Then and Now - Saturday Night Fun (a day late)

The "Saturday Night Fun" assignment from Randy Seaver at Genea-Musings (along with some of the fine results) can be found here.  It involved picking out a photograph to use in this challenge for August 16 by the Family Curator.  For the original challenge you hold up an old photograph and match it up to the present day scene.  This means you have to be in the area.  Unfortunately, I live far from the sites of my past and that of my ancestors so I was am not able to do this exactly.  I also was not able to just choose my photo and let it go at that. Here is what I did.

In 2004 I spent a day driving around Detroit taking photographs of places where I used to live and of other houses family members lived in.  The angle of this house fit almost perfectly with the photograph taken in 1951 of my father with my little sister Pearl and me.  We are in front of the parsonage on Atkinson. My father was the minister of St. Mark's Presbyterian Church, two block up the street on the corner of 12th Street and Atkinson.  My sister and I shared the bedroom on the upper left.  We used to look out of the side window into the attic of Carol and Deborah. They were our age and lived next door and got to stay up much later then we did. They had a wonderful playroom in the attic.  I taught Pearl to read by the streetlight shinning into our bedroom.  I don't know why we waited until we were supposed to be in the bed to teach and learn reading. On the other side lived Eleanor Gross, was our babysitter during the rare times our parents were out.  My paternal grandparents lived down the street and I have a 2004 photograph of that house which I think I will mix with one from the 1950's.  I was trying to think of someone still in Detroit that I could get to take a photo from the proper angle of St. Mark's. I like this assignment!

The Ruff Draft - July 30, 1991

In 1990 my family began putting out a newsletter, The Ruff Draft.  We had recently started homeschooling and the purpose of the Ruff Draft was to both give real writing opportunities and show the relatives they were learning something. Here are 3 pages from the July 30, 1991 edition.  What I noticed while looking through it this morning was how similar the News Shorts on page 3 were to the News Shorts in the papers in the early 1900's where I have found information of births, weddings and at home celebrations for my grandparents.   We stopped publishing when the writers had moved on to bigger things away from home.

 

Poppy's House by Dee Dee McNeil

After writing about my grandparent's house the other day, I came across this poem my cousin Dee Dee wrote. She said I could post it, so here it is.

POPPY'S HOUSE
By Dee Dee McNeil
 
Snow ice cream
from the window sill.
A kerosene stove
for the bathroom chill.
A tub with feet
like lion paws
clung to the floor
with porcelain claws.
A house that smelled
of sachet bags,
of moth cakes, greens,
and fresh bleached rags.
A house that rang
of happy things
with warmth that only love can bring.
Poppy's house.

© Dee Dee McNeil

My parents about 1943 - Wordless Wednesday

Doris Graham Cleage and Albert B. Cleage, Jr at the Meadows in Michigan

For other Sepia Saturday photos click HERE.

Albert and Pearl (Reed) Cleage - #Tombstone Tuesday

 Last week Megan and Jim Heyl were kind enough to do some cemetery sleuthing for me. In spite of the rude and unhelpful attitude of the office staff, they found the groundskeeper to be helpful. He located the sod covered headstones of my paternal grandparents.  The Heyls dug them out and replaced them on top of the sod so that they are now showing. More on Detroit Memorial Park Cemetery in the future.

1883 Husband 1957 Dr. Albert B. Cleage

My grandparents graves are left of center, front.

Pearl Doris Cleage 1889 In Loving Memory 1982

Nanny and Poppy's House - Grandparents’ House - 52 Weeks of Personal Genealogy & History

Week 31: Grandparents’ House. Describe your grandparents’ house. Was it big or small? How long did they live there?


My maternal grandparents were Mershell and Fannie Graham.  We called them Poppy and Nanny.  They bought their house on Theodore Street on the East Side of Detroit in 1922 when my grandmother was pregnant with my mother, Doris.  They lived there until the neighorhood became increasingly violent and they experienced home invasion and shots fired into the house. That was in the summer of 1968 when they bought a two family flat with my parents near the University of Detroit.  So they lived in this house for 46 years.
When I was growing up we used to pick up my cousins on summer Saturdays and spend the day at my grandparents.  We had Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners there and backyard meals for the summer holidays.
There was a frontporch across the front but by the time we came along there was no porch swing and we never sat or played in the front.  The front door had a full window. the window to the right of the front door was the "hall way" it was divdied from the living room by wooden pillars. On the hall side there was a table that held the high school graduation photos of my mother and her sister, a lamp and underneath a brass bowl that held last years Christmas cards.  Next to it was my grandmother's rocking chair.  The door to the kitchen was behind that and the stairs to the second floor were behind the table.  At the foot of the stairs, beside the single window, was a table with the telephone. The telephone sat on a small table my grandfather built, on the landing.  During the day, it came down to the little table and at night it went back to the landing.  But wait, I think I can show you better then tell you.  Downstairs on the first and upstairs below. No photos taken upstairs. There was a great basement too that included my grandfather's workshop, a large converted coal furnace and a pantry.

When my grandparents moved in 1968, the people who owned the factory across the street bought the house and tore it down. This is what the spot looked like last time I was in Detroit taking photographs of family places.

This is the alley that ran next to the house. The fenced in area is where the house was.