Passing It On

Baby Jenette’s gravestone headed to Iowa after 157 years

More than 157 years ago, baby Elizabeth Jenette Bissell died in Joliet, Illinois. While it took more than 150 years to discover her final resting place, her gravestone will join those of the siblings she never knew in a small Iowa cemetery later this week.

I first wrote last month of the Internet connection that united Bissell family members in Iowa with Gina Wysocki in Illinois. That connection will result in the Bissell family adding baby Jenette’s gravestone to the family plot in Massena, Iowa, this Saturday, which marks the 159th anniversary of Jenette’s birth.

Young Jenette is believed to have died from cholera in March 1852. Her gravestone was discovered under three feet of dirt by Joliet city workers who were working on a children’s playground. It is believed that dozens – maybe hundreds – others are buried in the area where the gravestone was found.

Remains in the unmarked cemetery were undisturbed although city workers completed the children’s playground on the site. For more details on the story, check out the Chicago Tribune.

Meanwhile, Wysocki is looking forward to her meeting with her Iowa connection, Julie Bissell Tupker, this weekend.

“When Julie and I were planning the trip from both ends, the only date that we were both able to do it was on that weekend,” Wysocki said. “And, of course, the day of Jenette’s birthday!”

Writing prompt of the day: What’s the most exciting family history discovery you’ve made on the Internet?

Larry Lehmer is a professional personal historian who helps people preserve their family histories. To learn more, visit his web site, send him an e-mail or follow him on Twitter.

When it was time to write, Grandma found the words

As my parents filled their autograph books as young teenagers in the mid-1930s, it wasn’t just their friends that they approached. They also asked family members to sign – sisters, brothers and parents.

For the most part, entries by siblings are indistinguishable from those made by friends. Parents, though, offered bits of the sage advice you’d expect from an older generation.

Unexpected though (at least to me), was the entry of my mom’s mother, Ellen H. Andersen. Grandma Andersen arrived in America from Denmark in 1920, shortly after marrying Grandpa, and spoke not a word of English on her arrival in the states. As a homemaker, she was slow to learn English and spoke with a thick Danish accent the rest of her life.

Yet, when asked to write something in Mom’s autograph book, she showed an eloquence that caught me off guard, over 70 years later. On Sept. 26, 1935 – the date of her entry – Grandma was a 37-year-old mother of four. I’d like to think that the 12 lines of prose that were entered that day in tiny, neat penmanship were her own words, but it’s more likely that she copied them from something she read.

Nevertheless, her words set a course that my mother followed the rest of her life. Here’s what she wrote:

One little word, one little smile,
Will make someone feel that life is worthwhile,
Just one little look from a twinkling eye,
Given to someone as you’re passing by,
Will brighten and cheer some sorrowful soul,
To the extent of new hope to choose for his goal,
One seldom knows the damage and weight,
Of harsh cutting words before it’s too late,
How helpless we are, our words to correct,
Which have traveled like fire and as bad in effect.
Keep bitter words firmly under control,
Be free with your smile, and brighten some soul.

Writing prompt of the day: What’s the most surprising thing you’ve learned about your grandparents?

Larry Lehmer is a professional personal historian who helps people preserve their family histories. To learn more, visit his web site, send him an e-mail or follow him on Twitter.

Photo: Ellen Andersen (seated at right) in 1943 with three of her children - Elsie, Norma and Richard. (Walter B. Lehmer collection)

Clues to my family’s cold cases: Lost loves from 70+ years ago

In my previous post I mentioned that my parents were married for 66 years after a five-month courtship. Since they didn’t start dating until after high school, it’s reasonable to assume that they dated other people before they became a couple.

I’m aware of several of my Dad’s female acquaintances from his high school years, but Mom never spoke to me about any previous boyfriends. Now that I have both of their autograph books from roughly ages 12 to 15, I know a bit more.

As I wrote earlier, Mom’s autograph book was definitely G-rated, but I did find one small clue about a possible earlier paramour. It came in an entry dated May 27, 1936, a few months before my Mom’s 14th birthday. The author was Alice Jean Stacy (who added “Blondie” in parentheses below her name).

Remember the bluejay,
Remember the dove,
Remember the night,
You fell in love (with Bob)

If you’re the Bob that Blondie referred to, or if you’re Alice Jean Stacy, please contact me. I want to know more.

Compared to Mom, Dad looks like he was a real player in junior high. Here are a couple of clues from his autograph book:

Snow on the Mt. top and the sun can’t melt it,
I love you and you can’t help it.
Forever yours, Dorothy Owens

My heart pants for you, 4get me not …
Yours until the sidewalk walks,
Yours until the butter flies,
Yours until the sink sinks.
Your sweetheart, Annabelle Wright

I should also point out that each of these entries was dated the same day – Oct. 1, 1935 – a few weeks before Dad’s 15th birthday. Again, I’d like to know more.

It’s all irrelevant now, of course, but it is worth noting that Mom and Dad had full, separate lives before they became Mom and Dad.

Writing prompt of the day: What do you know about your parents’ previous boyfriends and girlfriends?

Larry Lehmer is a personal historian who helps people write their family histories. To learn more, visit his web site, send him an e-mail or follow him on Twitter.

Photo: Jack & Elsie Lehmer's wedding portrait, 1942 (Walter B. Lehmer collection)

Their neighborhoods were similar, but their messages were worlds apart

My parents grew up less than a mile from each other, in similar working class neighborhoods, with nice homes tucked in among the not-so-nice and a scattering of automobiles parked at the curb, where there was paving.

But to read their autograph books, you’d think they were from different planets. Maybe it’s just the difference between boys and girls in the 1930s, but their autograph books have strikingly different tones.

Mom’s is definitely G-rated, peppered with phrases like “Yours till Niagara Falls” and “4-Get me not.” And, thanks to schoolmate Pee Wee, we now know that mom’s nickname (at least to Pee Wee) in the mid-1930s was “Tally Wally.”

Margaret “Dahlia” Reynolds penned the following ditty in Mom’s book:

Mary had a little watch,
She swallowed it one day,
And now she takes castor oil,
To pass the time away.

There were some clever entries in Dad’s book, too:

May you ever float down the river of time,
Like a bobtailed chicken on a watermelon rhine.

On a mule we find two legs behind and two we find before,
But we get behind before we find what the two behind before.

But Dad’s book also had a few entries that I would describe as dark or even disturbing:

When you get married and live by the river,
I’ll kill my best dog and send you the liver.

One day last night
Two dead boys got up to fight
A deaf policeman heard the noise
And came and shot the two dead boys.

Along the roads of life we have traveled,
And traveled far and near,
Let us hope that we will not
Reach our destinty (sic) for awhile
That destinty is death.

Despite those differences, Mom and Dad seemed to hit it off right away, marrying five months after they started dating. And they stayed married for more than 66 years.

Writing prompt of the day: Compare and contrast your parents’ lives up until the time they met and examine how any differences affected their marriage.

Larry Lehmer is a professional personal historian who helps people write their family histories. To learn more, visit his web site, send him an e-mail or follow him on Twitter.

Not in family tree but ‘Grandma’ nonetheless

My mother’s autograph book mostly covers the years 1934-36, when she was 12 to 14 years old. As you might expect, most of the entries are from classmates. Some are corny, some a bit flowery and many are simple variations of the “Roses are red” poem.

One of the most interesting to me, however, is this one, dated Aug. 15, 1935:

To Elsie Marie

May your life be pure and spotless,
As the page on which I write;
May there be for thee no cloud of sorrow,
May thy heart never know a blight.

“With love”
Martha Chamberlen
Your old friend

Martha was 73 years old the day she signed my mother’s book. My mother turned 13 that day. That my mother would enter her teenage years in the company of an elderly, non-family member gives you an idea of Martha’s role in my mother’s life.

Mom never met her actual grandparents, who lived in far off Denmark so she adopted Martha, who appears often in Mom’s answers to questions in the “Mom, share your life” book. Here’s one of Mom’s answers:

“When Mom & Dad came to America from Denmark in 1920, they had an apartment at her [Martha’s] home in Shelby, Ia. She became my adopted grandma and when we moved to Council Bluffs in 1923, she followed us and I would spend my weekends with her. I remember so well the breakfasts we had together. I always had toast buttered on both sides with pimiento cheese on it. I can still taste it in my mind. She was such a sweet little lady & I loved her very much.”

I met Martha several times before her death at age 99 in 1961 and she was just as Mom described – my adopted great grandma.

Writing prompt for the day: Write about a non-family member who had a great impact in your life.

Larry Lehmer is a professional personal historian who helps people write their family histories. To learn more, visit his web site, send him an e-mail or follow him on Twitter.

Photo: Martha Chamberlen holds Elsie (Andersen) Lehmer in 1923 photo. (Walter B. Lehmer collection)

Autograph books offer candid peek into a person’s past

Did you ever collect autographs? Many of us did, especially as kids, whether a baseball player’s scribbled signature on a game program or the wit and wisdom of a classmate in a pastel-sheeted autograph book constructed precisely for that purpose.

Although I’ve had a curious personal history myself regarding autographs, I must say that both of my parents’ brief foray into the hobby has provided me with some valuable insights into their familial relationships, schoolboy (and schoolgirl) romances and a surprising contrast in tone of classmates jottings in their autograph books.

I’ll be writing this week about what I learned from my parents’ signature-laden autograph books. But first, a bit about my very different approach to the subject.

I’ve never been much for celebrity worship. Most honest-to-goodness celebrities I’ve met are not much different from anybody else. That’s why, on assignment as a young reporter to shoot a photo of some country music stars signing autographs for kids at a local bowling center, I retreated with the musicians to the lounge where Johnny Cash’s guitar player, Luther Perkins, shared many a tale of the road while rockabilly legend Carl Perkins and Mother Maybelle Carter played pool behind us, occasionally correcting Luther’s recollections. Great fun. No autographs.

Same thing with many other famous people I met or interviewed during my writing career: George McGovern, Stan Musial, Red Skelton, Hank Aaron, Waylon Jennings. I had an out, at least, since no real reporter would ever ask for an autograph under any circumstance.

But I didn’t even collect many classmates’ signatures as a kid. What’s up with that?

Chances are, your relatives probably did better. If you spot an autograph book among their possessions, peek inside. You may be surprised by what you find.

Writing prompt of the day: Examine someone’s autograph book and make a list of questions that arise from your examination. Then find the answers and write about them.

Larry Lehmer is a personal historian who helps people write their family histories. To learn more, visit his web site, send him an e-mail or follow him on Twitter.