Time Capsule Tuesday

 Mary Margaret Hesser Ranney, my 2nd great-grandmother, passed away on Wednesday, October 6, 1920, at the age of 78.  She passed less than a month after her husband of nearly 52 years, Comfort Ranney.

So let's take a look at what was happening in the United States in October of 1920 and during that entire year.

In 1920, Woodrow Wilson was President, and the Vice President was Thomas R. Marshall.  It was the 66th Congress that year.  

1920 was a Census year.  This census was the first to record a population exceeding 100 million.  Because there are so many mixed-race persons and because so many Americans with some black ancestry appear white, the Census Bureau stops counting mixed-race people and the one-drop rule becomes the national legal standard.  (The one-drop rule asserted that any person with even one ancestor of black ancestry - "one drop" of black blood - is considered black.)

In 1920, Prohibition in the United States begins with the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution coming into effect. 

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is founded.

The U.S. Post Office rules that children may not be sent via parcel post.  Was this even a thing?!  

The first commercial radio station in the U.S., 8MK (WWJ), owned by the Detroit News, begins operations in Detroit, Michigan.

The National Football League is founded.

The Nineteenth Amended to the United States Constitution is passed, guaranteeing women's suffrage.

The first domestic radio sets come to the stores - Westinghouse costs $10.

In the November presidential election, Warren G. Harding defeats James M Cox.  This is the first national election in which women have the right to vote.

 1920 Prices

Bread:  $.11/loaf

Milk: $.58/gal

Eggs:  $.39/dozen

Car: $345

Gas: $.30/gal

 House: $6,296

Stamp: $.02/each

Average Income: $1,130/year

Top Songs for 1920:

The Love Boat by Gene Buck

Margie by Benny Davis

Whose Baby Are You? by Anne Caldwell

Avalon by Al Jolson

Japanese Sandman by Raymond Egan

Mah Lindy Lou by Lily Strikland

Top Books in 1920:

The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton

The Frontier in American History by Frederick Jackson Turner

Main Street by Sinclair Lewis

Top Films of 1920:

Way Down East starring Lillian Gish and Richard Barthelmess

Over the Hill to the Poorhouse (a silent film) starring Mary Carr

Passion (A German film released in the U.S.) starring Pola Negri and Emil Jannings 

The Mark of Zorro starring Douglas Fairbanks

Hot New Toys in 1920:

Raggedy Ann

Crayola Crayons

Tiddledy Winks

Parcheesi

Snakes and Ladders

Lionel Trains

Lincoln Logs

Ouija Boards

Pogo Stick

Teddy Bear

Also... 1920 was the beginning of the Roaring Twenties!

People born on October 6, 1920:

1846 - George Westinghouse, responsible for alternating current in the U.S.

1909 - Carol Lombard, actress (My Man Godfrey, In Name Only)

1925 - Shana Alexander, NYC journalist (60 Minutes)

Happenings on October 6, 1920:

* Since the invention of the airplane in 1903, flying after dusk had been too dangerous to attempt.  On this date, a demonstration was held at midnight on Long Island, New York, of an airplane equipped with powerful arc lamps bright enough for the pilot to illuminate a landing site while making an approach to an airport.  Because arc lighting was a fire hazard, the test also demonstrated that an aircraft could make a safe approach even while the metal was ablaze.  

* The U.S. Navy made its first public demonstration of the new magnetized Ambrose Channel pilot cable navigational aid.  This introduced the first technology that would allow ships to sail into New York using only instruments during heavy fog, rather than having to wait outside for the fog to clear.  

* For the first time in eight years, a passenger train from Mexico was allowed to cross into the United States, as President-Elect Alvaro Obregon traveled rom Ciudad Juarez to El Paso, Texas for a visit.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun - My "7 Generations in 1" Chart

  From Randy over at Genea-Musings:

it's Saturday Night - 

time for more Genealogy Fun!!!

Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to:

(1)  Please see the Genea-Musings post for this challenge to get the template, etc. used.  I'm going to just cut to my result tonight.  

My challenge tonight was to fill out my 7-in-1 Ancestor chart and show it off.  The chart covers ancestors #1 through #127 in an ahnentafel list.  I used the spreadsheet, added the ancestor numbers while adding the names (starting with 1 = me, 2 = my father, 3 = my mother, etc.).  I added the names and birth and death years (if known) for the first 7 generations.  I colored the boxes for the two ancestors who were born in other countries.  As you can see, my families are deeply rooted in the United States.  I saved my chart in Excel, copied it to Paint 3D and then saved it as a JPG image file.  This task has taken more than an hour!  So if you choose to do it, plan ahead!

(2)  Show me your 7-in-1 chart in your own blog post, in a comment to this post, or in a post on Facebook.  

Here's mine:

My columns are wider than the ones you'll view from Genea-Musings because, like Randy, I added their birth and death years.  This helps me a lot since several of my ancestors share the same name.  

There is other color coding I would like to do, such as by states, military service, blanks that need to be filled in, etc.  I'm open to other ideas for coloring coding!

Thank you to Ann Raymont (DNAsleuth) for the original idea of doing this; Linda and Dave Shufflebean (Empty Branches on the Family Tree) (Also, thank you Linda for always commenting on my Saturday Night Genealogy Fun posts.  I love the feedback!) for creating and sharing the spreadsheet version of the chart, and of course Randy Seaver for sharing this idea.  I think I am going to suggest to my mother, BFF, cousins, etc. to refer back to this chart when I am going on and on about an ancestor - it may help to keep them all straight!  

Time Capsule Tuesday

 

Tonight we are going to visit what was happening in the world on the wedding date of my 2nd great-grandparents.

William Robert Harrell (1838-1908) and Catherine M. Odom (1841-1875) were married in Johnson County, Georgia on Thursday, December 21, 1865.  

Of course, the biggest thing that happened in 1865 was the ending of the American Civil War with the surrender of the Confederate States, beginning the Reconstruction era of U.S. History.  The war mainly ended on April 9 when General Robert E. Lee surrendered to General Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House, Virginia.  By December, there was still a lot of clean up, so to speak, happening in the wake of the war ending.  

It was an eventful and dark year, kind of like 2020 has been.  Five days after Lee surrendered, President Abraham Linda was shot while attending a performance at the Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C.  He died the next day.  On April 26, his assassin is cornered and fatally shot by a member of the Union cavalry.  In May, the first train robbery in the U.S. occurred in North Bend, Ohio (a suburb of Cincinnati).  In June, there are still more Confederate surrenders, and June 19, 1865 becomes the day officially celebrated in modern times each year as Juneteenth.  

On July 5, the U.S. Secret Service was founded.  On July 7, four of the conspirators in President Lincoln's assassination are hanged.  Also this month, Wild Bill Hickok is involved in a shootout in Springfield, Missouri, in what is regarded as the first true western "fast draw" showdown.  He shot and killed Little Dave Tutt over a poker debt.  

Meanwhile, there are two steamboats that sink, killing more than 1,800 people.  There is an earthquake in the San Francisco Bay Area that is a high intensity.  The last significantly organized Confederate unit finally surrendered on November 6.  Captain Henry Wirz, Confederate superintendent of Andersonville Prison is hanged for war crimes arising from the treatment of prisoners of war and conditions at the prison.  

And that brings us to December 1865:

Top Headlines:

December 11 - The U.S. Congress creates the House Appropriations Committee.

December 18 - The 13th Amendment of the United States Constitution, which abolished slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime, is declared ratified by three-quarters of the states.

December 21 - The Kappa Alpha Order, a social fraternity, is founded at Washington and Lee University.

December 24 - The Ku Klux Klan is formed by six Confederate Army veterans in Pulaski, Tennessee, to resist Reconstruction and intimidate "carpetbaggers" and "scalawags", as well as to repress the freed slaves. 

December 26 - James H. Mason of Massachusetts patents the first U.S. coffee percolator.  

The U.S. president is Andrew Johnson.  He was the third president of that year.  There was no vice president in office at the end of 1865.

Famous people born on December 21:

1117:  Thomas Becket, archbishop of Canterbury

1897:  Joseph Stalin, Russian dictator

1908:  Pat Weaver, Los Angeles, California, TV Executive, started the Today show

Hot New Toys in 1865:

Cap Guns

And in the midst of all that, two people fell in love and got married.  Catherine already had one child whose father (her husband) was killed in the War.  She and Robert had 3 children before she tragically died so young.  I am descended from their oldest child, Emma Vermell Harrell, my great-grandmother.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun - Moving on Out

 From Randy over at Genea-Musings:

it's Saturday Night - 

time for more Genealogy Fun!!!

Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to:

(1)  Where did you go the first time you moved out of your parents' home?  Did you have any roommates?  Did you live by yourself? Did you get married right away? Tell the story - your children and grandchildren will want to know!

(2)  Share your story in your own blog post, in a comment to this post, or in a post on Facebook.  

Here's mine:

Well, Randy picked a tough subject, and it probably won't be fun for me.  Also, I have no children and thus no grandchildren who will want to know.  However, I'll push through and tell the story.  

When I was preparing to go to college, I wanted to attend Georgia Southwestern in Americus.  However, my father told me he could not afford for me to live in the dorm.  So instead, he bought a lot on Lake Sinclair outside of Milledgeville and built a house on it for me to live in to go to college.  Obviously, he did have the money to send me away to school because dorm fees, I am sure, would have been far less than a lake lot.  But that's what he did and told me I had to attend Georgia College in Milledgeville.  So I did.  

In September of 1985, when I moved to the lake house, I didn't live with my parents anymore, but I lived in their house.  It was their furniture in the house (mostly), and if I moved or added anything, my father had a fit.  He would show up unannounced and stay the night, obviously just checking up on me.  He had to be in control no matter what.  And I was under his thumb for at least 4-6 months after I left for college.  When I started getting some independence, that is when the real trouble started.  

Meanwhile, I got a roommate at the lake house.  A girl I went to school with and graduated with in Swainsboro also went to college in Milledgeville, and she didn't want to live in the dorms.  My father loved her, so she moved in with me.  Of course, I went out more and got into more cause I had a partner in crime.  However, she went to Swainsboro every single weekend, so I was alone some too.  

Sometime in 1986, either summer or fall, my father and I had a major falling out.  Basically, he had snooped through my belongings and found something he didn't like.  So he drove up from Swainsboro and that very evening proceeded to throw my belongings out onto the lawn.  I had to call a co-worker (I was working part-time for an accountant there in Milledgeville.) to come help me gather my belongings, and she let me move in with her and her children.  That lasted a few months, but she eventually asked me to leave so I had to ask my father if I could move back to the lake house.  He had cooled down by then so he let me.  I believe when all this happened is when he stopped paying for my school.  So I got a full-time job and started going to school part-time.  Shortly thereafter, I moved out of the lake house into my first apartment in Milledgeville.  It was a really old house, with 10-12 foot ceilings, in a not great neighborhood, that had been remodeled into apartments.  When I say it wasn't a great neighborhood, I mean I was TERRIFIED to go out of my apartment at night.  Even just to walk to my car right outside.  I eventually adjusted and was able to conquer that fear, but I always kept my guard up.  Also it helped that my roommate from the lake house didn't feel comfortable staying there without me, so she moved into the apartment with me.  It had two bedrooms, so that worked out well.  

It was quite an adventure, but I do remember my time there fondly.  I was gaining more and more independence over time and was paying my own bills.  By December of 1987 at the age of 20, I had dropped out of school, gotten a full-time job at a bank, got married and was living in a rented single wide trailer in Eatonton. (Oh there are many more stories there that will have to wait until another time.)

(Oh did you catch the irony that after building that lake house for me to go to school where he wanted me to go, my father was no longer paying my tuition after only about a year and a half?  Everything had strings attached.  I cut the strings.)  

Time Capsule Tuesday

 I liked the time capsule genealogy fun post so much that I have decided to make it a regular feature here on the blog!  So welcome to the first Time Capsule Tuesday post.

Today, I chose to travel back in time to the birth date of my great-grandmother, Bessie Alice Carter. 

Bessie was born February 9, 1883 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.  Bessie was adopted by Charles Kelso and Sarah Schoonover Carter shortly after her birth.  We have no information on her birth parents.  We have checked with the state of Wisconsin but their records do not go back that far.  Through DNA, my mother and I have discovered that she must have been from Swedish and/or Norwegian descent. I ended up with an Ethnicity Estimate of 7% Sweden and 5% Norway. No one else in the family came from either of those countries.
 

February 9, 1883 was a Friday.  

The top headlines that month:

Feb 8 -          Louis Waterman begins experiments to invent the fountain pen

Feb 10 -        Fire at uninsured New Hall Hotel in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, kills 71.

Feb 14 -        First state labor union legislation; New Jersey legalizes unions

Feb 16 -        "Ladies Home Journal" begins publication

Feb 23 -        Alabama becomes the first U.S. state to enact an antitrust law

The top songs for 1883:

Polly Wolly Doodle                                                      La Golondrina

Only a Pansy Blossom                                                There's a Tavern in the Town

A Handful of Earth from Mother's Grave                  The Farmer in the Dell

My Nellie's Blue Eyes                                                Strolling on the Brooklyn Bridge

The U.S. President was Chester A. Arthur.  However, there was no vice president in office on this date. 

1883 Prices:

Bread:                    2 cents/loaf

Milk:                     16 cents/gallon

House:                   $5,000

Average Income:   $500/year 

Famous people born on February 9th:

- Wilhelm Maybach,, German engineer, designer of first Mercedes - 1846

- Carmen Miranda, Portugal, vocalist/actress (Copacabana, Date with Judy) - 1909

- Alice Walker, U.S. novelist (Color Purple) - 1944

Here's a little diddy to get stuck in your head.  Shirley Temple singing Polly Wolly Doodle from the 1935 film, The Littlest Rebel:

Source:  dMarie Time Capsule

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun - What Was Your Childhood Home Like?

  From Randy over at Genea-Musings:

it's Saturday Night - 

time for more Genealogy Fun!!!

Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to:

(1)  What was your childhood home like?  How big was it? How many rooms did it have? What facilities did you have? What furniture was there?

(2)  Share your response in your own blog post, in a comment to this post, or in a post on Facebook.  

Here's mine:

I actually had three childhood homes.  One in Augusta, where we lived from the time I was born until I was 4; one in Jacksonville Florida, where we lived until I was 8; and the one in Swainsboro, where I lived until I was 18.  I'm going to write about the Swainsboro house since I lived there the longest.

The house had belonged to my grandparents, Charles and Ethel Tapley.  They moved there in the early 1960's.  The house was located on West Highway 80, a little bit out of town, up on a hill, with about 35 acres, half on each side of the highway.  It was huge as it was a converted store building.  The living room, which faced the road, had windows all the way across the front, like a store would have.  (Please don't ask me for dimensions... I have no idea.  LOL)

Here's the house before they started remodeling:

I don't know what kind of store it was intended to be or was.  It seems odd that there was two entrance doors across the front.  

Anyway, here is the house after my PopPop started working on it:

You can see in this picture, that he took the far right set of windows out and made it two separate windows - for two separate bedrooms.  He left the other window as it was for the living room, as I mentioned.

Here is the house after he finished.  The second one was probably taken 5-7 years later, since the trees have grown quite a bit tall.  

So going from left to right, the first door is the main entrance used by company.  It opened into the dining room/kitchen combo.  That next window is in the dining room.  While passing through the kitchen, I will mention that my grandmother's favorite color was pink, so my grandfather, believe it or not, did the kitchen in pink.  Pink cabinets, counter tops, and yes, even the appliances were pink!  I don't know how he did it, but it was the 60's after all.

Passing through a door opening with no door, you would enter the living room.  As I mentioned it was HUGE.  The door past the living room windows was an entrance we never used, and it entered into a tiny little vestibule.  I don't know why my PopPop put that there.  It was too tiny for anything.  And it had a door on it leading into the living room!  Wasted space.  On the back side of the living room was an opening to the den, or library as my grandfather called it.  The left side was lined with bookshelves and the back wall had built in drawers from floor to about 5 feet up.  There may have been some cabinets too, but I know there were cabinets built in below the bookshelves.  My PopPop loved books and he was a hoarder.  So he built himself plenty of space in the room for both.  

There was a set of glass sliding doors leading from the den into the garage.  The garage stretched across the entire back side of the house.  The left side was used for parking a vehicle and the right side was the junk area.  There was also a laundry room/half bath combo on the left side.  Eventually, my father made a 4th bedroom in the middle of the garage.  

Going back to the living room, start down the hall, and the first bedroom is on the right.  This was my Great Aunt Alice's room while she lived there and then it became my room through my teenage years.  (That's the next window after the vestibule door on the picture above.) It had red shag carpet and a rather large closet with a step up into it.  It did, however, lose a chunk of space to that vestibule!  My bed was a four poster and the entire set was white.  Then of course, I also had a stereo (one of those big floor models) and my desk in the room.  

Continuing down the hall, the next bedroom is on the left.  This room had twin beds, and it was my room as a child.  This room, because it was sandwiched between the hall and the garage, got absolutely no natural light.  It felt like a cave.  

At the end of the hall, to the right was the master bathroom and bedroom.  (The bedroom window is the last one on the right side of the house.)  The master bath had no window.  My grandmother was in a wheelchair so the doorways were extra wide.  The closet was a his and hers double closet.  After putting in the king size bed, there was little room left but for nightstands and a dresser.  

Back to the left side of the hall, was another bathroom.  This was my bathroom, for all intents and purposes, though it was used by visitors, too, of course.  There was a window in this bathroom and a large linen closet.  For some reasons, we did not use the showerheads, so we always took baths.  It was decorated with cheery yellow curtains and throw rugs.  It also had a built in dressing table with drawers for storage, right under the window.  

If you exited right out of my bathroom, there was a hallway that was added after my father built the bedroom in the garage.  This short hallway led to a doorway out to the garage and access to that bedroom.  

My father and his visitors loved to sit in the garage where a car was supposed to be parked and rock in the rocking chairs and feel the breeze from the attic fan my dad put in the other side of the garage.  It kept the cool air blowing through on those hot Georgia afternoons.  

Eventually, my father added a carport, a barn (that he never finished), fencing, etc.  There was a clothesline in the back yard; we never owned a dryer when I was growing up.  

So as I said, the house was rather large.  It wasn't fancy but it was nice by many standards.  Daddy finally sold the house and it looks quite a bit different now.  

I will refer you to a post I wrote in 2011 about my childhood homes.  It's not much different than what I wrote here.  I just went into a lot more detail today.  It was nice to see that my memories haven't changed.  

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun - Time Capsule Fun

  From Randy over at Genea-Musings:

it's Saturday Night - 

time for more Genealogy Fun!!!

Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to:

(1)  Go to the dMarie Time Capsule Website.

(2)  Select a date in your family history that you want to know about.  You might pick a birth date or wedding date of your parents or grandparents.

(3)  Enter the date into the search form, and select the news, songs, toys, books, and other things you want to feature.

(4)  Share the date, why you picked it, and the results of time capsule fun in your own blog post, in a comment to this blog post, or in a post on Facebook.  

Here's mine:

Since today is my mother's birthday, I chose this date to look into.  She was born Saturday, September 5, 1942.

This is what I found:

Top News Headlines This Week:

Sept 5    Battle at Alam Halfa ends

Sept 5    British & US bomb Le Havre & Bremen

Sept 6    Czech marathon runner Oskar H'ks transported to Auschwitz-Birkenau

Sept 7    German occupiers take silver anniversary coins in battle

Top Songs for 1942:

Jersey Bounce by Benny Goodman	Moonlight Cocktail by Glenn Miller
Tangerine by Jimmy Dorsey	Blues In the Night by Woody Herman
Kalamazoo by Glenn Miller	White Christmas by Bing Crosby
He Wears a Pair of Silver Wings by Kay Kyser	Jingle, Jangle, Jingle by Kay Kyser
Sleepy Lagoon by Harry James	Somebody Else Is Taking My Place by Benny Goodman

1942 Prices:

Bread:      $0.09/loaf

Milk:        $0.60/gal

Eggs:        $0.61/dozen

Car:         $1,100

Gas:         $0.20/gal

House:    $7,573

Stamp:    $0.03/each

Average Income:    $2,348/year

Minimum Wage:    $0.30/hour

The President of the United States was Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR).

The Vice-President was Henry A. Wallace.

Academy Award Winners:

Best Picture:	Mrs. Miniver
	Directed By William Wyler
Best Actor:	James Cagney
	in Yankee Doodle Dandy
Best Actress:	Greer Garson
	in Mrs. Miniver

People born on September 5:

1929 -- Bob Newhart, Comedian and Actor (Bob Newhart Show, Newhart)

1937 -- William Devane, Actor (Family Plot, Missiles of October)

1940 -- Raquel Welch, Actress (Myra Breckenridge, 1,000,000 BC, 100 Rifles)

Top Books in 1942:

The Matchlock Gun by Walter D. Edmonds	Black Lamb and Grey Falcon by Rebecca West
West with the Night by Beryl Markham

Happy Birthday, Mom!