I wonder if any of you have any one hit wonders in your family?

A Mother is to…

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book, memory, Mom, mother, Mother's Day, school, story, Taylor

When I was in either second or third grade, our teacher had us make books for our parents.  Since Mother’s Day was yesterday, I thought I would share the book I made for my Mother.  It’s been about 40 years since I wrote this.

The cover shows amazingly little wear, despite its age.

We wrote the book with a simple formula.  Each page started with “A Mother is to”, and then we would write what we thought a mother was expected to do.  Looking at this book is a peek back at the things I felt important at the time.  It has a lot of good memories associated with it.

With each part of the story, we drew an illustration.  I can’t say that my artwork shows much imagination, but then again, I was a young child at the time.  Our teacher typed our stories and then bound them into books for us.

I’m going to present the book page by page.  If you scroll over the picture, there will be my comments as an adult looking back on what I wrote.

A Mother is to Take You to the Beauty Shop to Get Your Hair Cut
by
Pam Taylor

A mother is to help you with homework after school.

A mother is to go to the market with you after school.

A mother is to keep you company when there’s nothing to do.

A mother is to join you in brownies.

A mother is to take you to the beauty shot to get your hair cut.

A mother is to let you make gingerbread by yourself.

A mother is to boss you.

A mother is to take you places.

A mother is to move things.

A mother is to help you in bed at night.

Happy Anniversary!

Tags

adventure, family, Flint, journey, marriage, Sabados, Taylor, wedding

It’s been years since this picture was taken, but I’m happy to say that Bill and I are still together, and still very much in love.

Even though we had a daytime wedding, our wedding took place under the stars.  The building behind us is the Longway Planetarium in Flint, Michigan.  We said our vows under the dome, beneath the stars projected above us.

It was my second marriage; Bill’s first.  So, he was the one that got to wear white. 😉  One of my Aunts made my dress, which is white satin overlayed with royal blue lace.  Royal blue is my favorite color.

Our friends Carla and Brenda were the Maid and Matron of Honor.  Our friend Derek was Bill’s Best Man, and my Brother Tim and his son Timmy were groomsmen/ushers.  Tiffany, my niece, was our flower girl.  My Dad (kind of out of sight in this picture) was able to finally walk his daughter down the aisle (the first time, I eloped).

As you can see, the star theme carried through into our decorations.  Tiffany carried  a star wand rather than a basket of flowers.  The bridemaids’ dresses had a fabric than kind of reminded me of the Milky Way.

My grandparents, my brother and his wife and family, most of my cousins from my Mom’s side, and some of their children.

Bill, his Aunt, two of his cousins and their families.

Unfortunately, Bill’s Mom and Dad weren’t able to make it out from Oregon to our wedding, but one of his cousins came with his family from Arizona.  The rest of his family came up from Ohio.  Much of my family was already in Michigan, but I did have one Aunt and Uncle and a cousin that came in from the East Coast.

We spent a weekend up in Harrison Michigan at a bed and breakfast.

One corner of our room at the Carriage House Inn.

After that, it was time to finish packing, as the rest of our honeymoon was spent travelling cross country in a Ryder truck, bringing all my stuff from Michigan out to California.  We both said if you can survive a week together in a Ryder truck, you can survive anything. 😛

We did have one companion on our trip West.  My last day of work, I took one of the M&M dispensers with me.  Blue, the M&M guy, became our travelling buddy, and Blue wrote back to my former co-workers about his exploits on the road.  We stopped at St. Julian’s winery in Paw Paw, Michigan, before heading down to Berwyn, Illinois, where a branch of the bank I had worked for was located.  From there we continued our trek West, and got to see many interesting sights with Blue.

This Polaroid shows some decay, but you can still see Blue on the dashboard of the Ryder truck with the statue of the Jolly Green Giant in the background.

Bill and Blue posing in front of Mount Rushmore.

I believe that is Old Faithful in the background.  We are at Yellowstone Park.

One last thing I’d like to share with you.  We didn’t write our own vows, but I did write a poem that we both recited as we exchanged rings.