Portrait on the Front Steps of 435

     This lovely family portrait that is staged and yet has a candid feel, was taken in 1906 at 435 Valley Avenue in Grand Rapids, Michigan. The lady in the center chair is Nellie, my great-grandmother, who was pregnant with my grandmother at the time. Two of Nellie's children are near - seventeen year old Florence, holding her cat, and eight year old Wendell, who stands next to his father, Alfred. The lady seated to Nellie's right is her mother, Jane Long, who would have been 64 years old, and the lady to her left is Alfred's mother, Sarah Phillips, age 72.

     The two-story white house was home to a myriad of extended family and friends over the years. It would later belong to Florence and her husband, who continued the same tradition until the mid 1960s when, tragically, the house was torn down to make way for a new highway.

Vintage Hand-Colored Portrait of Mom and Meema

     This beautiful photograph of little Joan and Phyllis, is a glimpse of maternal love and the comfort of a child in her mother's arms. It is also a splendid study of portrait techniques of the very early 1930s. In the midst of the Great Depression and in the midst of a failing marriage, Phyllis has a simple but polished look; Joan, who was born in June of 1927 and appears to be about four years old, is dressed in a pretty yellow dress with a frilly collar and a matching big bow, typical of the era. The coloring, which at that time was done by hand, is subtle but beautiful, with only the use of very soft shades of yellow and pink. 

     This is also a personal treasure because it is my mother and grandmother (who have both left this earth), at a time long past.

1949 Christmas Tree

     'Tis the season for Christmas trees and everybody has a unique way of choosing and decorating their own. Trends and fads dictate some people's style, ease and speed of assembly may influence others, and some, like me, seek to recreate the magic of our childhood.

     This tree was my parent's, in their first tiny home in Grand Rapids, Michigan. It was several years before I was born but it is a fascinating glimpse into the traditions of a long ago decade.

     With Dad and her own mother in the Christmas Day picture below, Mom was pregnant with their first child (who would be born eleven days later). While not particularly creative, Mom did love holidays and she was influenced by an aunt whom she adored (and lived with for most all of her own childhood - Aunt had home full of family, extended family and sometimes even friends; she was frugal and hard-working but had a manner of quiet refinement.)

     Anyway, this tall balsam, which would be considered skimpy by today's standards, really does have a gorgeous shape and is adorned with just a few ornaments and a sprinkling of tinsel. I love it - and the joy and holiday spirit that is so evident in the young family's happy smiles .

Lil' Joan on the Beach

     Memories of one's mother are usually of an adult - a loving, authoritarian figure who provided and guided through our early years and even into our own adulthood - so a peek into their childhood can be fun and revelatory. These photos are of my own mother, taken in the very late 1920's. Western Michigan boasts so many beautiful lakes that I have no clue where they were taken, but it's obvious little Joan was a happy beachcomber!

Alfred P. Phillips - From England to America

    In the winter of 1853, a baby boy named Alfred (my great-grandfather) was born to Robert and Sarah Anne Phillips. The family lived in Weston Supermare, a small village on the Bristol Channel (that would eventually become a seaside resort). Robert was a boot maker and his children, William, David, Ellen, Alfred and Sarah were scholars. It is evident that Will immigrated to the United States as a young man and worked as a baker in Detroit, Michigan. Alfred probably yearned to join his brother in the New World and his mother must have wanted a better life for him as well. (It would have been difficult for a mother to send a young son alone, across an ocean to a big unknown country - either  the boys were very convincing or life in the village was without promise - maybe it was a combination of both.) Anyway, Will and his new wife were ready to accept Alf in their home.

     However, as the photo commentary explains, the wife and her baby died, so Alf stayed with a farm family until he took up his own trade, shoe making, following in his father's footsteps. In time, the rest of the family came to America and all were united under one roof until Will married again and Alf found his own bride - a pert, pretty Irish girl named Nellie Long. 

Peter & Juliana Voorhies

     We'll start with the end of a story here -  a tombstone in St. Johns Cemetery in Jackson, Michigan that stands as a silent reminder of a family long gone. The beginning was in Belgium, where Peter Voorhies was born in 1870, and in Flanders, where Juliana Desmyter was born in 1875. Peter immigrated to America as an adult in 1892 but Juliana was a toddler when her family arrived in 1877. The couple married in 1893.

     They were living in Scio Township, Washtenaw County, Michigan in 1900 where Peter (left) who had been a buggy maker in the old country, was now a farmer, and the couple had two little daughters, Florence and Marie. In 1910, the family had moved to Jackson City where Peter was employed as a laundryman at a hotel, and Juliana had borne two more children, sons Lawrence and Edward.











       Ten years later, the family was living in Summit Township, East Jackson; Peter was working for the railroad as a track foreman and a last little son, Louis (named for Peter's father) had joined the family. This photo shows the family plus a fellow named Harold Brown, seated far right, who was or would become Florence's husband.





     Here Peter and Julia, as she was called, smile on the wedding day of their oldest son,  Larry, and his bride, Phyllis Phillips (who would have only one child, my mother). Not long after, in 1926 at the age of fifty-six, Peter passed away but Juliana lived until 1952 with her single daughter, Marie. Sadly she lost two sons, Lawrence and Edward, before she died.

     I feel quite unfortunate that these hard facts are the only things I know about Peter and Julia (below). They lived through so much, overcame many obstacles and a large measure of their life must have been difficult. Why did they leave Europe and were they happy in America? What kind of personalities did they have? I can only speculate but I am glad that at the very least, I have these few photographs.

A Flapper Weds - Phyllis and Larry

     Phyllis Eleanor Phillips married her sweetheart, Lawrence Laverne Voorhies in Grand Rapids, Michigan in the mid-1920s. She was the beloved daughter of an immigrant English shoemaker and a second generation Irishwoman and was the youngest of five children, two of whom died in infancy. Lawrence was the son of an immigrant Belgian buggy maker-turned-farmer and his Flemish wife; he was the middle child of five. The beautiful bride looks demure in her wedding photo but was probably quite the feisty independent, as flappers had come to be in that era. She was also very fashionable in her tea-length gown of soft wavering fabric, distinctive headpiece with long veil, pointy low-heeled Mary Janes, and a huge round bouquet (all of which are similar to the vintage magazine cover below). The tall handsome groom leans close to his bride and gazes at her with adoration - he is dapper in his dark suit, bow tie, and polished shoes. However by the time a family portrait is organized outside in the sunshine, Lawrence's smile has faded into a grimace. Was he anxious for the festivities to be over? Or was he just tired of posing?

     The marriage lasted less than a decade and produced one child, my mother, Leah Joan. Lawrence, a baker by profession, suffered from alcoholism and died alone in Chicago in1942 - a sad ending for a story that had such a lovely beginning...

     

     Left to right: Juliana & Peter Voorhies (groom's parents), Jane Stoffer (bride's niece), Lawrence, Phyllis, unknown woman, Wendell David Phillips (bride's brother), Nellie and Alfred Phillips (bride's parents), Florence (bride's sister) and Fred Stoffer, Marie Stoffer (Fred's sister), Fred and Florence's sons - Robert and Alfred Stoffer

Walenty and the ANREF (Polar Bear Expedition)

     When I get an urge to become more organized, and begin going through papers, photos and other stuff in my genealogy files, without fail I get sidetracked by something interesting. Such was the case when I came across this invaluable gift from my aunt - WWI dog tags that belonged to my grandfather, Walenty Janus. I had seen his draft registration card online but had no idea about the scope of his participation in the war.  So, hoping against hope to get a clue, I Googled the numbers that were etched on the tags: 339th Infantry Regiment, Co. E. which resulted in way more than a clue - I hit pay dirt! And now I know my grandfather just a little bit better.

     Walenty immigrated to the U.S. in 1910 at the age of twenty, most likely leaving his homeland of Poland because of economic oppression, unemployment and to escape mandatory conscription into the Russian army. He worked in a furniture factory until he was drafted into the U.S. army and was trained in England, along with many other first generation immigrants from the Detroit/Grand Rapids area, for the 339th Infantry Regiment.  Valued for their ethnicity, they were chosen for the American North Russia Expeditionary Force (ANREF), whose mission was to secure the northern Russian ports of Archangelsk and Murmanks. The crossing of swamps and dense forests, and mismanagement by their British commander, played havoc with the operation, and many soldiers died from disease and exposure. Their incompetent general was replaced and the expedition then endured an extremely harsh winter and fierce combat with the Bolsheviks until the fighting in Europe ended in November 1918. The 339th returned to the U.S. one year after departing for Europe and demobilized. As a testament to its service in the icy clime of North Russia, the members were awarded a unit insignia of a polar bear and the regiment's motto "Bayonet Decides" in Russian.*
     So that's the story of Walenty's military career in a nutshell - the details are obviously more prodigious but to me, the gist of this narrative is paradoxical: a young man departs Europe to avoid Russia and ends up returning to the very same. I wonder how he felt about that and I wonder too at all the unknown complexites that form a person's life.

*Sources for photos and information: "On Point - The Online Journal of Army History" 

and the Library of The University of Michigan

Sweet Norbert's Story

     A beautiful little boy, a life cut short by tragedy, a mother's tremendous anguish - all evoked by the soft shy appearance in this old photograph. Norbert was born in  August of 1927, the third child of hardworking Polish immigrants, Walenty and Sophie Janus. The family lived near an industrial area in Grand Rapids, close to the Grand River, and the children attended St. Adalberts Catholic grade school. So devout were they, that the highlight of the children's lives was not birthdays but the celebration of their First Holy Communion at the beautiful basilica at St. Adalberts. (Norbert is shown below in a commemorative photo, dressed in fine clothes,  neatly combed hair and shined shoes. The carefully orchestrated pose also displays the boy's rosary and his adorable hesitant smile.)

     When Norbert was almost eleven years old, he was playing with some other children on the train tracks that flanked the neighborhood. While I am not sure of the particulars, it seems the boys were jumping among the couplers of an idled train; somehow Norbert lost his footing and took a dreadful fall. Unconscious, he was carried home and then to a hospital, where he died from a severe brain injury just a couple of days later. The grief and pain that his parents suffered remains unimaginable.

     Pictured at left are two of Norbert's three siblings - Chester (my father) and Dorothy, two and four years older respectively. Littlest sister, Theresa, who was born in 1933, is not pictured. 

Morenci Farm Images (Medina Township, Michigan)

     This c.1900 photo captures several significant images: the large brick home and stately trees, the ladies on the lawn, the painted barn, and the beautiful horse hitched to a handsome carriage (as I understand it, when a family paid for a  photograph in this particular era, they liked to include their prized possessions!) Apparently this Lenawee county farmer, my great-aunt's father-in-law, Elwood Stoffer, was quite successful. Of course, I never knew him as he was born in 1858 and died in 1923; my mother remembers only that the farm was very clean, "never a fly to be seen", something she may have heard from her own mother.

     The interior of the home is shown below, and again, there is evidence of Elwood's prosperity. That is his daughter, Marie, in a sitting room or parlor which boasts an upright piano, books, framed portraits, a tufted fainting couch, and beautiful carpets - all very Victorian and ornate. These are not the sort of furnishings one would expect to see in a standard farmhouse located in the upper Midwest.

     Following is another view of the farm. Attired in light summer dresses, Marie and my great-aunt Florence seem to be enjoying a romp in a field of wildflowers. Perhaps they were on a Sunday drive and stopped to gather a bouquet of blooms. Were the fringed surrey and horses included on purpose? If not, they do add interest and intrigue to the photograph, as one can also see the older couple waiting patiently in the back seat . The man, Elwood,  is dressed in a dark suit and hat, and his wife is swathed from head to toe in some type of fabric, which is probably a dust robe designed to protect her good clothes from the earth kicked up by the horses' hooves. 

Ps:
     This photo was probably taken by Marie's brother Fred, who was also Florence's husband - I was given a copy of the original by their son.
      Fred and Marie, (whose given name was actually Ethel Marie) were the only children of Elwood and Angie Stoffer. The first babies of Fred and Florence were born in Morenci, though they later moved to Grand Rapids. Tiny Marie never married; she had one leg shorter than the other from a childhood illness, but she was a hard worker and helped her mother cook for the family and farm hands. She must have been delighted when her brother married and provided her with a sweet sister-in-law. Marie (Auntie Ria to the nieces and nephews) spent her final years in Grand Rapids at the home of Fred and Florence.

Long and Phillips

     Two ordinary names - two extraordinary couples (at least by modern standards) - their lives were composed of  heartbreaking losses and exhilarating triumphs. This beautiful photograph must have commemorated some event, perhaps Alfred and Nellie's wedding, but is not documented. It is solely speculation but I believe that there was a special bond between father and daughter, evidenced only by the rest of her hand on his shoulder, the reach of his arm in her direction and the fact that, in his later years,  he followed her to Grand Rapids from Detroit.

      Jane Hartigan, seated on left, was one of six children born to Irish immigrants in St. John, New Brunswick, Canada, who moved to Massachusetts in 1850. That same year, following the birth of a seventh sibling and shortly thereafter the death of her father, teen aged Jane began working in a textile mill to help support her family. Jane may have met Jeremiah Long through her brother (both were apprenticed to boot-makers).    

     In the photo, Jeremiah appears almost pompous but it may be that he was just very self-confident and fiercely independent, attributes that would serve him well in his later years when he held the 

office of Michigan state representative (photo below - back row - far right).  Letters and original poetry still survive that prove him also to have been  a loving, tender-hearted patriarch. At the end of his life, Jeremiah was a widower and lived with his granddaughter's family; sadly blindness contributed to his death when he misstepped and fell down a basement stairway.

      Jeremiah came to America from Cork, Ireland as a little boy, possibly following a much older brother. When he met Jane he was living with an Irish family named Morrow. In 1861 he enlisted in the Union Army, serving as a rifleman in the militia, and at Fort McHenry he sustained a wound from a rebel sword. When he returned home early in the summer of 1862, he and Jane married immediately. 

      Jane and Jeremiah had nine children but it was a heart-breaking loss when two did not survive infancy and two died as young adults. By 1880 the family had moved more than 700 miles west to Detroit, Michigan (anti-Irish sentiment was rampant in the northeastern cities) and Jeremiah was working in a customs office.  There young Nellie met Alfred Phillips. They stand in the photo, straight-backed, determined and dreamy with plans for the future - Nellie with her delicate features and pert nose, and Alfred so boyishly handsome with dark gentle eyes. Their life together is another story, another post.

    

Our Nonnie

     Great-aunt Nonnie was a prominent figure in my early childhood. She was a trim tiny woman with porcelain skin and soft gray hair that she unpinned only at night. Mild in manner and serene, she was nonetheless a little dynamo - cooking, baking, cleaning and caring for family as well as countless relatives and friends that frequented her Grand Rapids home. Even while sitting on the front porch swing, her fingers were forever busy, peeling apples or stringing green beans and her neat shirtwaist dresses were always covered with an apron. Nonnie's good home baked bread was simply an essential weekly staple but it was and is, the standard by which I judge any white bread (as her home was the epitome of old-fashioned but fascinating charm.) When I knew Nonnie, she was a grandmother in her sixties but of course, I thought she was old.

     Florence Barry Phillips, our Nonnie and my grandmother's older sister, was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan; her father was from England and her mother was second-generation Irish. At age twenty-one, she married the equally mild-mannered Fred Follet Stoffer,  son of a successful farmer from a neighboring county, who worked in a local hardware store. Florence and Fred had five children, the youngest of which were energetic twin boys. Various other people lived in the home at different times: among them boarders, a blind grandfather, Florence's own sister and a niece, so obviously the couple were congenial and generous. 

     My mother once said she couldn't understand what Nonnie saw in plain, simple, unambitious Fred, but I think she chose well, especially after I was given the print below - our Gibson girl and her handsome dapper man!

b. 28 March 1889
d . 28 March 1980

Walenty: Polish-American Grandfather

     My father's father was christened Walenty Janus in Lublin, Poland, but later as a young adult, his first name was Americanized to William. A challenging aspect about William involved his birthday, which was recorded in several places as February 14. After researching the family and collecting some documents, I found that his birthday was actually June 12, 1893 and that it was common practice in Poland to celebrate the feast day of the saint for whom a person is named, rather than the actual birth date. Walenty is Polish for Valentine, thus the confusion. (and worse, in various US census records for different decades he is listed as Walenty Janus, Valentine Janus, William Janus and William James!)

      I often wonder why William immigrated to America in 1910. Was it to avoid being conscripted into the Russian Army? Or was he searching for his land of milk and honey? All I know for certain is that  for the rest of his life he worked as a finisher in a furniture factory. In 1917, he was drafted to serve in the American Army during World War I and in 1921, at the age of twenty-eight, he married eighteen year old Sophie Hojnacki, also a Polish immigrant.(I have heard that it was an arranged marriage but the source was not reliable). The couple had four children, one of whom died young in an unfortunate accident, and lived the rest of their lives in Grand Rapids, Michigan. They spoke English but very heavily accented. (During college, my father worked relentlessly to rid himself of any trace of ethnicity in his speech - he did, however teach us children to pray and to cuss in Polish!)

     William died in 1965 at the age of 75 and the only memory I have of him is a frail white-haired man chatting with his brother-in-law on the front porch. I wish I had known him better.

1922 Salutatorian

    In 1922, President Warren Harding introduced radio to the White House, the United States was in the  midst of  prohibition, and a Ford Model T was within the reach of most families (although a starter was a $75 option on Ford's open cars.) That same year, twelve young ladies comprised the  graduating class of Mount Mercy Academy in Grand Rapids, Michigan. They were accomplished, well-educated and musically inclined. However women's liberties were rapidly increasing and they must have been quick to adapt to shorter skirts, shorter hair, cigarettes, cosmetics and bathtub gin parties

     My grandmother, Phyllis (top row, second from left and salutatorian of her class) adored singing and became a member of a barbershop quartet. She married, had a child and soon thereafter divorced her husband, (divorces increased in the 1920's as women asserted their independence). Phyllis never remarried and worked full time in retail clothing for the rest of her life. She has been gone eighteen years but I like to think of her as the carefree teenager pictured here.

postcard of Mount Mercy Academy

Father's Day Thoughts

     Dad had immense potential. He was very intelligent, articulate, artistic, charming and attractive - so many adjectives for a man whose efficacy was never fully realized. Thwarted dreams and life's demands destroyed him as much as the disease of alcholism. My siblings and I have been able in recent years to overlook the bad years and remember the good years fondly. Dad died too young to witness the evolution of his progeny; sadly, only the oldest grandchildren remember him.

     Now I am reminded of Dad often because I recently framed his military casket flag and placed it on a shelf above the window in my computer room. Therefore it is extremely visible and presents a somewhat sad but noble presence in the room. He is always with me but never more than when I spend time in this room.

Fedamore

 

       For ten years I've been searching for the birthplace of my great-great-great grandfather, John Hartigan, and his wife, Ellen. My only clues were Ireland and Limerick but I wasn't even sure if the Limerick meant county and/or city. Records are always being added to online databases and recently I found a death notice for John that listed his place of birth as Feclima. Not finding a trace of this place convinced me to look closer at the original record, instead of the text version, and sure enough, the fine old handwriting disclosed another clue - the cl was a d. A thick Irish accent probably also confused the writer, hence I deduced that the place was Fedamore, originally Fiadamair, a small townsland in Limerick County. Researching the area online proved fruitful and I was thoroughly delighted to find pictures, history and even a graveyard map with designated plots!

   

     

      John Hartigan immigrated to St. John's, New Brunswick in the early 1800s. It was cheaper to dock there than in Boston or New York so numerous immigrants disembarked in that Canadian harbor. Whether John and Ellen chose to stay in St. John's or lacked the funds to travel any further may never be known, but from 1834-1848 they had seven children while in residence there: James, John, Jane, Ann, Michael, Thomas and Lena (Leah?). The family was living in West Boylston, Massachusetts in 1850, however, when John died of consumption (tuberculosis) at the age of fifty-five, five months before the birth of his eighth child, William. The widowed Ellen remained in the Worcester County town with her children. Jane would become my grandmother's grandmother.

     The photo above left is Rockstown Castle in Fedamore, a four story tower house built in the 1500's. Photo on right is Kilpeacon Church, present nave built in 1690.

Old Family Tragedies

     In 1942, at only forty years of age, my maternal grandfather died. I wasn't born until the next decade so I  never knew much about Lawrence, except that he was a baker, that his marriage to my grandmother failed miserably and that he was an alcoholic. Even my mother, his only child, knew little about him; Lawrence was completely estranged from his family and lived in another state.

     However, genealogy research revealed a history of tragedies in Lawrence's immediate family of fivechildren. My sweet godmother was married to his youngest brother and when I inquired, she sent me a large folder of papers, documents and photographs. The newspaper clipping (c. 1927) shown here reports the death of another brother, Ted, who was five years younger than Lawrence. In the photo, Ted's stance is not just a brash young man - he appears insolent and possibly inebriated, which could explain the reason for the accident.

     Below is another article, this time recounting the death of Marie, an older sister. Apparently she was a working woman who had retired relatively young, was unmarried and lived alone. The palm trees indicate that this photograph was taken far from her native Michigan, perhaps on a vacation. Was this the happiest portrait found in her possessions?
     The untimely and adverse nature of the sibling's deaths lead one to the conclusion that the family shared some type of unfortunate or oppressive issues. Rebellion against life on the farm? First-generation Americans chagrined by immigrant parents? Or if it was a gene for weak personalities, the adage was borne out that only the strong survive...

Jennie Long Hamilton - A Chapter in the Long Family History

     This old photograph was found with a few others in a box of yarn and embroidery floss given to me by my grandmother many years ago. I was told that the lady was "Aunt Jen" and the little boy was her son, "Roderick". It wasn't until decades later when I rediscovered the photo that I was able to really identify the subjects. Clara J. Long, born in 1870 in West Boylston, Massachusetts, was my great-grandmother's younger sister. She was called Jennie and at the age of twenty-three (sometime after the family had moved to Detroit, Michigan) she married Henry H. Hamilton, and they had a son, Roderick. However, the child supposedly died young and according to subsequent census listings, Jennie and Henry were divorced. Jennie died many years later in the care of a neice, elderly and suffering from dementia.

      No other records exist on Jennie - the book is closed on her sad life. But she and Roderick will not be forgotten as long as this haunting image remains.

A Portrait of My Dad (for Father's Day)

     Memories of my dad do not span a very long interval. He figured prominently in my early childhood, of course, because of his love, strength and affection. As a teen, I was able to appreciate his intelligence and idealism, while watching it disappear as alcoholism began to rule his life and hurt his family. It has been two decades since his death and I now understand what drove him to drink and the gentle spirit that was crushed. I do not blame him for his disease, only the circumstances and his weakness, which was an inability to confront the antagonist.

     Dad was the son of hardworking Polish immigrants and he aimed high. Smart, charming and ambitious, he attended college and (at his fiancee's request) aspired to eliminate the foreign accent in his articulate speech. After serving as a Marine in World War II, he got a job, married and began a family. Promotions came quickly, as did the children, and soon a relocation from Michigan to Missouri. He had wanted to be a physician but settled for a career in pharmaceutical sales; he had wanted one child but was accorded seven. He loved toddlers but struggled with teenagers. Throughout his life, Dad strived for perfection, whether in his hobbies of woodworking and gardening or in his knowledge of birds, animals and biology. And that pursuit, I believe was his legacy to his children.

c. 1950 with first child



Good OLD Summertime

     Summer in Michigan is magical. That may be partly because it exists largely in my memory as a child there and of subsequent vacations, and partly because it really is a beautiful land of lakes, beaches, orchards and forests. My mother spent her entire childhood in Grand Rapids and in this photo, c.1929, she pauses for a moment to pose with a young friend. Kids and sand and water are a combination that is timeless, but the swimming attire of these two toddlers is a definite and amusing indicator of the era.

A couple of years later, my mother helps restrain her energetic twin cousins. It is summertime again and nostalgia is evoked by her dainty white outfit (dress, hat, shoes and socks), the boys' sailor outfits and the striped awning on the porch behind them.