Saying Goodbye

Tom and Dot at Home, a photo by midgefrazel on Flickr.

Saying Goodbye

Memories can't always be explained. Every fall when the light is low and the temperature has a little chill, I think I remember a few seconds of a day long ago when I was very little. It is something to hold on to because it carries a feeling of well being with a clarity to it that I can't explain. Yet, nothing really happened to make this memory stand out. Here's the memory:

I am standing or sitting facing the open back door of the house. I can hear music playing in the house and I can see and hear wet laundry flapping on the clothesline through the window in the kitchen. I'd swear my mother is humming. I know my father is in the garage. The memory fades as quickly.. 

No photo captures that moment in time. Maybe it is a dream. It is so short, I wish it would stick around longer. The Plat will always live on and it will always be the neighborhood called home.

Here's a link to the location of my parents house at Google Maps. To see the house, look at Street View

Happy Retirement Days

The tiny kitchen table
Happy Retirement, a photo by midgefrazel on Flickr.

Happy Retirement Days

One day you wake up and your parents have grown old. Now, it is me that is getting old!This photo reminds me that it was NOT yesterday, that I took this cute photo of my dad and my daughter with his little ice cream cake for his retirement. 

I wish my parents had enjoyed their last years together. It was all too short and filled with worries, illness and loneliness. Dad couldn't play golf anymore. Mom began to forget things. 

As long a I can remember, this drop leaf table was in my parent's kitchen. It only seated two people perched on stools with cushions. It mostly was used for breakfast and lunch. Groceries were set on it. Mail was opened on it. It is a symbol of the simple life of the 1950s and 1960s in "The Plat"

I left it there for the new owners. Maybe they ate a snack on it before they got rid of it. Most of the other furniture I sold because it had value. This little table just belonged to the house and I wanted it to be the last thing I saw when I shut the door. I patted it and said, "Goodbye", locked the door and we drove away.

I have many more photos to organize, scan and archive that are of "The Plat." A few have my grandparents in them. As I have been writing, I have been planning another project about their life and what I have learned about them as I have been on this genealogy adventure. Maybe I will get that done. Should I do this?

The last post of this Family History Challenge will be a collage of a remembrance of the house.

Boyfriend to Husband

Tom and Dot 1971, a photo by midgefrazel on Flickr.

Boyfriend to Husband

When Steve came home from Viet Nam, we got engaged and set a date for our wedding. While he was overseas he had ordered this new car (see below) and while he was away my father wanted to go to the car dealer in Providence and look at the car. On the way there, he told me that he (my father) bought a new car just before he left for World War II and his brother was in charge of it while he was gone. Uncle Bill bought the car from him eventually because my mother already owned the Ford. 

Since I don't like cars, my father was trying to get me excited about this cute car. My father thought it was going to be a brighter blue. I couldn't drive it anyway because at that time, RI drivers had to take their road test on a standard transmission car to get an unrestricted license. Steve's mother was very disappointed in the car and my father in law loved it. She asked where we we going to put "the baby" in this tiny car? My father in law loved everything that was for bachelors. It was a good lesson for me that the generation above mine was not going to be happy with decisions we made.

The photo of my parents and the photo of the new car were taken the same day with a 35 mm camera that Steve got cheap at the military store (by catalog order). I was more interested in the camera than the car. I love the photo of my parents because it was taken in the back yard of their house and on an ordinary day. I am now much older than they were in this photo and my husband looks so young.

Steve's new Car a Volvo 1800e, Summer, 1971

Favorite Family Holiday

Our Favorite Holiday

Think about it. As a neighborhood, Halloween was the only one that was associated with the streets of "The Plat." In addition to that, Halloween is a favorite family holiday for my parents, my daughter and now, my grandsons. It is a photo-op-fun holiday. I have a lot of photos to choose from but these are the four I love the most.

As my mother went to RISD, she could sew really well and she was creative to boot. She made the French maid costume for an adult party that she and my dad attended. It is one of my most looked at photos on the Web. It's also pretty darn controversial. I wore that costume to a Halloween party and I can tell you, I got a lot of attention. Yes, I got pinched. That's all you need to know.

My gregarious father, loved telling stories and writing poetry. When I grew up, I used to get Halloween cards from him with special poems inside. It was OUR holiday. Here's one that has survived.

In the early years of "The Plat", fathers took kids out for Trick or Treat to just the nearby neighbors. I had to sing a song to get a treat. Dad told me, many years later, that we couldn't go to too many houses because it was customary for the father to drink a shot at each house. Of course, as I got older, we roamed the safe neighborhood streets, guided by the street lights, in huge groups. My mom told me that kids still came to our house on Hilltop Drive every year. 

When I got old enough to wear the "hobo" costume shown here, I was going to Halloween parties held at houses. That year, 7th or 8th grade, I went to the Girl Scout Leader's house in Oaklawn for a party. She had a haunted basement where you followed a rope walkway around and got slapped with wet strips of sheets blown by small fans and touched icky "eyeballs". The screaming of young teenage girls is quite an experience.

Halloween was fun in my neighborhood in Bridgewater, too, so my daughter loves this holiday. I pay for the costumes for my grandsons. Dad would approve. Tell me, what are the odds that I now live in a neighborhood where Halloween is celebrated with 80 trick or treaters? To top it off, I live next to a young family that has a yearly Halloween party. Places may change but good times remain the same. 

Life in "The Plat" can live on. You can go home again. Just ring a doorbell in October and you are there.

Dad's Garage

Photo collection of Midge Frazel

Dad's Garage

There are so many photos of my dad in or near the garage, I had a hard time choosing these photos. My father kept a low lawn chair near the door and was known to sit there and watch the cars go by. 

[Photos left to right: dad and little me, Dad's "Oh s%&*t photo, mom and I sitting on the "woodie", and dad holding his granddaughter in his lap in the garage.]

In the early plat years, the man who lived across the street also liked to sit in a lawn chair on his grass. Ray Fraser, was dying of cancer, and couldn't do much but he could water his grass. My dad would help him with the chair and the garden hose and they would harmoniously water their lawns. I'm sure beer was involved!

One day, a nephew of a house owner, was driving in his uncle's convertible with the top down. Evidently, he did this quite often and he drove too fast for my dad's liking. Dad talked to the uncle about his nephew's speed but the teenager continued to drive fast when his uncle was not watching. Dad had a plan. The next time Ray and my dad were watering, they aimed their hoses at the car as it sped by, blasting water all over the car and the driver. You can imagine the kids reaction? Dad called the uncle right away and "gave him what for" and that was the end of it. Problem solved.

One spring, my dad began to shop for a new station wagon and went to his local car dealer, Dick Cranston, and wanted to test drive a car. Cars were getting bigger and my dad was concerned that he would lose valuable garage space. So, mom and I went with him to pick up the new car. Dad drove the car into the garage and immediately backed out again. "Too big", he said and without another word we returned to the car dealer to get the smaller car. 

My mother was annoyed. I thought my father's logic was great. I wonder what Mr. Cranston thought? Remember, if you can't open the car doors while in the garage you've got a really big problem. I also wonder what people in "The Plat" today are doing with their small one car garages.

After my father died and mom sold his car, the door to the garage began to malfunction. I swear the garage missed my father. 

Wheels

Photo collection of Midge Frazel

Wheels

The photo on the left shows little seven year old me with my first big girl bicycle. My tricycle and my little pedal car were kept at my grandparent's house. This girls bike was blue (I think) and was brought by the Easter Bunny on that very snowy winter where there was no Easter. The bike basket and the horn were part of the big egg hunt which I am sure was held the next weekend at my grandparents house. This was the last Easter my grandfather would be alive. He died in June of 1955. I see my mother's yellow forsythia bush is blooming despite the cold from April's snow.

The best thing about bikes is that there is a taste of freedom that comes with them. I could now go all the way to both edges of "The Plat". The kids who were on my school bus and lived at the end of the development became real playmates and I could walk or ride to the Pontiac Library in nearby Warwick. There's a little history on that Web page and Miss Knight gave me my first library card.  I love to read. This web page shows the library and All Saints Church which is next door to the library. I went to preschool Sunday School there. After that, my parents decided to join the new Woodridge Congregational Church near Garden City. Dad was raised as a Baptist and didn't like the "high church" Episcopal All Saints. Compromise was in order. My aunt and uncle became my godparents and joined the church with my parents. I sang in the adult choir instead of attending Sunday School by the time I was in the 6th grade.

The other photo, taken by me, in 1962, is in the beginning of my own photo collection albums and gave me the idea that my grandparent's and parent's photo collections should be scanned and put in archival bags and be put in chronological order. That's not how my mother organized them.

In 1962, my friend Donna, who is wearing a scarf on her head, got a collie puppy named Tammy. I am not a dog person but Tammy was a good animal and loved playing with us girls. Donna lived on Hilltop Drive and her dad still lives in the same house in "The Plat".

The other girl in this photo is deceased. Her name was Barbara Burque and she lived with her parents and (very cute) older brother at 168 Hilltop Drive. Barbara grew up and became a medical technologist and worked at the Rhode Island Hospital after I got married and moved to Massachusetts. She married a man who lived in our "sister" neighborhood and they had a little boy. Barbara died far too young.

On weekends, I would go to the other end of Hilltop Drive looking for kids to ride bikes with. My neighborhood in Stow has streets like "The Plat" with a convenience store with a Dunkin Donuts inside. Soon, the kids will be riding around in here, past my porch and out into the nearby world. Our streets here are named for varieties of apples. A reader of my blog asked about the names of the streets in "The Plat" and I don't know why they are named that. It was hilly so that's probably a reason for part of the names. I know this because we had to really push to ride our bikes uphill to my house.

Life is an uphill battle, isn't it? But, the adventures and people along the way are worth the ride.

Hands Across the Table

Reaching Out, a photo by midgefrazel on Flickr.

Reaching Out

Our dining room table was an antique hand me down from my great grandparents. It had a separate leaf that made it bigger for holiday dinners. When my grandmother moved in with my parents, she brought her dining room table and eventually she sold it since my house in Bridgewater didn't have a dining room and I didn't want it.

My mother favored putting the table on this wall overlooking the backyard. This table made a great fort when a sheet was placed over it. This wall doesn't exist anymore as it was torn out to add an apartment for my grandmother when she turned 80 and came to live with my parents. I think she was convinced that she would die soon. She lived to be 98. Be careful what you think!

Grandmother brought a lot of furniture with her and so eventually, the dining room table was put in the center of the room and used only for holidays. My husband remembers my grandmother's last apartment and I rely on him to help me remember when certain events happened. 

Along with me, hubs remembers how the house at Hilltop Drive changed from 1970 to 2002 when we sold it. I do wonder what my parents and grandmother would think of my daughter's lovely home and us moving to our condo to be near her. So many people comment on how long we lived in Bridgewater. "How could you move?", they asked. "Easily", I answered. Home is where you hang your hat.

Loving Family

In the Kitchen Photo from the collection of Midge Frazel

Tom and Dorothy Broadfoot, a photo by midgefrazel on Flickr.

Loving Family

While researching and writing about my neighborhood, I have learned how important it is to your future to have a loving family. As idyllic as life in the 1950s and 1960s seems in retrospect, it is essential to write that there were families that struggled living in "The Plat".

One early family on our street was especially troubled. Using the 1950 city directory, I have identified the family that was the parents of a little girl that I will call by her first name Carmella. I remember that she was fun to play with and that my parents gave her one of my coats and mittens. She had none. My dad fixed the chain on her bike. One day, the family moved out. In the "dead of night". I didn't understand why they moved.

There were rumors of unpaid bills and alcoholism.  Just up the street from them, another couple took in a brother and sister as foster children. Another family didn't cut their grass in a timely fashion. Not everybody got along. I remember a huge shouting argument two adult brothers had.  The wife cried and pleaded with them to stop. The police came. We were mesmerized by watching them out our kitchen window. 

I was lucky to have loving grandparents and parents. My father did not have a loving father but his sister's husband was a great substitute. Dad was always vigilant to ward off neighborhood situations. Men stood in driveways and discussed troubles. Kids got in trouble for fighting and throwing snowballs and baseballs broke windows. Older people died. 

The imperfection of a neighborhood makes it memorable. You tend to remember it by certain incidents. One of my dear childhood friends moved away and then she died suddenly of a brain tumor. My mother and I met her mother in the grocery store and all of us cried.  The store manager ushered us out. She was an only child like me. I began to appreciate all that we had. Family and good neighbors are everything to the study of your past.

Eating in the Living Room

Photo collection of Midge Frazel

The Card Table

By the time the TV arrived in our house, weekends changed. Unlike weeknights where I was fed first and then my parents ate at the tiny table in the kitchen, Mom would set up the "card table" in the living room and we ate while we watched TV. This is obviously dessert since it is near 6 PM (we ate supper at 5 PM on the dot) and my mother is having her after supper cigarette.

While my mother prepared supper and then while they ate, children's TV programming (with numerous commercials aimed at kids) started to be popular. If I say, "It's Hoody Doody Time" and you are in your middle sixties, you will know what I mean. 

Children were washed in the tub, put to bed, all before the grownups TV shows. Kids stayed in their rooms and were not allowed to interrupt. We read with a flashlight under the covers and hoped we didn't get caught not sleeping.

Of course, being an only child, I was more obedient than most and I was also spoiled more than most. But, schedules were adhered to religiously. Dishes were washed and the men read the newspaper. There was a "bedtime" routine which meant your parents read you a story.

I had a special outfit that I wore when it was cold or when I was sick called "The TV Suit". It was a quilted jacket with pants that seemed unisex not unlike the clothes people now wear all weekend. It was cotton and not scratchy like the sweater I am wearing while I eat ice cream in this photo. It was also good to wear when I was home sick from school.  I'd wear it today.

Media Influence

Photos from the Family Collection of Midge Frazel

Media Influence

Every family story about the 1950s and 1960s seems to revolve around the influence of television and the telephone and the snapshot photographs in my parents collection certainly is no exception. The living room or the den was the center of the young households taking emphasis off the past years of family gatherings in the dining room. Life was changing. Some people think this was not for the better. 

In this photo, I am listening to a "Peter Pan" storybook on a LP record. The spiral bound book has some of the story and some drawings. The photos to the right are the only ones from my family collection that show the "media center". The black and white one is dated, March 1952 and seems earlier than the one where my mother is talking on the phone. At this time, there was only one telephone in the house but later, a phone was in the kitchen and in my bedroom. 

If 1952 is the correct date, then that would make sense. The story is that my mother went to a house party in the neighborhood because someone bought a TV set. She could talk of nothing else! Grandfather Evans was so influenced, he went out and bought two television sets one for our house and one for his own. My mother's was special, it had a record player and radio in the left side. Since, there was limited programming for TV, the radio was still on all day. The record player was used for my storybooks and for the 1940s swing music records. I remember my parents jitterbugging in the living room. Many parents did this. I love asking people my age if they remember their parents dancing. Let me know if yours did too.

Soon "The Plat" was alive with the glow of the TV screen. You could see who had a TV when you drove the streets at night. It is hard to imagine life before TV but I still do!

Birthday Party

Birthday Party [Dec. 1954], a photo by midgefrazel on Flickr.

The Birthday Party

As I have been researching, I have remembered so much more about the people in the neighborhood. Of course, you recognize me as the pony tailed girl, and my mom, who is reading the story to the party guests in December 1954. The little girl to my right with the darkest hair is Jamie Nero, then Linda Worcester Chappell and the little girl next to my mother I now remember as Carmella Santilli. Carmella is the little girl whose family moved out "in the night" and I was devastated. We know, because of this photo it was probably in 1955 when that family moved away.

Jamie Nero's father was a elected state representative and then a senator and is listed in the 1956 City Directory as a teacher. He was a teacher of music and helped me with violin lessons. I can remember that her name was Jamice, which I think is the female of James in Italian. She was a sparkly little girl and we often played at her house because she had a nice fenced in back yard and a cement patio that was we could sit on and play with our dolls. They were a Catholic family and I helped her memorize what she needed for her First Communion. I think she went to parochial school.

My mother loved parties and I did not. She did tell me about the parties that the adults had in the neighborhood when I was quite young. I was probably overnight at my grandparents or had a babysitter. The grownups called them "House Parties" because they didn't go to a club or restaurant. Her favorite was the one where some man did magic tricks. He actually levitated a guest and hypnotized another. That hypnotized man was told to take his jacket off and put it on inside out. He was asked to tell the audience of guests what his name was from the tag on his jacket. He read the name "Robert Hall" which was a men's clothing line. When the man snapped his fingers and the trance was finished the magician asked him what his name was again and he replied without hesitation, "Robert Hall". My mother thought this was hilarious and that was what, for the rest of his life, he was going to reply. I wondered how much alcohol was served.

Such was grownup life in "The Plat"!

Sledding Down Ledgewood Dr.

Easter Sunday Snow 1955, a photo by midgefrazel on Flickr.

Sledding in The Plat

As you can see by the photo in this post, Easter Sunday, 1955, brought us a lot of unexpected snow. I remember hanging out by the back door watching my father shovel out the area in front of the garage when a neighborhood child, Jamie Nero, who lived diagonally across the street, appeared with a little poodle she got for Easter. My father chased the dog all over the driveway and tied it to the garage door while he took Jamie home. She was wearing a short sleeved frilly Easter dress and white patent leather shoes and ankle socks with no coat. He bundled her up in a jacket of his that hung in the garage and hurried her home. Pretty soon, he came back with Mr. Nero and a dog collar and leash to get the puppy. Both men were annoyed that Jaime just walked out of the house with the dog. 

Around the same year, on a weekend day, my father was waiting for the snowplow to plow the street. Time passed and they didn't show so my father got out my sled and walked me over in my snow suit to slide down Ledgewood Drive. Kids appeared from all the streets with sleds in tow. The "saucer" type sleds were popular and I wanted one. My dad monitored the kids sliding down the street which was not a easy task. Finally, he knocked on doors to get other fathers to come outside to help. My dad took one unruly boy home by the collar, leaving his sled for his sister to use. 

Finally, the snow plows showed but my father asked them to do all the other streets in the Plat so we could slide a little while more. I saw him slip the driver some folded bills when they came back to plow that final street. Sledding was over and to my knowledge, this event never happened again. 

Dad's good rapport with the neighbors kept the situation under control more than once. He thought we should have more fun in the winter like he had when he was a kid. 

Childhood Toys

Photo from the family collection  of Midge Frazel, circa 1949, Aren't I cute?

Favorite Toys

As you can see, I am clutching my favorite baby toy, a little stuffed animal that I called "doggie". He was yellow with brown floppy ears. I still have him. I am very attached to my stuffed animals and it might be a family trait since my daughter and grandsons also love stuffed friends.

My best friend is my teddy bear, called "Boo-Boo" because my mother used to play peak-a-boo with me using him. I have a lot of childhood objects, but he is by far my favorite. My mother told me that he was patiently waiting for me to be born and sat in my crib until I was old enough to play with him. He was once a soft yellow color with pink ears and feet. I had other favorite stuffed animals as shown here in this collage. I was quite old when my mother gave in and put me in a bed. (The crib photo below is my last night in the crib.) My bed was the one that my mother's brother slept in as a child and since he died in 1951, she was sad each time she looked at it. The bunny and the "looped dog" were gifts and I loved them.

Toys are essential to childhood and are considered an important link to your personal past. As an only child I didn't have to share my toys or pass them to a younger sibling. My husband had a stuffed lamb called "Sammy the Lamb-ie" and he had to pass it to his younger brother. 

Several years ago, I bought this jogger outfit in the doll clothes department for Boo-Boo. He loves it even though he doesn't run much these days. I still love and talk to him all the time. 

Shopping at Oakhill Market

Front Steps May 1955, a photo by midgefrazel on Flickr.

Oak Hill Market

At about the age shown in this photo, I was allowed to walk alone to the little market at the edge of the Plat. I think that I was given this freedom because my mother often forgot to defrost any meat for supper and she decided I was old enough to go get it from Mr. Alveti who ran the market. I remember telling him what my mother wanted and after a few times, he would just nod and grind meat into hamburger for me. His family worked in the market too and I often times think we would not have survived without our corner store. When I was older, I realized that one woman was his daughter whose name was Sandra. She kept a watchful eye on the candy display and the soda bin that was outside and rang up customers purchases.

One day, my father was sent to the store with a note that simply read, "three peppers". He must not have looked at it before he drove down Hilltop Drive to the store. When he got there he could not find the spice bottle labelled three peppers. Mr. Alveti came to his rescue. They looked and looked all through the store. Finally, Mr. Alveti went to the telephone in the back of the store and called my mother. My dad said he could hear him laughing all the way to the front. After a few minutes, Mr. Alveti showed up with a paper bag and handed it to my father. Then, my father, laughed as he paid for the purchase. What do you think was in the bag?

Mr. Raymond Alveti's (1911-1994) store was at 1100 New London Ave. He lived in the Auburn section of Cranston with his wife Annita and his two daughters and retired sometime in the 1980s. He sold the property and it is now a funeral home. He is buried in the same cemetery as Mr. Melocarro who built "The Plat". I am sure they gave my Dad a big welcome when he got to Heaven. Maybe they still tell the "three peppers" story. 

My Earliest Memory

My Earliest Memory, a photo by midgefrazel on Flickr.

Sweet Earliest Memories

I have blogged about this photo before so if you have seen it, you must keep reading because there's more to come! This photo is a crop of the side of my parents' house. When did my mother have time to plant all theses flowers and have a baby? 

Many of my early photos are black and white. I am glad they are because the ones that are early color are turning yellow and it is not because I am old. 

My friend, Maureen Taylor, in her book titled, Preserving Your Family Photographs (Picture Perfect Press, 2000) says on p. 95 that, "Kodacolor film used between 1942 and 1953 has one of the worst preservation records." Yellow staining (even in the negatives) is causing irreparable harm to both the prints and the negatives.

Photo collection of Midge Frazel, 1952

So many photos of mine are stained yellow. I am experimenting with scanning them and removing the yellow cast. I can tell that I am not working fast enough. As I put them in archival envelopes, they are getting worse. I have managed to do a few and the color seems better after I am done. It is a long process. There's no quick one click fix. I keep trying different programs and apps but this fix requires the use of layers.

Any help is appreciated!

Mom's Desk

Brown Pitcher, photo collection of Midge Frazel

Mom's Desk

Connecting the photos in my photo collection to each other is something I am hoping to accomplish in this writing challenge. Since furniture in my family has been passed from generation to generation, I have been "stuck" not only with an endless stream of photographs but also with furniture and household furnishings that have been passed to me. What to keep and what to sell? It has been a terrible task. I have no idea what happened to Mom's desk shown in this photo in the collage above. I honestly only remember the telephone being there. I do remember this photo of me and I think I am holding "Miss Comfort" a sock doll made by my grandmother for me. (I am all about being comfortable.) Oddly, I can tell you that my Mom washed her hair just before this photo was taken.

The photo below is a very small one in my family collection.. The furniture shown in the below in the photo below was definitely given to my mother as it belonged to her grandparents but I did not notice that the desk was in this photo until I started to write this blog post. The blog post was supposed to be about the drip edge brownware pitcher that mom had on the desk and I have kept all these years. I also owned the fireplace tools in the photo but I left them behind in Bridgewater because our house here and my daughter's house too both have the modern gas fireplace which doesn't need tending.

Charles and Adah (Evans) Stewart's last residence, photo collection of Midge Frazel

How do you decide what to keep and what to give away and how do you make peace in your mind with your decisions? I kept the brown pitcher not because it was valuable but because it was part of "The Plat" idea  of research and because it easily fits in with my new house. 

I think that much of the family heirlooms that I kept belonged to my great grandparents and I am happy with my decision to keep them. Grandmother Ada was the one that had the Quaker ancestors and I think she lacked items to inherit since she was raised by a step-mother who outlived her father. She might have loved the fancy lifestyle of my Connecticut family. 

I am happy to have the brown pitcher no matter what its value because I remember it from my early childhood days in "The Plat".

A Bit of Norway

Norway Family Heirlooms, a photo by midgefrazel on Flickr.

The Ladies

Oh, what delicious cookies they made!

When the Graybills moved back to Pennsylvania, a trio of sisters moved into the house next door at 54 Hill Top Drive. We called them "the Ladies" and I enjoyed their company tremendously. Having no sisters (or brothers), I was interested in how well they got along. Sadly, I have no photos of them at all! From the plat card, I learned they sold the house in 1966, probably when Helga went into a nursing home. I do know that the ladies lived there by 1954 because we cooked on the charcoal grill outside when there was no electricity after Hurricane Carol in early fall of 1954. The 1956 City Directory lists Helga's name as homeowner. Their surname was Elstad.

Their first names were Mary/Marie Louise (they called her "Tulie"), Helga and Astrid. They had a brother who was married and lived in the nearby town of Warwick. I know that they once lived with their parents. I have always wondered where in Norway they came from. So, what did I do? I made them a tree at Ancestry.com. Guided by some excellent article in Family Tree Magazine ( latest one Sept 2013) and using Cyndi's List, I have been able to learn a little bit about Scandinavian genealogy. 

I love working on their ancestry although I have not been able to get very far (as yet). Their grandparents came from Norway to Wisconsin then Minnesota and the name at that time was probably Helstad. I located the family in the US 1880 census. Much to my surprise, there was another person's tree for the earlier generations of this family. I learned that there was another brother too that I didn't know about who lived in Providence. I may have thought the brothers were one person. The 1931 City Directory lists both brothers.

At the time they lived in "The Plat", Astrid was still working. We called her Artie. I own her "ladies hammer". Helga and Tulie stayed home and kept house. In the afternoon, they watched "The Edge of Night" and made cookies. My mother kept telling me to come home. I laugh today at the thought that I was bothering them. They were cool. I miss them.

They gave me several items like the ones shown here and a lovely opal charm that I have on a necklace. When they gave me gifts, I wrote thank you notes to them addressed to H.A.T. I didn't know acronyms would be popular in the future.

HATs off to The Ladies and their legacy in "The Plat".

The Graybill family

Martha Graybill, a photo by midgefrazel on Flickr.

The Graybill Family

My parents used to talk about the family that were our next door neighbors on the side of the house that you can see in this photo. My father told me that they were from Lancaster, Pennsylvania and that he was going to Bible college in Barrington, RI. He thought that the parents of this young couple were rich because when they came to visit, they came in big expensive black cars. At that time, they did not have children. 

They are not listed on the plat/assessor's card for that address. All I had to go by is the index card in my mother's address book with these people's former address.

I decided to go to Find-a-Grave and look to see if this family was listed in that part of Pennsylvania. I was so surprised to actually find the right cemetery and memorial. My father said that they might be Amish or Mennonite. The family is buried in Landisville Mennonite Cemetery but are listed as Evangelical Lutheran. There are no photographs in my parents collection of Mr. and Mrs. Allen Graybill. (The house is shown in another photo.) 

From his obituary (because parents were listed), I managed to find out, with the help of Ancestry.com, that the original name might be Krehbiel. They owned a feed and grain business. 

The photograph shown in this post is of me and the little girl that  Mr and Mrs. Graybill named Martha. I was sad to see that Martha died at a young age and that Mr. and Mrs. Graybill must have been divorced and that he remarried. It would be great to share my photo with living family. 

Understanding the Symbols

1956 Cranston City Directory page 37, Symbols

Understanding the Information
 in the City Directory

There's much to learn from City directories but it can be hard to make sense of what you are looking at. In the example above from 1956, this page explains the symbols indicating "home owner" and the "telephone subscriber". Even by 1956, there must have been households that did not subscribe (have) a telephone! 

In subsequent years of the directories, there continues to be an abbreviation list. As I reported in an earlier post, each village in Rhode Island was represented by an initial which corresponded to the town or village of the street, and this letter appears after each family listing. The family listing gave the home owner's name and sometimes the wife's name in parentheses, plus the street name as I have showed here.

In this cropped section of the 1956 Cranston City Directory listing for my father at at the end there is an H. That H stands for Howard which is the village name for "The Plat".

Understanding the abbreviations (Here's a full page from the 1948 Cranston City Directory, page 8 image 22 "City Information") you can learn a lot about how to read the listings. I want you to click on the link above and go there and look at the list. It contains job descriptions, shortened first names, church denominations, and military affiliations. In later city directories, the name of the business the person worked for may be listed. This might not be information you have for your ancestors.

Information gleaned now can be recorded with the citation:

1. Broadfoot Thomas H
2. Broadfoot Dorothy S 
3. dry cleaner
4. house at 60 Hill Top Dr.
5. Howard

Well Established Neighborhood

1950 City Directory, Cranston, RI clip of Ancestry.com, page 406

Well Established Neighborhood

What a difference from the street listing of the 1948 city directory of "Vacant", compared to this 1950 list of my parent's street. Oddly, the one house that is listed as vacant turns out to be the house in which my future maid of honor for my wedding lives in. Her mother is gone but her father still lives in the house. He is a great grandfather now and still helps his neighbors out when he can. Isn't that great?

This photo is dated 1950 from the family collection of Midge Frazel. Aren't I cute?

The names in this list of people brought back wonderful visual images of the houses and the people who lived there. I can't remember everyone, but from a genealogical perspective, what a wonderful mix of ethnic backgrounds these people were! 

What can't be seen here are the ages of the people living here. I do remember that many houses were sold to young couples, small families and many are people who inherited their parent's house in the city and wanted to move to the suburbs to live. They had cars and could commute to work in this generation. Even in 1950, there was a car in every garage.

Seeing this caused me to marvel that some homes still did not have telephones. But, in later city directories, everyone had one and they eliminated the need to put the telephone symbol next to the name.

This 1950 city directory is considered a 1950 "census substitute". The federal census for 1950 won't be released until April 1, 2022. That year, I will turn 75. Will I be alive to see my name in that census? I hope so. Showing my in-laws their names in the 1930 census was quite fun. I read stories about how it sparked conversations about neighbors when genealogists showed people their own neighborhoods in 1930 and 1940. The gossip was amazing!

 I plan to keep this list for the time when I need to start working in 2021 for the census release.