Throwback Thursday - Dot and Ettie's West Springfield High School Yearbook Pictures

A couple of days ago I got a text from Kristen with this picture attached.

To backtrack a little, Marley is on the Robotics Team at West Springfield High School, and Kristen is one of the business mentors for the team.  The faculty advisor for the team, Mr. Bernard, is also in charge of the school's yearbooks. Somehow, Kristen and her friend Joanie (the other business mentor) got talking with Mr. Bernard and they started looking at old yearbooks.  My Aunt Esther graduated from West Springfield High School in 1949.  I had never seen her yearbook. It was so weird to read the write-up about her.  I had never heard her referred to as Penny.  I also never heard of Henry, who she supposedly liked and was usually at home writing to, lol!

I have Dot's yearbook.  She graduated in 1942.  After seeing Esther's picture, I sent Kris a text picture of Dot in her yearbook.  Her yearbook is very interesting, with many references to the war.  Unlike Esther's write up, Dot's sounded just like her.

Coincidentally, Kristen's friend Joanie is married to a guy who graduated from West Springfield High School.  His last name is Welch.  They found Joanie's father-in-law on Esther's yearbook page, and his brother on Dot's page.  Small world!

I find it so interesting to see these little glimpses into my aunts' high school years.

Throwback Thursday - Friends

This is a picture of my grandmother, Lucy (center), and some of her best friends.  She had two other good friends that I can think of that are not in this picture.  It was taken at a wedding and maybe those two didn't attend.

In her later years Nan would often ask, "Why am I still here; all of my friends are gone."  I used to say to her, "But you still have your family."  I never understood her feelings at the time, but I am starting to.  When you are young, you take your friends for granted.  You assume that they will always be there.

This is a picture of most our friends that we get together with regularly.

(This picture was taken on Valentine's Day 1993)

So far, we have lost two in our group.  

I'm starting to realize how my grandmother felt. Your family is the most important, of course.  But there is something about friends that are your age, have known you forever, and have lived through the times that you have lived through.  

In the picture of my grandmother and her friends, they were all widows.  I can only imagine how important your friends become when you have lost either your husband or wife.  It's amazing to me how many things that I remember my Aunt Dot and my grandmother saying that, at the time, I thought were ridiculous.  They make total sense to me now.

Throwback Thursday - The Swamp at the end of Oleander Street

I have so many good memories about "the swamp"  at the end of the street where I grew up, Oleander St., in West Springfield.  

In the picture below, I am standing with my friend Carl Natti.  He lived on Primrose St., which was at the end of Oleander St.  His house backed up to the swamp.  

The only time I was allowed to go down to the swamp was in the winter, to ice skate.  

I  used to sneak down there, only to hear my grandmother yell, "DEBORAH", and I knew I was in trouble.

When I got a little older though, I used to have "clubs" (usually in our chicken coop) and one of them was a hiking club. The picture below is of my friends Marie Benjamin (left) and Doris Watson, two members of my hiking club.

I loved that swamp.

There was also a part of the swamp, further down towards the center of town, where we used to go sledding.

I haven't been in that swamp for years; over 50 years.

I have been telling Paul for a long time that I wanted to go back to that swamp and just walk around and see if anything looked familiar.

This past Saturday we set out to explore the swamp.  Since there is no entrance, that I know of, that doesn't include going through private property, I thought maybe we could access it from the end of one of the streets close to the center of town where I used to go sledding, and just walk across the swamp to get to "my part."

We found out this was not possible.  This, too, went through private property.

We decided that if we (I) really wanted to do this, we were going to have to knock on a door and ask if we could walk to the back of their property.  

As luck would have it, when we parked on Primrose St., there was an elderly man working on his flowers in front of his house.  It was actually Carl Natti's house.  We told him what we wanted to do and asked if we could walk to the back of his property.  He was very nice and said that he would go with us.  He told us he had lived in this house since 1984 and had heard the name Natti.  I told him of my love affair with the swamp!  He seemed to like it as much as I did.

To my surprise, the swamp was covered with water!  Much more than I remember; maybe because it was Spring.  I only remember one section of it, right behind Carl's house, where there was like a little pond.  The rest of it was just, well, "swampy".  

He said that we were welcome any time to come back and look at the swamp.  I told him that it would be fun to come in the winter when it was frozen over.

He introduced me to his next door neighbor, a young woman with two young girls.  She said that the girls love the swamp too.  I said to her, "Maybe some day, 50 years from now, her girls will knock on the door of the house they used to live in and ask to visit the swamp."

I know this all sounds a bit silly, but it was such a fun time for me.

Happy Birthday Gramps!

Donald (left) and David Wait - 1956

Paul and I have been working on David Wait's genealogy lately.  He was my grandfather's younger brother.  

We have been photographing all of the different places that Uncle David lived, all of them in Greenfield except for one place.  From what we can gather from City Directories and Uncle David's daughter Janet, Uncle David moved to Arizona in 1956.  He had bad lungs and the doctor told him that moving to a dry environment might help.  

This picture is one of my Aunt Dot's slides.  I remember that they came for a visit on their way to Arizona - Uncle David, Aunt Ellen and their five children.  There was another picture taken that day. I can still see it in my mind.  I looked everywhere for it and the only thing that I can think of is that Dot must have thrown it out.  She went through a phase where she went through her slides and "purged" them, although I can't imagine why she would have gotten rid of that one. 

Anyhow, my grandfather and Uncle David were very close and the move must have been hard for both of them.  I don't remember the details, whether he didn't like it in Arizona, didn't think it helped his health or what, but Uncle David was back in Greenfield the next year.

I have many pleasant memories of going to Greenfield with my grandfather to visit Uncle David, Aunt Ellen, and their youngest son Donald, who was two years younger than me.  

Today is my grandfather's birthday.  He would have been 117.  Happy birthday Gramps. 

Happy Birthday Nan!

Today is my grandmother's birthday.  She would have been 116!

In honor of her birthday, I thought I would post some pictures of her childhood home, Chateaugay, NY, a tiny town near the Canadian border.  

In 1986, and again in 1987 we took her back there.  In one trip we went with my Aunt Esther and, I think, my Dad.  In the other trip it was me, Paul, Nan, and my Aunt Dot.

I'm so glad we took her there before her eyesight got so bad. 

The farmhouse was still there and the owner was working near the barn.  He stopped to talk to us and then had his wife come out.   My grandmother told them that she and her family lived there when she was young.  I wish we had asked them if we could go in.  

We also went to the cemetery in Malone, at Notre Dame church, where her parents are buried and also two baby girls who died in infancy.  

We drove around the downtown area and Nan told us where one or two of her brothers worked.  I wish I had taken notes because I have forgotten a lot of the things we saw. 

We also met a member of her family who still lives in Chateaugay.  We went to her house and talked with her but I can't remember who she was.  I sure wish I was doing my blog then!

In looking through old pictures I found some pictures that Paul and I had taken in 1998.  I had totally forgotten that we took a trip to Chateaugay then.  And actually, I really don't remember much about that trip, but the pictures show more of the barn and farm area.  

Paul and I have been working on the Bessette genealogy on and off for years.  In 2003 I found a Bessette message board on Ancestry.com and this is some of the information I found (Thomas Bessette is my grandmother's grandfather).  

"Thomas Bessette married Marceline Martin and he had a brother, Francis Bessette, that married Lucie Martin. Marceline and Lucie were sisters. Frank and Thomas came to Malone in the mid 1880s and built houses just outside the Malone Fairgrounds. Those two houses are still there today."

I really want to go back there again some time soon.  I want to find those houses.  I want to see if they have a Historical Society in Chateaugay, or at least Malone (the nearest city).  I want to see if the farm house is still there.  Maybe I can go in this time!

Happy 92nd birthday Dot!

This was my Aunt Dot's favorite car, her 1959 Chevy Impala.

It was a convertible and I remember it so well.  I remember when the Mass. Turnpike opened in our area, Dot, my grandmother and I went for a ride on it from West Springfield to Lee.  I was so afraid that the ticket would fly out of the car and we would be in deep trouble.  They both laughed and said I was silly and that the ticket would be safe.

I also remember many times riding to my aunt Esther's house in Salem, NJ.  We would always leave after supper, around 6 pm, and arrive at my aunt's house about midnight.  I remember the first time I went over the George Washington Bridge in Dot's convertible.  It was almost surreal - night time with all of the lights on the bridge, being up so high with the wind whipping at us.  It's something I think I will always remember.  One time my Dad came with us and the wind was so strong that he wore a kerchief on his head while we went over that bridge.

In later years Paul and I bought Dot a car model of her 1959 Chevy.  She still has it in her room at her nursing home.

Happy birthday Dot!

My Aunt Ettie

This is my Aunt Esther (I have always called her Ettie).  My grandfather had hunting dogs for many years and I am sure this must be one of them.  I wish I could remember the name.  Ettie has been having memory problems, along the same line as Dot, recently.  I wonder if she would remember her dog's name?

This picture reminds me of a funny story.  When I was a kid, one day I was rummaging around my grandmother's attic and came across a brown paper bag in one of the trunks.  I stuck my hand in the bag and nearly freaked!  I quickly took my hand out and looked in the bag.  There were two long, blond braids, intact, in there.  I found out later that they were my Aunt Ettie's.  I can't imagine what her hair looked like after just cutting off the braids, lol!

Thowback Thursday - Uncle Harold Wait's Camp at Lake Sherman

A couple of weeks ago Paul and I went kayaking at Lake Sherman in Brimfield, MA.

Before Paul and I really got into doing genealogy, we went to the Wait Family Reunion in 2002. While we were there we met a lady (my grandfather's sister's son's wife, got that?) who was really into genealogy.  She brought her book that she was working on and went around gathering everyone's information.  

It was around 2003 that Paul and I started getting interested in genealogy.  Some time later in talking with my Aunt Esther about some of what we had found out she gave me this lady, Ann Bonneville's, email.  We corresponded back and forth and she eventually mailed us her book that she was still working on.  It had a lot of information and pictures that I had never seen.

One of the pictures in her book was of Uncle Harold's "camp" on Lake Sherman in Brimfield, MA.  

I remember talk of this camp.  My Dad used to love going there.  My Aunt Dot said she never liked going in the water there because there were blood suckers.  

This picture was from Ann's book.

Last fall I decided that I would like to try and find out if this camp still existed.  We found the lake, but couldn't identify the house.

My Dad told me years ago that he tried to find it and he had to hike from the road to get to it.  The picture we had was from the water, so I thought maybe we could find it from the kayaks.  Believe it or not, we found it and it didn't look much different than the picture we had.  

Through landmarks we were able to find the camp from the road.  No one was there at the time.  When we got home we looked up the deed and found that Uncle Harold's son Jim sold it in 1990.

It was so much fun actually finding this place.  I was really surprised that it was still there.  

In going through my grandmother's photo album this week I found this picture.

On the back of the picture, this was written in my grandmother's handwriting.  

1957  Camp at Lake Sherman, Brimfield Mass.  

Donald Merz Wait, Feb 6, 1900, my grandfather.

David Reed Wait, Jan 19, 1907, his brother.

Can I say it again?  I LOVE doing family history.  

Throwback Thursday - Julia Christina Merz Lamson

On April 21, 2016, Paul and I went to the wake of Doris Hubbard.  Doris was married to Bob Hubbard, and Bob's mother Lucy was my grandfather's sister.  While we were going through the line, two of Doris's sons, Barry and Bobby, mentioned something of interest to us.  

This is what I journaled about that: 

Both Barry and Bobby told Paul and I about a picture that was hanging in Doris's home. It was a picture of Julia Merz Lamson. They told us that she was buried in White Church Hill Cemetery in West Springfield. Neither of them really knew how she fit into the family. So of course Paul and I got right onto it. We went to White Church Hill Cemetery which is just across the street from Kristen and Toby's house. It's proper name is Meeting House Hill Cemetery. We weren't able to find the grave but came home and looked her up on ancestry.com. In just a little while we had figured out that Julia was Dora Merz Wait's sister. Dora was my grandfather Donald's, and their (Barry and Bobby Hubbard) grandmother Lucy's, mother; so Julia was Donald and Aunt Lucy's aunt. We also found out in looking through the censuses that the Waits and the Merzs were from Greenfield, but Julia married a man from Northampton and moved to West Springfield. Bob Hubbard's parents lived on the same street, Larone St., that Julia and her husband lived on. I'm wondering if when Lucy and her mother Dora went to visit aunt Julia, that Lucy met Bob who lived on that street with his parents, and that is how Lucy and Bob came to live in West Springfield and, ultimately, how my grandfather Donald came to live in West Springfield because my aunt Dot told me that my grandfather wanted to get transferred (Western Union) to West Springfield to be near his sister Lucy. I love doing genealogy!!

Hopefully, that wasn't too confusing!

It's amazing what just talking to Doris Hubbard's sons lead us to - another piece of the puzzle for our family tree.  By the way, we did eventually find her grave.

801 Merion Square Rd, Ardmore, PA

Back in 2010 I wrote a post about my maternal great grandfather, William Ross Harper.

He was born in Thomas County, Georgia in 1874. He married Virginia Jeanne Sims Stapleton in 1894. They had 4 daughters and 1 son. The son, William Ross Harper, Jr., died when he was a year old.

William's first wife died shortly after their last child was born in 1902. Somewhere around 1905 he remarried and his new wife and the four girls moved to Philadelphia, PA.

One of the daughters, Eleanor, was my mother's mother. I never knew her as she died a month before I was born. The only thing, really, that I knew about my mother's mother's side of the family was that they were from the South and they were wealthy.

A couple of years later, April of 2012, I got a notification that I had a comment on the post of William Ross Harper. All of a sudden I had a new found second cousin who knew a lot about that side of my family. Our grandmothers were sisters! We corresponded back and forth, and I was thrilled to hear all of her stories. She told me about this "big house" as we now call it, just outside of Philadelphia that William lived in.

I knew that Paul and I were going to the Philadelphia area in April for a 90th birthday party for Paul's aunt. I got in touch with my cousin to see if she had an address for the "big house." I wanted to see it. She didn't have an exact address but she knew it was in Ardmore, a suburb of Philadelphia.

I knew that Paul didn't like to go looking for places that we really have no idea of where they are, but I thought that we could look in one of the libraries around there and maybe find a City Directory and find the address.

Who knew that Philadelphia didn't have city directories?

We spent most of the day that we were driving home trying to locate this house. We found several other houses that he lived in before moving to the "big house."

We actually found the house on Merion Square Rd, but we didn't have a house number. One house on the street was not a private home. It was owned by the Philadelphia Motherhouse of Deaconesses.

After we got home we started doing some research and I found two articles written by The Lower Merion Historical Society.

One of them said:

Its new owner, William Harper, a Philadelphia musician, lived at "Skylands" until 1952 when he sold it to Joseph Newton Pew, Jr. The next year, Pew donated the property to the Philadelphia Motherhouse of Deaconesses, who nearly doubled the size of the residence with northeastern additions.

The other one said:

The Skylands mansion was built in 1928 on a 16-acre site for William Wood and his family. The house was originally named Stonecroft. Wood was involved in the woolen industry and did quite well for a time until the Depression hit and his business began to crumble. In 1938 the couple were so broke they put their house up for sale.

Two years later it was purchased by William Harper and his wife, who breathed life back into it. Known for their entertaining skills, the Harpers’ house was filled with music from two grand pianos in the Great Hall and dancing in the third-floor ballroom. They even had individual members of the Philadelphia Orchestra perform at the home, according to a 1999 Main Line Times history page.

In 1952 the Harpers sold the mansion to the Pew family for $100,000, even though the original cost of the home was closer to $500,000.


There were also pictures, the most impressive being this one.

Paul and I have entered all of this in our Family Tree Maker.  I really love doing this, even though it is a lot of work and can sometimes be very frustrating.

I wish my mother were still alive and of sound mind.  It would be so much fun to show her all of this and talk with her about it.

Throwback Thursday - Me and Ettie

The year on this picture from my Aunt Dot's photo album is 1953.  That means I was 3, and my aunt Esther (Ettie) was 23.  We were supposed to be posing with the "helicopters" from the maple tree on our noses.  Obviously I couldn't resist sneaking a peak at the photographer, most likely my Aunt Dot.  I'm so thankful for these old pictures!

Throwback Thursday - Me at 11 months

I found this picture in one of my Aunt Dot's photo albums.  I remember, as a kid, going through family photo albums.  There were several of them.  One of them was a large, maroon book with black card stock pages.  The photos were attached by corner stickers that the corner of the picture fit into.  I loved that book.  Some time later, my aunt took that photo album apart and cut a lot of the pictures into smaller pictures, with only the people showing, eliminating the backgrounds.  It must have been the thing to do then because Paul remembers his mother doing the same thing to her photo albums.

I take a lot of close-up pictures, but I also like to get the background in pictures too.  It gives the pictures context, and it's nice to remember things and places as they were.

I think this picture was taken in Greenfield, MA, where my grandfather was from and where some of his family still lived when I was young.  I have seen that wall in Greenfield before, I'm sure.

My next quest is to find that wall, and try to figure out where we were in this picture.  So, you see my point about not having all close-up pictures.  If this picture was cropped, I would never know where it was taken. It's not that important, really, but I like knowing the details of pictures.


***Update.  Paul and I went to Greenfield to try to find where the above picture was taken.  I had a feeling that I knew because I know where this wall is.  The area is a little different now.  We talked to the guy who owns an antique shop next door which, by the way, used to be an Assemblies of God church that I had been to as a kid.  He said that next door to him used to be all grass with a little shack business in the back.  Now that business has a big dirt/paved front and just a little grass.  There are also hedges out near the street.  It's the same place though.

Paul took a picture.  It's a silly picture, I know, but it does show the wall.

This is an old picture of the church next door.  Rev. Ralph Jelley used to pastor it.  He and his wife were friends of my family.  It was 1964 and we were there for someone's wedding.  It is my grandmother, my cousin Lynda, my Aunt Ettie, and my Dad.

This is what the church looks like today.  It is an antique shop.

Everything changes.  Sigh.....

My Five (So Far) Phases of Christmas

When I was much younger, I would notice that every year around Christmas time, my mother-in-law Priscilla would get, not quite melancholy, but pensive. When I would ask her about it she would just say that she was thinking about Christmases past. I never really understood it then, but I think I do now.

I was thinking, today, about all of the different Christmas seasons that I have had in my lifetime.

I think it started because we got a new, smaller tree this year. I have to transfer all of my ornaments onto this tree and I am thinking that I will not be able to fit all of them. We have some ornaments that go way back to Paul's grandparents' ornaments, ornaments that Paul bought at Rocky's (where he worked while he was in college) our first married Christmas, ornaments that the kids made for us and gave us over the years, some that I made in my craft years (that didn't last long), and now ornaments that we exchange every year with the family by picking names. In 1996 we went from a big tree to a table top tree. I tried to pick our favorite ornaments of every different type. We also have boxes of Christmas ornaments and decorations that we don't use anymore. It seems each year I put up less and less.

It came to me that I have had five phases of Christmas, so far.

Phase One is Christmases of my childhood. Most years it was at our house with everyone coming for the day, and my cousins coming for a few days. Sometimes we would go to wherever my Uncle Bob was pastoring.


1956

1957

1958

1965

1966

Phase Two was when I started dating Paul and our first couple of years together without children. Christmas was very romantic at that time. We were starting to gather our own Christmas decorations and traditions.



1967

1970 - Paul and my first married Christmas tree

1971

Phase Three was when we had little children. This was an exciting time - dressing them up and bringing them to church festivities and having them excited about Santa. We were still going to our families' houses for Christmas, and also traveling to Paul's aunts and uncles' homes, and also his Grandmother's family in the Boston area.



1974

1975

1976

Phase Four was when we started having Christmas at our house (I'm not positive but some time in the late 70's) and all that that entails - getting the house decorated, Christmas shopping for the kids for ourselves and also our families (they never knew what to buy the kids; it was just easier for me to do it), having dinner at our house, and then still visiting relatives on different days. It was a busy time, but I loved it. This phase also included having married children and grandchildren. Everyone still came for dinner; the house was still fully decorated even though we went to a smaller tree.



1979

1987

1992 Our $5 cut tree from someone's front yard

1992 What the tree looked like decorated - it was huge!

1994 Another $5 cut tree from the same yard

2004

2005

2005

2005

2007

2010

2011

Now, I feel like I am in Phase Five. Most of the older generation is gone, except for Paul's dad, and my aunt Dot. Mark and Janelle have taken over the holidays, for which I am grateful. They bought a house in the beginning of November 2012. I had Thanksgiving at my house that year, but then my Dad died in December, and they had Christmas at their house. Janelle's parents had been joining us for Christmas for quite a few years, and Stacia and I do a lot of the cooking but I don't have the meal and the opening of presents at my house anymore.



2012

Mark and Janelle's tree

2013

2014 Holiday Brunch at Dot's nursing home

This is my cousin Lynda and her husband Ray at their home in Delaware

2015

I haven't decorated my smaller tree yet this year, so I don't have any pictures.

This is the first year that I haven't had my aunt Dot over for the holidays. It is just too confusing for her (and truth be told, for us too). This Thanksgiving we had her over the next Sunday with the family, and this seemed to work out really well. I plan to do that for Christmas too.

A lot of these phases have overlapped at certain times, but I see a pattern here. I totally understand now what my mother-in-law was feeling. Christmas is still wonderful no matter what phase you are in, just different. The key is to remember past Christmases but still enjoy the present one.