My grandmother, Hannah and her sister
Searching the images of the 1940 census is making me lonely for my "old" family. You know what an "old" family is, don't you? It's a family that was already in place when you were born.
I took this photo at a holiday meal in 1976 of my grandmother, whose first name she hated, which was Hannah, and her only sister, whose name was Dorothy. My grandmother preferred to use her middle name, Josephine, and of course, my mother was named after this Aunt Dorothy. We called her Tattie.
The holiday in this photo, which was Thanksgiving, is really unimportant to the story because this is a story about Easter.
My great aunt Dorothy lived in Westerly, RI but in the part that was Pawcatuck, CT (a village in Stonington, CT). Huh? You say, how can she live in two states? Well, she lived in a family home that was so close to the border of the two states that her mailing address was Rhode Island and her car license plates were CT.
So, you can see why I am reminded of this as I search for her in the 1940 census.
One Easter, when I was about 11, we switched to having Easter at our house instead of my grandmother's apartment. She had just moved into an apartment from her beautiful house. She was a little sad and not completely unpacked.
We decided that we would celebrate my great aunt's birthday at the same time. She was born on April 7. When she came to our house, she was wearing a new necklace which was a string of pearls (or so we thought). My mother admired them and then to our horror, my great aunt pulled at them and they flew all over the room.
They were pop-beads! How we laughed and laughed! It was so unlike her to do such a thing. It took all of us half an hour to find them all. I bought a bag of pop-beads to remember her by and I think I will wear them this Easter.
6 comments:
What a great story to remember, Midge! And I loved the 2-counties information too ... a good reminder to check boundaries yet again.
Even the Telephone came from Westerly Dial Telephone until the late 50's or early 60's. That's when Southern New England Telephone took over the Pawcatuck lines and my aunt on Lower River Rd changed over from a 8 party line to a private line.
Love pop beads. They were among the first toys I bought to have here for my granddaughters when they got old enough to handle them. We always put a towel on the table to keep them from rolling all over, and they had a ball with them. So much entertainment for a small investment.
Hi Midge, You won't believe it but my own rather elderly grandmother in the last year of her life let me play with her own pop-bead pearls. I was two and a half years old so it is a wonder that I did not choke on one. She was kind and fun and died a year later.
Clever picture, Midge! It made me go on to read the post! I couldn't imagine why you had pop beads in there! Great little story, too!
So this is the beautiful Josephine that I found in the yearbook.
Barbara Fallon
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