Pre-History — Gran, 1935-1991

  

“Kentucky girl, are you lonesome tonight?

Kentucky girl, do ya miss me?

Does that old moon shine

On the Bluegrass tonight

The way it did on the night you first kissed me?

 

Memories and Thoughts of Mary Hesther Mullin

Mary Hesther Childers Griffith Croghan Mullin

By Jo Anne Warren, Granddaughter, and Jane Griffith Chrisman Stickel, Daughter

I’ve finally tried to chart Gran’s family background, not something my forward-looking grandmother would report on. I now see I have had opportunities to know some of her aunts and uncles.  Photographs in her mementos, which finally came to me, rarely identified on the backs, are coming clear.  She came into this world in Campbellsville KY, Taylor County, down by the Green River, in 1885.  Goldsberry Childers, her father, was a carpenter.  Looking in the archives in Campbellsville, I see that almost everyone there at that time was a farmer.  Gran told me that they moved to Lexington when she was four, 1889.  Goldsberry had heard there was a lot of house building going on there—perhaps not so much in Campbellsville?  So he and his wife Emma Jane Rodgers Childers, and their four children—Margaret, Willia, Mary Hesther, and John, a baby, moved to Lexington. They left behind Emma Jane’s 11 younger siblings, and a large family—everyone had 8 or 10 children then. There is a lot of genealogical information in Campbellsville archives documenting Emma Jane’s family, the Rodgerses (and Price, Cheatham, Kendrick, Curry, Hundley and Brawley families).

But as for the Childers line, I see a lot of 18^thC. ancestors beginning around 1700 in Virginia, but the direct forbears of Goldsberry, my great-grandfather, not so much.  I see Goldsberry’s parents, John Childers, b. in KY around 1806, his wife Margaret Sacre (no info), Goldsberry their son b. 1854 in Kentucky, and no siblings!  In census records I find them both listed variously as born in England or born in Kentucky.  It seems clear that John’s family came from Virginia and he was born in Kentucky; but possibly Margaret Sacre was born in England.  Still—only one child?  I’ll get to this project later.  I’m here, so there is proof of something!

We know Gran to have had a strong character from the get-go.  She was not the firstborn; she had two older sisters.  She had a younger brother of whom she was protective.  In a photograph of her class in school, she is seated center front holding the “sign” that identifies the group.  Mother pointed this out to me as characteristic of her “front and center personality.”

Gran’s father, the carpenter, fell from a roof in Lexington and was injured so that he could not work (I do not know the date of this accident), dying in 1906, of “lobus pneumonia,” it says in the death notice, which could have developed from his injury.  I have in Emma Jane’s family Bible a small ribbon imprinted with the carpenters’ union to which Goldsberry belonged, and I know that Emma Jane received a check from the union as a death benefit, and I heard that while walking home with this money she passed a group of men, perhaps her husband’s comrades in the company, and that one of them asked her for the money as a loan for some need he had, that she handed the money to this man, and that she never saw it again.

At her father’s death, Gran was 21 and married to Jack Griffith for 2 years, living in Columbus GA.  Mother writes in November of 1996 about Hesther—Mother has just bought a historic Gibson Girl Bride Doll, who reminds her of her mother: “When I put a picture of Mother near her face, it was my Mother, who wasa Gibson girl—complete with the pompadour hairdo and 18” waist, which her sisters resented. . . . .You know that the Gibson Girl was more than beauty—she had to be educated, have social graces, and be the complete woman.”

In the period of time between the occurrence of Goldsberry’s accident (unknown) and his death in 1906, Emma Jane, Gran’s mother, and Gran worked at sewing to make a living—Emma Jane sewed waists and petticoats (my nephew John Daniel Chrisman has her account book) and Gran helped her. Perhaps one of her older sisters accompanied her riding the streetcar up Ironworks Pike taking garments to the girls on the horse farms.[1]  I wonder if Emma Jane ever regretted leaving Campbellsville and coming to the big city, now left with four children and no husband.

 

The ages of the children at the time of Goldsberry’s death were :

Margaret Elizabeth Childers (Mrs. Charles Bell), b. 1878                            28

Willia Gay Childers Bitterman (Mrs. ______ Bitterman, b. 1880                 26

Mary Hesther Childers (Mrs. John C. Griffith), b. 1885                                21

John Lewis Childers, b. 1889                                                                             17

 

From a Lexington newspaper clipping we learn that Gran won an ice skating competition in Woodland Park.  I never learned much about her schooling, but she was adept at English and Math.  I don’t know when or where she learned to play and sing music, but she owned a zither and a mandolin when I knew her; although I never saw her play them.  I know she had a ladies’ trio in Pensacola, several years hence, and I’ve placed her tuning fork in the LHS collection.  She was all her life a soprano soloist in church, and member of the choir.  When it came to dancing though, she could step lively, and was always in good physical shape.  I frequently came upon her doing little calisthenics.  She had beautiful legs, remarked upon by many.  You can see them in a photo in that collection, of her standing in her petticoat (it would have been called a corset cover then) in a barn door (always I wonder who is taking the photograph!) and black stockings with no shoes, and you will see her beautiful legs in that photo.  This photograph is intriguing.  Being seen in underclothes would indicate a certain daring. Here I am years after her death trying to get to know her.

About Jack Griffith, letter Mother to Jo August 12, 1987:

First, let me clarify the barbershop picture.  [Messick’s Barber Shop, Trotters Row, 109 Limestone Street, Lexington, operated by R.G. Moore.  Rodney D. Messick was another barber who operated alongside Benjamin Franklin, a Negro barber, from 1898 to 1907.] Your Grandfather Griffith is the handsome one, fourth man back on the left, behind the shoeshine boy – the one with dark hair, mustache, wing collar and four-in-hand.  Man, they dressed in those days—no uniforms for them.  Gentlemen all.  That was quite a posh “saloon” and for men only, it goes without saying.  . . . From this shop he spotted Gran on her way to school and she refused to flirt with him.  That’s why he hunted for someone in Lexington who knew both families to properly introduce them.  Remember, he was 11 years older than she.

When my Father was serving a customer, traveling man, the customer told him that he had no business cutting hair, etc. when he was a natural born salesman. Shortly thereafter, a telegram arrived from the man (long distance was reserved for deaths and disasters) asking him to come to Columbus , GA, for an interview.  He did.  He never cut hair again but sold all over the south for a wholesale grocery concern. Funny thing: He belonged to the United Commercial Travelers and just yesterday I heard of a meeting locally of that same organization.  Hadn’t heard of it for many years.

Mother could have pinpointed the character of a barber, which is a stand-up job and serves up plenty of gossip and humor while cutting the hair.  Here’s a quote from David McCullough’s  John Adams[p. 106]: in a letter to Abigail April 23, 1776, he said about his barber: “He is a little dapper fellow . . . a tongue as fluent and voluble as you please, wit at will, and . . . never . . . at a loss for a story to tell . . . while he is shaving and combing me . . . he contributes more than I could have imagined to my comfort in this life.”

One item in the LHS collection is a photograph album which Aunt Peggy gave me towards the end of her life, when she lived in Bracken County KY.  She did not apologize for the lack of captions, but there aresome penciled captions in the first few pages, which barely show up on the black photo album paper, in which we notice that everyone is called by Miss, Mrs., in a formal way, as on page 2, “Mrs. Croghan,” so that was when Hesther was married to Bernard Croghan, placing the photo after 1915, Jack Griffith’s death, but since we don’t know the date of her marriage to Croghan or his death date or presently the date of her marriage to Chris Mullin, we can only approximate by other clues in the photo:  the style of dress, the sewing machine which is incongruously out in the yard, and the captioned names of others in the photo—“Mrs. Murphy, “and I cannot read the next line or lines.  I know the woman on the far right behind the central group is Gran’s sister Willia (Aunt Bill).  But I learn from this photo’s caption that Gran did not remain a widow very long after Jack Griffith’s death in 1915, because these clothes, the hat Mrs. Murphy is wearing, are not much earlier than the 20s.  Hesther probably needed to marry in order to live, wouldn’t we all think? She was working in a factory, but could she have supported herself and her daughter on her wages?  Aunt Peggy (Margaret Childers Hamilton, Mrs. Stanton} made this album, and wrote these captions.  Aunt Bill is Margaret’s mother by her first husband, Mr. Bitterman.

Back to 1904, when Gran married Jack Griffith. Just traveling on the train to Atlanta by herself was fairly risky, but here seems to be a woman who can take care of herself, and many others as well.  How long did it take a train to go from Lexington KY to Atlanta GA in 1904? Presumably for a journey of such length it would have been a sleeper, but perhaps to save money she sat up?  How can we look into the past?

The original plan was for her aunt Hettie (Hesther), her mother’s next-eldest sister, after whom Gran was named, to accompany her to Atlanta that December. But Aunt Hettie had gotten married and moved to Texas by the time Gran planned to marry Jack Griffith in Atlanta.  The next possible sister I believe would have been her Aunt Viana, Mrs. Davidson, b. 1886.  However, Gran went unaccompanied, presumably because her aunts were unable to accompany her. This is another mystery to me. These were Victorian times. Surely somebody would have been able to break away and go with her.  Or did she refuse to accept such an offer?  What did her mother say?  Here I am writing something and don’t know what to write.

I don’t know what accommodations Jack would have had but probably not his room in the Rankin House, where he was staying while writing the beautifully written letters in the black display album (LHS) or wherever he was staying then.  From his letters I do believe he had a room to himself, which would indicate some style on his part—and I see indications of a lot of style–as other writings from this time indicate rooms and beds were shared by men.  Witness Abraham Lincoln and William Herndon, his law partner, travelling the assizes around Illinois, and sharing not just a room but a bed.  [Herndon, The Hidden Lincoln.] What would seem to be appropriate would be a rooming house, with a woman in charge of the house, offering various services such as breakfast and fresh linen—and more important—respectability.  So, say Hesther arrived in Atlanta at bedtime.  He might put her in a room in the rooming house and return to his room in his hotel until the wedding, perhaps next day.  There is a photo of the two of them which I believe is a wedding photo.  He has a rather impressive moustache, she a lovely hat with a large bird wing on top of it. I know they were married at the Methodist Church on Peachtree Street, and walked along Peachtree Street following the wedding.  No mention is made of anyone standing up for them—maid of honor, best man.  Were there?  The whole trip, see the tiny newspaper clipping entitled, “Alone,” and the marriage tell us that Mary Hesther left her mother and sisters and travelled by train to Georgia, met her lover, married him, and commenced life in a strange place where she knew nobody else, a new beginning.

Gran was always moving forward, never looking back, never regretting, although as I have mentioned in the section on Jack Griffith, she did mourn him all her life, in those quiet times when I came upon her wiping away a tear, saying she “was just feelin’ kinda blue.”

In Atlanta I believe they both lived in a rooming house.  He was apparently gone a lot, as his company sent him to various places to sell whatever commodity was being currently offered.  I heard that he sold coffee to the Negroes working the turpentine forests of Texas, which is where he met his ultimate death by an accident with a horse and carriage.  Gran began church work, organized singing and other activities.  Still, I am asking—nobody to ask of course—what would she do before she became pregnant, and again this is a mystery—she married in Dec. 1904, and had her first and only child in March, 1908.  Is this normal?  So all of 1905 and 1906 and half of 1907 before she conceived.  Did she lose a child before that?  Is it just that his travelling schedule did not mesh with her times of fertility?  And why did I never ask her?  I knew her since 1935 when I was born until 1992 when she died, and we were close—I have a large file of letters from her.  I so regret not asking questions.

John Chalfant Griffith, “Jack,” my grandfather, was a real Kentucky man, even though we now know that the whole family originated in Lawrence County, Ohio.  The children were pretty young when Amos and Mary moved the family to Lexington. Perhaps the aura of Lexington was just so compelling.  I intend to build on the genealogical work I have done—put on hold for this book—which goes back to Lawrence County, and before 1794 to Bucks County, PA, and thence to Wales.  Jack must have been a romantic.  We have seen him as a champion story teller as a barber, and from thence to champion stories as a “drummer,” or travelling salesman in the south.

Once in awhile Gran would start to tell me about his death, and Mother would interrupt and redirect the conversation.  I believe this was because this event was so painful for her as a 7-year-old and possibly she never “processed” it.  But one day when the two of them were visiting me in the bakery, she began to tell it, and Mother tried to stop her, and I, strong enough at that time—strong beyond strong from operating that bakery—I said, “Mother, I want to hear it.”  We were in a back room, having had some lunch.  And this is the story:

Jack left a roadhouse, where of course he was entertaining everybody with his stories, to go to the livery and pick up a horse and wagon to get to the site of next day’s sales work.  At the livery, the owner said, “Oh, Mr. Griffith, I don’t have a horse for you now.”  “Well, I see a horse over there—mayn’t I have him?”  “Mr. Griffith, that is a very mean horse.  I wouldn’t want you to take him.”  “Well, I’m from Kentucky, and there isn’t a horse anywhere I can’t drive or ride.  So if you please, give me the horse.”

The horse was indeed mean and determined to lose Jack Griffith and the wagon.  The turpentine forests consist of slim trees planted close enough together for easy tapping. The horse saw an opportunity and ran hard between two close-planted trees, breaking away from his traces and  disappearing into the moonlit night, leaving Jack lying on the sand bleeding from a concussion.  Shortly after that another man left the roadhouse on his horse, and travelling the same road, noticed the horse shying from something glittering on the sand—it was Jack’s sample case with the brass corners.  The man looked around and saw the schoolhouse door open, went in and found Jack sitting at a small desk, leaning his head in his hands.  He said, “Oh, Mr. Griffith, I’ll go back and get help. Don’t you go anywhere!”  “I don’t think there’s much danger of that,” said Jack. The woman came from the kitchen of the roadhouse with buckets of warm water, and towels, running over the sand to the schoolhouse.

After that, the next thing I heard was that he couldn’t get well.  He was lying in bed, and his friends came to see him, sitting on the bed, causing Jack’s head to fall toward the sitter.  I don’t know what this means for his eventual failure to get well.  Thence follows years of convalescence, moving to Pensacola, then El Paso, and eventually death, from “exposure.”   The death certificate which reads “pulmonary tuberculosis.”  And date of March 20, date of shipping, March 22, 1915.

In 1905 Jack and Hesther were still in Atlanta. Back in Lexington that year a Music Recital of Mrs. Nannie Prather Herring’s Music Class contains the names of several people we know.:  Pearl Davidson could be related to Emma Jane’s sister Vienna who married Mr. Davidson. Willie Bitterman is Aunt Bill; Maud Davidson may be yet another daughter of Vienna; Pearl Davidson ditto, May Coyle has appeared in these lists; and who is Nora Childers?  And the listing “Little Margaret Bitterman” is interesting because she was born in 1899 and this program was given Feb. 16, 1905, when Aunt Peggy would have been only 6!  What a gal!

Pensacola FL 1909

After Jack’s accident in Texas and the doctors’ advice to leave Atlanta and move to Pensacola, for the warm, damp Gulf air, Mrs. Emma Potts and her boarding house at 212 E. Gregory Street, come into the scene. Gran became close with her landlady, who I have heard her call “Potts,” her lifelong friend.  I contacted Ms. Jacqueline Wilson of the Pensacola Historical Society to identify a photo showing Mrs. Potts and her two children Rosalie and Lucille posed before that house, and learned that the house had been razed to put tracks through for the Southern Railroad, whereupon Mrs. Potts acquired the house at 28 E. Brainerd.  Ms. Wilson sent me a photo showing this house today, which is sadly lacking its gingerbread! The original Brainerd St. photo shows Aunt Bill, Aunt Libby (Eliz. Childers, Mrs. John—Gran’s sister-in-law), Gran, and Jane, my mother, and Jane’s doll! in her buggy, which I was told she insisted be included in the photo.  This helps us to date the photo—Jane is probably 2 years old, and the year would be 1910.  So we can almost date Jack’s accident to sometime 1909 or 1910.  Hesther is in Pensacola becauseof Jack’s convalescence.

My letter to Mother letter of January 2, 1990, reports on a talk Gran gave me about Libby and Uncle John:

She [Gran] spoke of Libby.  John had met Libby and wanted to marry her, but first he sent Libby to his sister in Pensacola for acculturation.  Gran said all of her clothes needed mending or discarding.  Gran got some fabrics and made her some clothes.  Then she took her to church and had her meet some of the ladies and learn how “we” lived.  L’s mother apparently  had attracted a certain amount of negative gossip by the way she talked or acted—Gran thinks she was creating a false impression, that there was nothing really bad about her, but she just was foolish.  Apparently your Uncle John was worried about this and wanted to teach Libby proper ways.  Libby died because she didn’t take care of herself.  Her example, Gran’s example, on request, was she used to lie on the floor with the breeze blowing over her from an open window and read.  Now you know Gran would take a dim view of reading. Very irresponsible.  Apparently Gran’s course of education did not include the dangers of reading.

A propos of John and Libby, this year we discovered that they are buried next to Emma Jane, their mother, in Memorial Park Cemetery north of Dayton, OH, near the airport. Emma Jane had come to Dayton to live with her daughter, Mary Hesther.  I knew her then.  Their graves are on the left of Emma Jane’s, and on the right, to my great surprise—another mystery—are the graves of Gran’s youngest uncle, William L. (for Lucien) Rodgers, and his wife Mary Bell.  These people were I thought left behind in Campbellsville, Taylor County KY, when Emma Jane and

Goldsberry moved with their four children up to Lexington in 1889.  This may explain the snapshots of Uncle Lu and Aunt Mary’s children being photographed in Gran’s backyard on Brookline Avenue sometime in the 1960s (judging from the clothes).

Would this be a good time to note that my great-grandparents on both sides came with their families to Lexington KY in 1889, one from the north and one from the south?

I learned from one of the clippings that Elizabeth Gorham (my Aunt Libby) had indeed come down to Pensacola to visit with Gran – a trip to Florida!—stayed two months, and Gran’s younger brother John Childers had come down and gotten a job at Sterns & Culver Lumber Company in Laurel Hill, and Miss Gorham and Mr. Childers married at the Methodist Church and began life together in Florida.  Preceding this is a clipping about a “Pre-Nuptial Party” given “Wednesday afternoon,” a “novelty shower at 6 o’clock on Friday” by Mrs. J.C. Griffith:

“The gifts which were many in number were unusually lovely they were brought into the living room, where the guests were gathered together, in a miniature express wagon , garlanded with ivy. . . ”  “A most refreshing ice course was served.  Mrs. Griffith’s guests were the young girls who are members of the Philathea class of the first Methodist church.”

Another clipping, “Changes His Position,” reads: “Mr. John L. Childers, formerly employed by the Adams Express Company of this city, has taken a responsible position with the Stearns-Culver Lumber Company, of Florala, Ala.  Mr. Childers was making a tour of the South when he secured the position.”

A clipping from The Pensacola Journal, June 2, 1909, reports on another event of the Philathea class:  “Philathea class gave bay party last night”:

“A pleasant first of June event was the bay party to the island which was given last night by the Philathea class of the First Methodist church, the members, Mrs. Thos. V. Hannah, who is teacher, and Miss Zelius, the very efficient and capable president of the class, having succeeding in making the event a perfect one from every standpoint for all who attended.

“The steamer Monarch had been chartered, the party leaving at 7:30 o’clock.  Once the delightful ride across the bay had been enjoyed, the party secured refreshments at the pavilion, and surf bathing was also an added feature to the evening’s fun. The Philathea class members have long held the palm as first class entertainers, and last night’s affair was one of their characteristically happy events, appreciated by all who were fortunate in being in attendance.”

Always trying to nail down dates, and still in Pensacola, we see that Miss Missouri Cawthon on West Belmont Street is hosting a fish fry at her home on Friday evening.  “Present were Mr. and Mrs. Jack Griffith, Mrs. F.E. Brawner, Mr. and Mrs. Fleming  Brawner, Miss Cawthon, Miss Margaret Bitterman, of Kentucky, and Mr. Harrison of Virginia.”

Another boat trip:  “Launch Party and Picnic”  “Mr. and Mrs. F.E. Brawner, Mr. and Mrs. Jack Griffith, Mrs. O’Neil and children of Lexington, Ky., Miss Missouri Cawthon, Miss Florida Zelius, Miss Florence Halsey, Miss Louise Pfeiffer, Mr. Will Moyer and Mr. J. Marshall Harrison, of Richmond, VA., composed a party who spent the day at Santa Rosa Island on Thursday, going over on the launch Lena.

“Dancing and surf bathing were enjoyed and a fish and chowder dinner served.”

“Music at the First Methodist Church”

The musical program at the First Methodist Church on Sunday was unusually beautiful, the following selections being rendered:

Morning Service

Piano Voluntary—Miss Eulalie Hutchinson

Quartette—“Thy Will Be Done,” Miss Missouri Cawthon, Mrs. Jack Griffith,

Dr. Phillips, Mr. Bagley

Offertory Solo—“Face to Face,” Mr. Cecil Bagley.

Evening Service

Piano Voluntary—“Last Hope,” Mrs. Richard McAllister

Quartette—“Come Ye Disconsolate,” Miss Cawthon, Miss Eulalie Hutchinson,                                             Mrs. Jack Griffith, Mrs. F.E. Brawner.

Baritone Solo—“Hold Thou My Hand,” Mr. J. Marshall Harrison

Quartette—“Thou Art My Shepherd,” Mrs. Griffith, Mrs. Brawner, Mr. Bagley,                                                 Dr. Phillips

Once again, here in Pensacola, Mary Hesther became active in a Methodist Church (Jacqueline Wilson correspondence says that also was torn down and replaced with a more modern church.)  and I believe it was here that she formed her Ladies Trio which performed in the church and perhaps other venues as well.

We have no evidence of Jack’s company supporting him and his family during his convalescence, but perhaps it did, especially in the beginning, as his recovery and return to work may have been expected. I heard the main problem with his working was his terrible cough, which was a negative for sales.  Shades of Willy Loman, although Willy was not coughing; he was just getting old and not keeping up with modern ways.

El Paso TX– Hopes for Jack’s Recovery

At some point between 1909—the accident–and Jack’s death in 1915 the doctors realized he was not getting better in the damp, salt air of the Gulf, and decided that what he needed was the dry air of El Paso, where there was also a sanitorium, and the family moved there, to Altura, not a town any more but part of El Paso.

In El Paso we know of involvement in the activities of a Methodist Church, but I have no evidence of any specific activity with the church or the community, except for the beautiful and moving encomium written by the Men’s Sunday School Class in memoriam.  Jack died March 20, and Mary Hesther and Jane returned to Lexington by train with the coffin containing Jack’s body, where Jack was given a funeral and a space in the Griffith family plot in Lexington Cemetery, and Gran endeavored to find a way for her daughter and her to live there.

On the train back to Lexington 7-year-old Jane moved about the car gaily chattering to the other passengers, “It’s my birthday! We were going to have a party but my Daddy died and we have to take his body back to Lexington.”  A woman and a man were especially shocked and sympathetic and spoke together and agreed to ask Jane and Gran to the dining car for birthday cake.  Jane was willing, certainly, to go, but they asked Gran, who was sitting in her seat with her handkerchief, who declined the invitation, saying, “No, thank you.  I have my lunch with me, and I think I’d prefer to just stay here.”  I have sometimes wondered if Gran told me that the man named Meredith A. Proper from Homer, New York, was that man.  He appears in below in a subsequent paragraph.

Lexington KY 1915

What Hesther and her little girl found in Lexington in 1915:  Jack Griffith’s father, Amos Griffith, had cancer and would live a little more than a year.  Mary Chalfant Griffith, his wife and the mother of their nine children, had died the previous year.  Most of Jack’s siblings had moved out west—Uncle Claud was in McMinnville, Oregon; Uncle Charlie in Pasco, Washington; Lewis was in Detroit; Dick was in New York City (designing typefaces for Mergenthaler Linotype)[2], Jim was a newspaper editor in Lusk, Wyoming; Lola was in Arkansas (where she would live 17 years before succumbing to the family disease[3]at 47).  That left Uncle Dave and Aunt Matt—he was suffering the family disease, and Aunt Ruth and Uncle Jim.  It was clear to Mary Hesther that this family could not sustain her, and her own family was much poorer, having lost the paterfamilias in 1907.  She learned that there were factories and employment in Dayton, Ohio, so she and little Jane moved up there.

Dayton, OH 1916

Hesther found quarters, and a job at National Biscuit, the chief story I have heard about that being her bringing home bags of broken cookies to Jane.  One by one she brought her siblings up to Dayton from Lexington, for the opportunities there, and even one cousin of her left-behind family in Campbellsville, Kentucky—Elizabeth Rodgers Schumate and her husband Edgar.  In fact, their letters tell us a great deal; I regard them as primary documents.  At this time Mother (Jane) became a latchkey child, with strict orders not to open the door to anyone while her mother as at work.

Then there was that man, Meredith A. Proper, of Homer, New York, met on the train from El Paso to Lexington in 1915, who with the woman took Jane (Mother) into the dining car on the train, and I believe afterwards courted Gran.  Whether Gran was interested in this man or not I do not know.  It is possible that by the time he came into her life she was secure in her home and employment, and did not need or want him.  But Mother remembers that he came to the house in Dayton one day when Gran was at work; Mother was home but was not allowed to answer the door.  She must have seen him through the door glass curtains, but she did not admit him.  He went away and never came back

Mother (Jayne[4]) told a story about a doll in a letter dated July, 1986, to me: “About my doll.  Have I asked you whether you want your name on it?  She is beautiful.  Mr. Snow, a business friend of my Father’s, gave her to me the day I was born (March 23, 1908).  [The doll’s name was Snow Dolly.–jw] So, you know how old she is.  Libby Childers made her clothes.  The slip and panties are made from a peach colored slip which Mother made to go under my first long formal.  When Nan Hoopert  (Treva’s daughter-in-law, who is a collector, judge, expert) was here recently, she restrung her and gave me an appraisal.  Are you ready?  $3500. Now, should I put your name on her or Julie’s?  Or, to be proper, should I have you pass her on to Julie?  I’m thinking of getting a stand to display her but can’t think of where.” I had this doll for some time,  photographed it thoroughly and let a neighbor here in Bellevue sell it on E-Bay. So much for Snow Dolly.

Then again, December 23, 1986, that same year, Mother wrote:

Yesterday we brought Snow Dolly down from the attic.  I washed her clothes (probably the first time since Aunt Libby Childers made them), pressed her hair ribbons and freshened her hair. Then I bought a doll stand for her and she is commanding a good view of the music room from the top of the piano. She’s so beautiful.  I noticed that when Nan Hoopert restrung her she did not get her hair back in the exact center (things like this really bug me!) so when she comes to see her mother this summer I’ll have her take it off and redo it.  I just decided that the attic was no place for a lovely doll to spend Christmas.  I wish now that I had gotten her out for display before this.  The stand is not the greatest, but it will do for right now.

Excerpt paragraph from Jo’s letter to Mother of July 28, 1986:

Gran and building superintending were made on the same day. I must say it drives me nuts having to discuss construction with her.  We have so much too much of it and all of it awful.  The buildings fall down in ten years if we’re lucky.  That section of Route 95 near Greenwich, Connecticut, is now the contention in a lawsuit brought by the State of Connecticut against the contractor.  Ridiculous. The fact that she’s been shifted around from pillar to post at 99 & 100 like a college girl doesn’t seem to impress her.  I think they’re trying to kill her. Well, if that’s what they’re trying to do, they’re making a big mistake. She thrives on it.

Almost two years after moving to Dayton Gran moved from Laurel Biscuit (she brought  home fresh but broken cookies for the two of them to enjoy) to Delco Light, gearing up for WWI.  She became a forelady with 18 women working under her, winding armatures for a piece of heavy artillery in the 1^stWorld War.  This was a repetitive, automatic motion with two hands, which I have seen many times, as we know from similar actions in our own work lives, become habitual to the point where one does it in his sleep.  Whenever one of her team came up in discussion—as she kept her friendships forever—she would show me once again the two-hand motion of winding an armature.  I never asked what the thing was or did.

One thing Gran loved and made her very own was baseball.  She listened to the Reds on her little radio, and could tell you every player—really in the whole league—and every game, score, RBI.

While living and working in Dayton, it is obvious from the photo album of her niece Margaret Bitterman (Aunt Peggy), mentioned earlier, that Gran spent a lot of time in Kentucky with her relatives.  The trains ran often and Lexington was not so far away.  Gran wanted her daughter Jane to know her Griffith, Rodgers and Childers relatives, and I believe the country felt good to her, too, as many of these photographs show her and her relatives and friends canoeing, camping, and just generally enjoying the outdoors.  Certainly they enjoyed photography.  (Gran’s camping outfit is a sight to behold—it looks like the WWI soldier’s style was copied by civilians, just as during WWII our suits had big shoulder pads.  Gran’s outfit was completed with knee britches, black stockings, and beautiful leather shoes in the sporty mode.)

Excerpt from letter Mother to Jo March 20, 1986, after Fred and I have been burglarized:

I have so many feelings about your losses.  I know what they are only things.  They can be replaced, after a fashion.  However, I get so indignant when I think of some grimy individual handling your things and being in your home without permission.  Most of the stolen things were part of our history – links with the past.  For instance, the little amethyst was the only tie with Bernard Croghan, Gran’s second husband.  He was a dear, kind man who accepted this girl child along with the woman he loved.  . . . However, the most important thing to consider is that neither you nor Fred was hurt physically.  For that we can be so grateful.  Things are expendable.  You are not.

Excerpt from letter Mother to Jo April 25, 1986:

First, let’s deal with my Mother.  Realizing some of her beginnings, we may be able to deal more charitably with her, exasperating as she is.  In her day, young ladies were not trained to be self-supporting, but rather the focus was on marriage and whatever security those bonds offered. When she married at 19 she was equipped for nothing more substantive than being a loving wife and charming hostess. When my Father died, she was left with an 8-year-old and no saleable skills.  She got tough in a hurry, scratching her way to survival.  I think her church offered her a job as secretary, which tided her over until she could get herself together and return to Lexington. My memory has large blank places and I do not know what she did there until she met and married Bernard Croghan, who took us to Flint, Michigan, where he worked in a big GM plant at the onset of the war.  Then, he was sent to Dayton, where he became ill with that horrible flu and died.  ,  , ,  I was a “latch key kid”. . . . Also during those years there was little work for her family in Kentucky, so she got them all jobs in Dayton—Aunt Bill, Uncle John and Elizabeth Rodgers and Edgar.  She really put them on their feet.  Of the bunch, Elizabeth is the only one who ever expressed any gratitude. Now, this never bothers me, but it seems to be important to her.  With all her self-generated courage, she seems to need this expressed thanks.

As a child, my life was structured according to her convictions of right and wrong.  I lived in a protectorate – for my own good, you know.  She did pass up many interesting opportunities to have some innocent fun because of what it may look like to me and, perhaps would offer me some temptations I could not handle.

When she married Chris, his relatives were heavily in debt to him and he was an easy mark.  She managed the money and had their affairs in order quickly.  He happily turned it all over to her and she had their little house paid off in jig time, enabling them to take trips, drive decent cars and enjoy each other.

Nobody knows more than I that she can be difficult.  She has strong ideas of priorities, proprieties and such and would have blocked my marriage to Ed because it was too soon after Lois’ death, she thought.  She feared scandal.  When I attempt to assert myself (which I do more frequently now) and speak with any sharpness in my voice, she pouts.  This is punishment.  I’ve learned to turn this off by killing her with kindness and ignoring the issue. She needs me to take care of her affairs and see that she has periodic care to keep her clean and attractive. Bottom line: She is my Mother and I do love her.  This doesn’t mean that I always have to like her ways.

 Flint MI –? 1918 ?

At some point here Gran met Bernard Croghan in Dayton, and married him. Regrettably nobody clipping items from the press annotates any of the standard data: name and date of publication, city and state, page number.

In the Lexington paper  News from Flint, Michigan, reports that “Mrs. Bernard Croghan was operated on at her home in Flint, Michigan for appendicitis, that she stood the operation well and is doing nicely.  Mrs. Croghan was before her marriage Mrs. Mary Hesther Griffith, of Lexington.”

Hesther’s niece Margaret Bitterman Hamilton (Aunt Peggy—Willia’s daughter with Bitterman, her first husband) lived on a farm in Bracken County, KY, with her husband Stanton Hamilton and his mother, an arrangement which did not suit her terribly well as Peggy was a fiery, independent type, and Mother Hamilton was in charge of the house.  (However, I saw somewhere that Peggy, 16 when she married, learned a lot from Mrs. Hamilton and was grateful.)  Peggy was a Leo like me and we were always close. She was July 25 (1899) and I was July 30 (1935.)  She was called Aunt Peggy but she was my first cousin once removed (!!).

A newspaper item entitled “Secret Marriage,” subtitled “Miss Margaret Bitterman and Stanton Hamilton were wedded in June, 1916.”  The article states that Margaret was a pupil at the high school, while Stanton was at that time a student at the University of Kentucky “and it was decided to keep the wedding a secret until after his graduation.”

In any case, this marriage was doomed as Stanton Hamilton was a philanderer.  One day in old age, she and Mother were talking about him, and the break-up, and Aunt Peggy said in the sweetest Dixie tones, “He wasn’t true.”  The divorce settlement stated, in typical male-centered fashion, that she could live on this farm as long as she did not re-marry. So Peggy farmed that farm herself, milking 30 cows twice a day so that she had trouble sleeping at night, her arms ached so.  We visited there as often as Mother (Jane) could get down there, usually with Gran, and I loved the quiet, and the natural sounds, the darkness of the nights, during which we slept in Peggy’s feather beds.  Mother and I slept in the same bed.  Maybe Gran and Peggy shared a bed.  This sort of arrangement was quite common.  I always wondered about a hired man named Jay, whether he played a larger role in Peggy’s life than hired man.  But certainly she needed help on this farm.  Many years later, when I was grown, Peggy married Arthur Jones, and the next day the courts took the farm away from her.  Stanton Hamilton died in 1959, and I don’t know whether he was alive then; neither did I know if he had ever re-married, or what he did for a living, not having the farm.  But the feeling of a small Dixie town with a long memory and respect for the law is palpable.

Sept. 26, 1988, Jo to Mother:

That reminds me of something Gran said at dinner Saturday.  She was eating her soup and I handed her a corn muffin, cut in half.  I ate the other half.  I told her I would butter it for her but it didn’t really need any butter.  “Well, alright, give it to me without the butter then.”  OK. She took a bite, and looked over at me and said, “Goody, goody!”  A couple of bites later she said, “These muffins are just like Margaret Jones’s.”

May 26, 1979—Mother to Jo after she and Gran pay a visit to Peg’s:

We did have a nice visit with Peg and Arthur, but a shorter visit suffices now.  They are nicely situated in their trailer home, with two bedrooms, a complete bath, much storage and ample space everywhere.  Their situation on the land, however, is something else.  They’re right at the busiest corner in town (Germantown KY) and the truck traffic is fierce.  Right across from a large IGA market.  However, they have adjusted and don’t mind.  Everybody for miles around knows them – stops in – toots the horn in passing, etc.  Arthur has difficulty in moving about—a painful hip and back, but she sees to it that he does move!  They are both enjoying the decrease in demands on their strength and time.  She is still a terrific cook, but would you believe that for breakfast we had “tube” biscuits?  This was a shocker to me.  I use them only in an emergency.  However, the green beans, cornbread, mashed potatoes and pork chop gravy were right up to snuff!

Dayton OH again—1918?

Back in Dayton where Bernard Croghan had been transferred by his company, he succumbed to the tuberculosis epidemic and died. Gran, once again living and working in Dayton, welcomed her relatives who visited her there.  Several of them, including her sister Willia and brother John,  probably noted the employment opportunities in this modern industrial town with oh, so many business enterprises, especially factories—National Cash Register, General Motors, Standard Register, Wright Field, and hundreds of businesses existing because of them.   Gran helped her brother John Childers get a job at General Motors (I think), telling the manager that her brother could fix any motor or engine.  I knew him as a man with a perennial cigar in his mouth, unlit, just chewed on.  His wife, Aunt Libby, seemed rather frail to me. They had two sons—John Lewis and Charles C.  Gran used to drive over to their house, with me along, to pick up deliver shirts for her brother.  I was given to believe that Libby was unable to do heavy work.

Gran doted on Jane (Mother), making beautiful clothes for her, protecting her in all ways, giving her tap dance lessons, piano lessons, teaching her fine needlework, gardening, cooking, and teaching her to be an independent lady, never to be vulnerable to the circumstances which had caused her mother so much heartbreak.  (We’ll see how that worked out.)

When I came on the scene, I became a key part of Gran’s schedule and concerns.  Gran loved to take me with her everywhere she went in her 1939 Chevrolet sedan.  She went to the cemetery after church to place altar flowers on graves, and to visit graves to remember her departed friends. She raised peonies and iris which would serve to decorate graves on Memorial Day, as that is when they bloomed—May 30 on the dot. She took other women from church, women who did not drive cars.  We went out to the country to buy apples in the fall, and at other times to get fresh produce.  On these trips she made sure she took as many as wanted to go with her/us.  She regularly stopped at bus stops if any of her friends or acquaintances were standing there, and filled her car on the way to church or shopping.  Sometimes she took me to other cities as she visited friends—Ada Green in Wilmington, OH for example.  She took me to visit her older sister Margaret (Aunt Mag) in Lexington, where we stayed overnight.  It was so exciting to put the car on the ferry at Cincinnati to cross to Kentucky. We had a good time together.  She always had some little candy or snack in her “reticule” and that was because she was a snacker herself but it was a delight to me.

When I was 6 years old I came down with Scarlet Fever, and I was at Gran’s house!  I hate to say this made her very happy, but it meant the doctor was called, our family doctor, who diagnosed me with Scarlet Fever and pronounced 2034 Brookline Avenue in Dayton, Ohio, under quarantine!  I believe this lasted about 6 months.  It meant that Mother and Daddy could not see me—nobody could.  During that time I occupied the front bedroom, and Gran tended to me very gently and sweetly.  I did not realize at that time that many children died with this disease. Gran bathed me so carefully, cool cloths on my brow, and fed me honey from a hive with a little spoon, which tasted so good, and I think now healed me.  People sent gifts of – what I remember is a giant gingerbread man – sweets and toys.  I could not have any of the lovely sweets, but Chris took them—even breaking up the big gingerbread man – to work in his lunchbox.  It was a terrible disease then and I was not really expected to live, so there was a crisis of which I was unaware.  Many years later my sister-in-law Rita Chrisman, my brother’s first wife, called to say she had found in the papers among Unclaimed Funds an amount in my name!  Gran had taken out a little insurance policy on my life. Then forgot about it I guess. She paid the payments to a man who came to the door, probably so little it was just change.  Gran was long gone when Rita called.  I claimed the fund and sent half of it to Rita.  Don’t want to buy any bad karma.

On Tuesdays in summer I woke up at Gran’s house because we went right after breakfast to church for her Red Cross sewing group.  A group of about 15 women, we sat on high-backed wooden chairs in a circle in the bright, airy church basement (South Park Methodist, Brown and Stonemill in Dayton) and sewed and talked.  The women brought their lunches with them, so at noon we stopped and ate lunch. During the war we rolled bandages. At other times we made carpet rags: we cut dress goods or whatever the ladies brought or what members of the congregation put in the collection bags, into strips, sewed them together in long strips, and wound them into balls.

The chief benefactor of these rags as I recall was Berea College in Berea, KY.  This was a special college; I learned later that Berea and Warren Wilson College in Swannanoa, NC, were established to serve the Appalachian people.  You couldn’t pay to go to these colleges.  If you had enough money to pay you would be unable to study there.  There were no legacies. A graduate of these colleges would not be able to send their children there because they would have gained skills and been able to make a living so that their children would not be poor—and these colleges were established to educate the Appalachian poor so that they would no longer be poor.  There was an elaborate program of work, so that students actually built the college—they sawed the wood, baked the bricks, did the carpentry, electrical work, glazed the windows, made all the furniture, sheets for the beds, pillows, kept the grounds, grew the vegetables, cooked all the food served in the dining halls.  They made many products to sell, which is where the carpet rags come in. At the same time they followed a superior curriculum of study including Latin and Greek, music, dance, literature—interests characteristic of the American South.  There was an innovative educator who was president of the University of Chicago, Robert K. Hutchins, whose brother headed up Swannanoa College. I believe I heard that these gentlemen created this idea and the curriculum.  And they were young men themselves.  When Gran took me to Berea with a carload of balled carpet rags, she told me before we got out of the car, “Now you don’t say anything about some of these students who don’t have shoes.”

Well, I’ve got back to Kentucky, where Gran’s siblings and cousins are having a great time!

I’m quoting from a newspaper account, which I find amazing;

“Old Greece is Revived Here,” subtitle “First Methodist Church Scene of Pageant and Reception”—

“The grandeur of the festal days of ancient Greece was rejuvenated last night and made manifest in “The Feast of the Seasons,” a pageant given by the Epworth League of the First Methodist Episcopal Church to the congregation.  Nearly three hundred guests were present and they entered into the spirit of the occasion and enjoyed every minute of the entertainment.

“The Sunday School room of the church was decorated in booths to represent the months of the year.  On entering each guest was presented a registration card upon which to write his name so that everyone would know everyone else.  Good fellowship was present from the start.

“Each guest was assigned to some particular month and went into the decorated booth that represented that month.

“A reception line, in which the members of the league, representing the year, month, days of the week and seasons, were, greeted the visitors as they entered.  Dr. and Mrs. G.E. Cameron, Mr. and Mrs. T.E. Allen, Mr. and Mrs. J.L. Malin, Mrs. F.W. Clare, and Mrs. E.B.G. Mann assisted the members of the league in the receiving line.

“After the receiving line dispersed, each guest was taken to the Palace of Fate, an artistic pageant and decorated stage, where the Greek Fates and other divinities told fortunes.  In the Palace of Fate were: Clotho, Miss Sarah Hester; Lachesis, Helen Davies; Atropos, Miss Jane Earle Middleton; Justitia, Miss Lucille Robbins; Rhea, Virginia Kelley; Hobo, Miss Jane Lewis; Cassandra, Miss Elizabeth Clare; Thalia, Miss Annelle Kelley; Erato, Miss Louise Borger; Sprite, Miss Grace.”

“Father Time, represented by C.S. Adams, president of the league, and the New Year, represented by Miss Louise Malton, collected resolutions written by the guests.  Delicious refreshments were served in the basement after the spectacular part had been concluded.

“The menu was served by the goddesses of the seasons, assisted by the days of the week and the colors of the rainbow.  In this company were: Spring, Miss Maxie Johnson; Summer, Miss Mary E. Reese; Autumn, Miss Marguerite Morris; Winter, Miss Anna Young; January, Miss Mary McDonald; February, Miss Dorothy Middleton; March, Miss Helen __________; April, Miss Alice McCloud; May, Mrs. C.C. Lambert; June, Mrs. W.E. Nichols; July, Miss Margaret Bitterman; August, Miss Lucille Young; September, Miss Bernice Ellwanga; October, Miss Mary Johns; November, Miss Naomi Hadden; December, Mr. R.B. Finley; Midnight, Miss Alys Pilling; Dawn, Miss Ida Young; Monday, Miss Sophine Rogers; Tuesday, Miss Anne Hager; Wednesday, Miss Mary Cleveland; Thursday, Miss Eva Sallee; Friday, Miss Mildred Morris; Saturday, Miss Mabel Frost; Sunday, Miss Josephine Linney; Sunshine, Miss Frances Oney; Rainbow: Violet, Miss Elizabeth Richardson; Indigo, Miss Sallie Wieman; Blue, Miss Eleanor Eaker; Yellow, Miss Nancy Morris; Orange, Miss Lucille Melton; Red: Miss Idolyn Munns; Green, Miss Veronica Atkins; New Moon, Miss Ella Young.

“The following assisted the musical program which interspersed the entertainment: Mrs. Alys Pilling; Mary Pelle Baird; Ida Young; Elizabeth Froman; Mrs. E.T. Powell, Misses Lula Oney, Annelle and Virginia Kelley, Louise Borger, and the Sunday School orchestra.”

Two of these ancient party and event announcement clippings show Mr. J. Marshall Harrison’s name underlined in pencil.  I would love to know who he was.  He came from Virginia.  I believe that is where the Harrisons were and are.

There are other event clippings in the envelope here, so wrongly cut out with no indication of time or place, which we can place in Lexington (one is in Nicholasville), and indicate a spirit of fun and camaraderie perhaps typical of young people but seeming to me a little more “country” than what I grew up with in Ohio.  One thing family members would say in the car going over the river into Kentucky was “take off your shoes!”

 

Dayton—Bonds with Kentucky

Mother (Jane) graduated Stivers High School in 1928, and planned to go to college at the University of Kentucky, but lost her savings in the Crash.  So she went to work as a legal secretary.  At the same time she had been since high school active in dramatics, one clipping showing her as the lead in a play called “Runaway Girl.” She had appropriate skills for the theater –could sing, tap dance, and spoke well—but she did not pursue this work.  In fact I did it for her for several years 1952-1962.  See Chapter 3.

Mother (Jane) had been taken by her mother (Gran) to Lexington throughout her life, where she enjoyed being part of the Griffith family—after all her name was Jane Griffith!  She always cooked southern, as my late friend Chuck Goggans from Montgomery AL used to say, not taught her so much by her mother but by her cousins in Dixie. As an example, let me tell of a visit to Lexington with Gran in the Chevy (black 1939 sedan) to her sister Mag in Lexington.  We drove down U.S. 25 from Dayton to Cincinnati, then took the ferry the Island Queen, built in the late 19^thC., a boat onto which Gran drove her car. We got out of the car and went up on deck to enjoy looking at the river.  It was pretty convenient as then we drove the car off the boat and on down to Lexington in the car.  Fun. When we got to the house, Gran said, before we got out of the car, “Now don’t say anything about the house not being painted.”

Aunt Mag and Uncle Charlie greeted us, and Katie Bell—their name was Bell but she didn’t seem to have a middle or second name—unheard of for a female in the south—who had a paralysis of some kind on her right arm, so she carried it next to her body crooked at the elbow—I later heard she had had polio.  She had a hitch in her walk on that side as well.  So it was quite something some years later—I was in high school—that Gran said Katie had a man, but I think I was told they were not getting married. I wonder about these things.   There was an older daughter, Mary Emily.  I don’t remember her.  We visited through the afternoon and I don’t remember supper, but I will never forget the beds—feather beds.  I shared a bed with Gran.  There was a slopjar on the floor under the bed in case we had to “go” in the night.  In the morning Aunt Mag went out in the yard and took a chicken up by the feet in her left hand, carried it over to a stump, picked up a hatchet, and chopped off its head. Then she plucked it, washed out its insides at the pump, dried it, cut it up, rolled the pieces in flour, and dropped them into a skillet full of hot lard.  Breakfast.

We also visited, with Mother, too, the Griffith relatives who remained in Lexington—Aunt Matt and Uncle Dave, and Aunt Ruth and her daughter Eva Mae (there were 3 boys but they were gone—Jim to Indianapolis, Dick to Michigan, and Clifton killed at age 11).  Uncle Dave had “the family disease,” which we finally learned was called not “the creeping paralysis” but “spino-cerebellar degeneration.”  The chart my cousin Eva May Nunnelley drew up (which cousin Bonnie has in New York), shows carriers and those who had the disease.  Eva May herself had it.  Visiting her in Tallahassee I went with her in her car, which she could operate in her leg braces with special pedals.  Then when she parked, she got out of the car carefully with her braces and a cane, went around the back of the van, opened the rear hatch, and pressed a button which activated an automatic electrical device which picked up the wheelchair attached to an arm that extended out beyond the hatch door and lowered the wheelchair to the ground.  Then she pressed the button to close everything up and the two of us went into the grocery—she in a chair, me on my two feet.

A beautiful woman, who with her mother Ruth played Mendelssohn’s “Thaïs Meditation” on two violins at Mother and Daddy’s wedding, and Uncle Dave, who had the disease and died of it, gave Mother away, as remember Jack Griffith, her father, had died in 1915 when Mother was 7.

What people did then when they visited one another was “visit.”  That means sitting on chairs on the porch or in the parlor, and catching up on the local and national news, the neighbors, and the best way to do this or that.  Every woman had a cloth bag, sometimes with wooden handles, containing her hand work.  It could be ongoing, as embroidery or knitting; or short-term as in mending. If it was hot—and there were always big trees front and back creating a breeze if there was any moving air—we fanned ourselves.  People gave each other fans as gifts.  The funeral homes gave out paperboard fans on flat sticks.  I remember these placed in the hymnbook racks in church.  After some time, refreshments would be served by the hostess—in the summer iced tea and perhaps with cookies or cake.  Then we all get up and do what needs to be done to get supper ready.  Some of it will already be ready unless the visit was unannounced or impromptu, but whatever was prepared and served would already be on the premises—in the larder and out in the garden.  There was no popping out to the deli or grocery store.  Cash was in short supply, for one thing.  There was no freezer. For another, baking was done on a certain day of the week, towards the end, so if the bread was fresh it would be sliced – had to be sliced—it was homemade!—and put on a plate for the table.  If it was a little stale, it would be used in whatever the main dish was, some way—soaked in milk and used as thickening, fried in the skillet, crumbed for “breading,” wonderful for fried green tomatoes, and a favorite—chunks of bread mixed in with cut up tomatoes—this could actually have an egg or two added and baked.  Yum.  And so I learned to live.

When Gran and I left to drive home, or to the ferry, and then home, Aunt Mag would make up sandwiches or cold fried chicken, and tomatoes, pickles or whatever she had and a jar of tea, pack it all up so we would have our lunch on the road.  It was about a 3-hour trip.  Mag was Gran’s older sister, and their relationship was fun to watch.  Gran was such a take-charge person, but with Mag she was a little girl.  Many years later, when Gran was way over 100, living in Twin Towers, the Methodist Home, in Cincinnati, about 1991,  I was visiting her with Fred, and she said to us by way of the current conversation, whatever it was, “Mag was standing over there by the bureau and she said . . . “ and whatever she said.  When we left and were coming down the steps to our car, Fred asked me, “Who is Mag?” I said, “Mag is her oldest sister, who died in 1945, come to take her home.”  And indeed, two days later Gran passed away.

Gran did not work for money, but she always had a little put by.  Many of the letters in my mailbox came with a one-dollar bill, later a five-dollar bill. Her marriage to Christopher Columbus Mullin, originally from Altoona PA, who she met at South Park Methodist Church in Dayton, was celebrated about the same time Mother married Daddy—1934. Chris was working at the Frigidaire Division of General Motors in Moraine City, West Carrollton OH.  He had lost the first joint of one of his forefingers, which he said got caught in a closing car door.  He smoked cigars.  He was the only husband of Gran that I knew as a grandfather.  He was a widower; his wife Gladys had died, perhaps in Altoona, and he brought her body to be buried in her family plot somewhere north and east of Dayton, which I knew at one time.  I have a 7” plate hand-painted by Gladys or one of her sisters, with a gold border and the initial “H.”  I cherish these unprepossessing objects even though I don’t know precisely what they mean or who made them and for whom, because I know they wouldn’t have been kept for so many years by the one who kept them if they were not significant. This way I keep friendly spirits about me.

Chris adored me and I him.  His Pennsylvania Dutch locutions led me through childhood. He thought he was old, and when I stood on a small stool behind him sitting in the dining room chair by the window, combing his gray hair, he suffered because I insisted on combing it different ways, and then his hair “hurt,” but it was one of our enjoyments. He would say, “Old age is screepin’ up on me!”   He submitted this photo to the shop paper at Frigidaire:

Christopher Columbus Mullin and me

We played cards and Monopoly together in the back yard.  He told me about the Reading Railroad, which was on the Monopoly board and was part of his neighborhood growing up.  He told me about the Hairpin Curve.  Awhile after supper, Chris made his lunch for the next day and put it in the refrigerator. He retired early and left very early in the morning to go to work, so I never saw him in the morning.

Sometimes in summer evenings we would just pass the cooling-down evening sitting on the front porch, decorated with ferns in a wicker fernstand, and a porch furniture set—couch and 2 chairs—with side tables for a part of our sewing things brought up out of the basket—and greet the neighbors walking by in the cool of the evening.  Then Gran might ask Chris, “Daddy, would you like to walk up to the corner and get some cream?”  By that she meant ice cream, at the Sealtest store.  This must be a Kentucky-ism.  Then we would discuss what flavor we wanted, and Gran would prepare a tray in the kitchen with saucers and spoons.  What flavors could we have had?  Vanilla, chocolate or strawberry most likely.  These were simple times.  Butter pecan was far in the future.  So that was a very pleasant evening, and a good sleep to come as we were not going to be hungry during the night.

August 2, 1987, Mother to Jo:

Grace and I were trying to remember what we did as kids in the heat. I know we slept on pallets on the floor. And our poor Mothers wore heavy corsets! And, those kitchens were really hot. No wonder Gran still uses fans (she has a collection).  It’s part of her fiber. Of course, we sat on the porches and out in the yard and there were not so many bugs, either.  We caught lightening bugs in jars.

I remember when we first came to Dayton – about 1918 or so.  It was war time and this was a manufacturing center.  There was no place to live. We found a room on Taylor Street in north Dayton – upstairs, low ceiling.  My Mother was so smart.  She bathed us in tepid water and barely blotted with a towel, then put on a loose night gown and we lay very still.  The evaporation cooled us enough that we could relax and sleep.

I loved being at Gran’s.  Before Chris came to bed, Gran and I would lie in the bed together and talk, as she said, talking me to sleep.  Then I was carried into the front room to one of the twin beds, where I slept.  My brother John was there sometimes, not often.  Once when we both were there, waking up in the morning, Mother and Daddy came into the room to greet us in the morning, quite early and all dressed. This was strange.  Mother and Daddy got up in their own house—why were they here?  They told us to get dressed and go downstairs to breakfast, and be very quiet, as Gran was down there and she was very sad.  We did not understand when we were told that Chris had passed away during the night and his body taken away to the funeral home.  When we got downstairs we found Gran at the sink crying, kind of looking out the window but much farther away than the window.  We stayed very quiet but I snuggled up against her side.

I got a lot of lessons from Gran, more or as much as I would have gotten from a preacher in church on Sunday morning.

Here is an excerpt from a letter I wrote to Mother June 26, 1988, about a visit with Gran, on the occasion that we had had a close call on a flat tire:

We told Gran about this flat tire, and how miraculous I seemed that it had not happened on the interstate or in downtown Newport, that garden spot of the world.  And she said, “That’s the second time you’ve had that happen right in front of your house. Remember when your truck broke?” Yes, and come to think of it, the cable on the steering went on me right in front of the apartment house in Worcester one day (instead of somewhere on the road).  Gran had been telling me that morning on the phone, that she would be praying for me when I had my operation.  I had said no, don’t bother about me, when there are so many people who need it worse than I do.  “Everybody needs prayer,” says she, “and you don’t just say prayers, you pray prayers. And praying if you don’t believe, you might as well save your time.  No point praying if you don’t believe.”  Quite a little Saturday sermon.  Funny I had to admit there must have been someone praying me safe home and not just one time.

Now Mary Hesther at age 62 had buried all three of her husbands.  Chris left her some money, General Motors stocks.  He had not been sick as far as I know, or had any debilitating condition. Just had to go.  He had been a regular usher at church.  I remember his funeral at Routsong’s was packed with people. The preacher, Harold Kellogg, who had guided us through the war, said tender things about Chris in church that next Sunday, said he was a true servant of Christ.  I do not believe he is in Woodland Cemetery, though.  I remember he had wanted to be buried in northern Ohio next to Gladys.  I’d like to know now that I think about it.  For a long time I tried to be good, conscious that Chris could be in Heaven watching me, and not that I wasn’t a good girl overall, I had faults.

Sept. 12, 1987, Mother to Jo:

We went to Cincinnati yesterday and took Mother to lunch.  . . . We found her seated at a card table with another lady, just beyond the elevator door.  They were collecting for Goodwill memberships.  I asked her what she thought she was doing and she said, “Just sitting here raking in the money!”

Dr. Claud Chrisman, my paternal grandfather, died the year before, so now it looked like I was pretty much on my own.  About this time, Daddy had a collapsed lung, followed by a period of good health, and then the first heart attack in 1955, until after nine of them, one each year, and death in 1964.  And of course Jack Griffith had been “on the other side” twenty years before I was born.  A litany of loss.

Gran liked to take me shopping downtown.  This meant walking to the bus stop from her house at 2034 Brookline Avenue, by the A&P on Wayne Avenue.  The bus had fuzzy upholstered seats, green, very beautiful. She was dressed up in her sealskin coat and hat and had several diamond rings on her fingers.  [Jack Griffith presented Gran with jewels, sometimes rings and things that a friend needed to sell; Jack always helped a guy out.]    We went to a tea room when we had shopped at Rike’s.  Sandwiches then were very small, thin, compared to today’s.  They would be filled with pimento cheese, chicken salad or ham and tomato, all sliced very thin.  And we would drink tea.  And there would be potato chips, which I have long thought was because of Mike-sell’s Potato Chips, made by a factory in Dayton.  And we would have pie.  Gran loved pie, and she made a great deal of pie herself.  My pie pastry recipe is hers—nothing could be simpler, and she did and I do get a lot of compliments on it.  It is simply:

3 C. flour, 1 C. shortening (combined lard and Crisco), 1 t. salt, some ice water.

But the rest is in the hands and the weather that day. In Gran’s time every woman in America knew how to make pie crust.  Sift the flour and salt together into a bowl, cut in the fat with two knives or a pastry blender, then sprinkle into that enough ice water to bring it together. Make a ball of it in your hands, like you were playing ball or making a snowball.  Push it together.  You want to exclude air and help the moisture and fat bring it together.  I divide this recipe into 3 balls, wrap each in waxed paper, put in a plastic bag, close up, and refrigerate for at least a half hour but as much as 2 hours.  Any longer than that and you will have to let it come to room temperature before rolling it and it won’t be as good.  Roll it out, line your pie plates, crimp, and Bob’s your uncle.  I must have taught 200 women to make piecrust in my bakery.

For my wedding to my starter husband Gran served a pie wagon, which is to say after the reception in the church basement Ralph’s family from Cleveland and several others went to her house so I could change into my travelling costume upstairs, while Gran wheeled out the wagon with 7 or 8 pies she had made and served with coffee.  Ralph’s family was quite European and expected alcoholic drinks, and what to go with that, but my family did not serve alcohol.  They also probably expected supper somewhere, as I later observed knowing them in Cleveland.  But I was blissfully ignorant of their disappointment, and would later find disappointment to the tenth power in the marriage.

When I had been brought to Cleveland from our home in Chicago to live with my mother-in-law while Ralph joined the Army, leaving graduate school and generally wasting love, hope, and future plans, I endeavored to join Ralph’s family and live and work in Cleveland.  That did not last.

In 1948 Mother had tried to find a house away from the very Catholic neighborhood we lived in – Wellmeier Avenue, East Dayton – and failed to find something we could afford in Dayton so moved us to Englewood, Ohio, where John and I went to high school—Randolph Township—now renamed, torn down, everything new and meaningless, although they still ask me for money.  It was a great experience, and made possible by Gran agreeing to sell her house and come with us.  Mother had found a house with “mother-in-law” quarters.  So we became a commuting family, as we remained at South Park Church and Daddy remained at Battelle & Battelle CPAs in downtown Dayton, 11 miles away.  Gas was cheap.

Gran got involved in the Union, Ohio, Methodist Church, keeping at the same time her work in South Park in Dayton.  I remember the ice cream socials—homemade ice cream of course.  It was great fun living in the country, and very compatible with Gran’s experiences. One thing about the country road was the mailbox out at the end of the driveway—we had 3 acres—and another was Gran’s two long border beds either side of the vast lawn where she planted peonies and iris.  On Memorial Day John and I stood out front with a sign for the price of a dozen stems, and many people stopped and took them to the graves of their loved ones.

John and I slept on cots in an umbrella tent pitched in the back yard, on pleasant summer nights, and we learned many of the constellations—possible because it’s the country, the early 50s, and everything is dark at night so you can see the stars.  “Look!  Orion is coming over the garage!”  “Cassiopia behind us!”  Many of our school chums were of farming families; mother enjoyed the women, too, sharing sewing and cooking tips.  I joined 4-H. John got a bike for his paper route.

I don’t, however, think Gran was awfully happy with this arrangement.  Maybe she felt snookered into chipping in so we could afford this nice house, but her involvement in her life in Dayton was a huge pull.  After I went to college, Daddy was doing tax work for a developer working in Englewood, and was offered a good price on a new house in the development, made a good profit on the big house, which allowed them to buy out Gran, who went back to Dayton about 1954, where she was when I needed a place to live in Dayton in 1957 while awaiting my divorce in Cleveland.

Gran’s vision began to deteriorate, and her hearing as well.  She was 50 when I was born and 70 when I married Ralph, so now she is approaching an age many people at that age regarded as close to the end.  When she was getting into her 80s she joined her many church friends who had “retired” to The Methodist Home for the Aged in Cincinnati, now Twin Towers, a lovely Samuel Hannaford  building, and amid great rejoicing she gave up housekeeping and driving her car, by then a 1949 Chevy, which she gave to my brother John.  John drove to Cincinnati with her stock certificates which were given to the Home for her care until she died.  She outlived this scheme and went on State Aid eventually, but was not a big expense and performed many services for the home, not just in chapel, but kept the rose garden, which she was able to do by feel, as she couldn’t see.  The Director of the home used Gran and her advanced age and good physical shape to promote the establishment–by celebrating the Fourth of July or some occasion, parading her around in an open car, getting in the papers, her sitting in a beautiful white dress with an American flag in her hand.  Mother continued to care for Gran’s clothes and wig (her hair as always thin and she wore a wig for many years) driving down to Cincinnati to spend the day with her and her many friends there, driving her back to Dayton (by then Mother lived at Bethany Lutheran Village) for several days to reconnect with her huge network there.   Once when we were sitting in her room I said, “Gran, I’m so sorry you’ve lost your hearing.”  “Oh, that’s alright, Honey,” she said, “I’ve already heard everything.”  I”ll say.

In 1963 Gran visited me in New York, coming on the bus from Dayton.  I had given up the acting career, if it was a career, and enrolled at Columbia University School of General Studies, at night, studying American History with Alden Vaughan, who I still know and correspond with—we did Colonial and Revolutionary American History. Whenever I hit a snag in my life I took a course.   During the day I worked at the Columbia University Press in the Advertising and Publicity Department, which used some of my writing talents and because I took our display kit to conventions—MLA, AHA, etc.—and manned the booth, some of my chatting-up selling abilities.  (I had done the same booth-manning thing in Chicago.)   I had three cats–Schwartz, Sebastian and Sister Girl—littermates (we say siblings but cats say littermates)—and plenty of room at 123 W. 93^rdStreet, Apt. 6A—so Gran spent the day there by herself, going out to see the city, mending my clothes, fixing dinner, etc., and we had our evenings together.  One evening when I got home she told me she had washed out some of her undies and hung them on the shower rod, then went out for awhile, and when she returned all the undies were on the floor.  She said Schwartz had exerted his prerogative, that this was his “Mom’s” quarters, and he resented Gran hanging her undies there. No way to explain to Schwartz about a grandmother as he never had one.  I enjoyed this so much, as she was such great company, with her practical ways and her Kentucky locutions and attitudes.  It was a very healing experience.

That brings to mind that Gran was a very good person to attend anyone ill or in any pain.  People said she had healing in her hands.  One time when I was sleeping at her house, as I often did as a child, I woke up in the morning and Gran was downstairs already dressed, so I asked her if she were going out.  She said no, she was just coming in.  She had been sitting all night by someone’s bedside or deathbed. She told me the woman she was sitting with woke up from a dream or coma and told Gran that she had had an extraordinary experience in her sleep, if that was sleep.  She told Gran that she heard the Angel of Death arguing with the Angel of Life for her life, and the Angel of Life won, saying, “No, you can’t have her now.  She’s mine still.”  And then the woman woke up.

Mother took Gran on a trip with the South Park Church people to England to the graves of John and Charles Wesley, the founders of Methodism.  This was the first and only time Gran travelled by airplane.  She did fine.  What a trooper!

When Mother was getting too old to drive down to Cincinnati often enough to suit Gran, Fred and I moved out to Kentucky, right by the Ohio River, and I had several years of visiting with her.  We would sit and visit for awhile in her room, and then she would get up, go to a shelf and put some candies in a bag, and say to me, “Well, let’s go visit the sick.”

June 28, 1982—Mother to Jo

When we took Mother home yesterday, I began asking her questions about her life at home when quite young.  There is so much that I do not know.  Then and there I decided that when you come in August or whenever, I will have a tape recorder ready.  With you and, possibly John, we can ask questions to prompt her and pick her brain. Then, I can begin to get some of it down on paper for the two of you.  I have some pictures and newspaper clippings, etc. which could go with the thing to make a nice little history.  I think she will enjoy it, too. . . . She said she wouldn’t know where to begin but would depend upon our questions.

February 5, 1983—letter from Mother to Jo

I’m taking lentils and rice.  Do you think Fred would like this?  A very tasty mid-eastern dish.  Equal parts of l. and r., a bit of salt, lots of butter (3/4 to 1 stick—no margarine—and fill casserole with water to 1 ½” of top, cover and bake at 350 until moisture is absorbed.  A mid-eastern Madame Something prepared this for Mother in Pensacola before I was born or there-abouts, so it’s authentic as a staple—or was at that time.  You know that mess of pottage for which Esau sold his birthright was lentils.  For me they’re like peanuts—I can’t keep out of them.

April 6, 1989—Letter Jo to Mother

I recounted to Mother an appointment with a rheumatologist – I was beginning to get arthritis – and I remembered Gran had had it quite bad around the time of my own birth.  So I dropped in to Twin Towers to see Gran and hoped to be able to ask her about her experience.

“She did, but not until she’d made me admit I hadn’t eaten and eat a banana (ice cold from the box) and a cookie.  She laughed when I told her all the avenues the doctor was pursuing and the tools and knowledge she brought to it.  She said, I wonder what I would have done if I’d had all that then.  She said why I didn’t even see a doctor about my arthritis!  After our talk, she said do you want to take a walk?  Sure, I said, but it’s nasty out.  Well, she said, let’s go visit the sick.  Whereupon we trooped over to the health center, subject of quite a fantasy on her part, I must say.  . . . Then she sang her current chorus about it.  The place is full of terrible people, full of negativity, mean to the nurses, correspondingly tough nurses, and they’re not like her people at all, and they wouldn’t like or appreciate her.  They’re half gaga most of the time.  None of them walks around on their own.  They’re all in chairs.”

November. 10, 1982—Mother to Jo and apparently to Gran also . . .

Yesterday Ruth S. and I were seated down by Mr. Titus and Jim Simmons and Norm Snyder were across from us.  Norm left for a bit and along comes Florence and tries to occupy Norm’s seat. It took three tries before we could convince her that that that seat was taken!  She moved on up the line a bit.  Mr. Titus said, “Whew!  That was a close one!”  There was a seat open next to Mabel R. at the next table.  She said they held their breath until Florence was settled.  I know this is an inside joke for whoever is reading this, but Hesther will get it.

In pen, on the reverse of this letter, Gran has written in pen:

“Florence Critz is an old maid—deaf and talks very loud –all the time.”

Fred and I enjoyed her, having her to our house for supper and sharing memories and gossip.  Gran loved Fred very much.  Once I called to invite her to supper, saying Fred would come over and pick her up, and said, “Just come as you are.”  And she said, “Or as I will be at that time.”

December 30, 1987, Letter me to Mother

I am surprised you are just now getting superimposed lines from Gran—I’ve been parsing them out for years.  Fred is a genius at it.  As for the phone, sometimes she’s good and sometimes not.  I can’t tell what factors make the difference, but I would guess a) fatigue, and b) mood. A reason she might have thought it was me is she hears from me often.  Yesterday I went up and had lunch with her—we had fun.  I called her at 9:30 to say I had an errand in her neighborhood, and would come by and she said, “Want to have lunch with me?”  She’s fun for me like she used to be when I was a little girl and she was my Gran, seemingly devoted to thinking up things I might enjoy—she’s like Fred, in that she “had good ideas.”  (Nothing is as much fun as Fred when he has thought of something he is absolutely sure I would enjoy, like when he told me had gotten tickets to hear Marcia Ball in Northampton MA at the Iron Horse Café.

August 3, 1986, Mother to me

We went to see Mother last Monday.  Took her out to lunch and did the usual things in her room—read mail, reviewed collected papers with the wastebasket in mind, styled and freshened her wigs, tried on the new dresses, etc.  One of them will do, although I don’t think she’s too excited about it. We took her some fresh roses, some rhubarb and peeled tomatoes and good bread.  Ed remembered that she wanted some corn, so we stopped two places and went a good bit out of our way but we got some Silver Queen.  When we got there, Ed spread papers in the bathroom and shucked and cleaned 12 ears.  On the way to lunch, we took 5 of them to Ruth Boehnker for their Sun. get together. The others will go into the big “community” fridge.  What other son-in-law would go to such trouble?

Gran lived 24 years after she went to Twin Towers, and had three funerals when she died at 106—in the chapel at the Methodist Home, now called “Twin Towers,” at South Park church, and at Routsong’s Funeral Home in Dayton.  She was not sick, just worn out.  She had wanted to be buried next to Jack Griffith in the family plot in Lexington, but the cemetery’s proviso that she would have to be approved by all living family members–which was impossible, or it was too late to find them all, scattered all over the country—prevented that, so she was cremated and placed in a rose garden in David’s Cemetery in Dayton.  She was a great lady.  When I visited South Park Church on Mother’s memorial day, giving altar flowers and a donation in her memory, people still remembered her, told me stories about her that they remember, praise her name—Mother and Gran.  Members of the congregation often said they were amazed that I would still come up every year on her memorial day Sunday and put a notice in the bulletin to announce her memory, make a donation, and all.  I told them that as long as there was anyone in that church who remembered them I would come.  This year –2017– the church closed and the building was sold.

Shakespeare writes in Henry V, Part I, the night before the battle of Agincourt, between the English and the French, the French send Herald to Henry to offer terms of peace, three times, and three times Henry refuses.  When Herald kneels and bids farewell, he says, “You will not see Herald any more.”

***********

[1]There will be few photos in this chapter. All Griffith and Childers memorabilia have been placed in the Lexington Historical Society (LHS).

[2]He called himself Dick, as a nephew also did. The real name was Chauncey Hawley, the name of a Civil War officer in Nebraska Territory—so Chauncey Hawley Griffith, and then my cousin Dick, son of Aunt Ruth, who was Chauncey Griffith Nunnelley. Chauncey Hawley did a good turn for my great-grandfather, Amos Griffith.

[3]Diagnosed by doctors at the time as “the creeping paralysis,” it began in the feet, and progressed upward, killing the patient when it reached the heart.  Sounds very romantic.  My cousin Eva May Nunnelley made a chart, in possession of cousin Bonnie Hamilton in New York, documenting those who were carriers and those who actually had the condition.  My cousin Gayle Hamilton, Bonnie’s sister, living in Baltimore, went to Johns Hopkins to find out exactly what this disease was now called—spino-cerebellar degeneration.  We now know that the original carrier was a brother of Amos Griffith’s wife, Mary Chalfant, Nebraska Territory.

[4]Daddy added a ‘y’ to Mother’s name.