“Odds and Ends”
I found this card in a stack of photographs — vaguely from the 1980s — Woodstock to Florida. This is typical of Gioja’s filing. The green 3 x 5″ card with her loopy handwriting across it. What these particular odds and ends had in common, I do not know. What other odds and ends they were different from is also a mystery to me. I do think it’s nice to see her handwriting.
M.
Lawrence and Oakley Family, c. 1885, copyright Jon Boody
Left to right: Mary Lawrence (standing), ?, ?, Ralph Lawrence Oakley (in boater)
Left to right seated: ?, Theodora Lawrence Oakley, Mary Oakley, Ralph Oakley with Beatrice or Dorothy on his lap. I’ll be updating this with other identifications as time goes on.
Matriarch Emily Hoe Lawrence surrounded by her family, Summer, c. 1885, copyright Jon Boody
Back row: Ralph Lawrence Oakley, Mary Say Lawrence (sewing), ?
Front row: ?, ?, Emily Amelia Hoe Lawrence (Nana), ?.
Sisters Dorothy and Beatrice Eleanor Oakley, Summer c. 1885, copyright Jon Boody
James S. Oakley and his wife, Mary visiting with Emily and Cyrus Lawrence, Summer, c. 1885, copyright Jon Boody
I am grateful to Jon Boody, a previously lost cousin, for sharing these photographs with me. His great-grandmother is Beatrice Eleanor Oakley. These photographs are by Richard Hoe Lawrence.
Tagged Lawrence Family, Mary Lawrence Webster, Webster
The pictures here were given to me by my great aunt, Aileen Webster Payne. Her mother, Mary Say Lawrence Webster, gave them to her. Benjamin Crampton Webster (1821-1893) and his wife, Eliza Campbell Wilbur (1822-1912), had five children, two of whom (Marcus Wilbur and Eliza Campbell) are included in these photos. Eliza Campbell Wilbur is also known as Elizabeth. The other children were Benjamin, Albert and Joseph Wilbur. Albert, born in 1859, is our great grandfather.
Tagged Lawrence, Mary Lawrence Webster, Webster, Wilbur
Birch Trees, Byrdcliffe (?)
Here are examples of photographs taken by my great grandmother, Mary Say Lawrence Webster. Her oldest brother, Richard Hoe Lawrence was an avid amateur photographer as well and was an early member of the New York Society of Amateur Photographers, which later became the New York Camera Club. Another member of the New York Camera Club, Eva Lawrence Watson-Schütze (American, 1867-1935), was a friend. The women both summered in on Byrdcliffe in Woodstock, New York. Webster from 1904 on and Watson-Schütze from 1902 on. The Schützes came from Chicago each year; the Websters from New York City. Watson-Schütze was a founding member of the New York Photo Secession, which was established by Alfred Stieglitz, at that time a champion of Pictorialism in photography. Exactly how all these influences worked on Mary Lawrence Webster’s photography is a question I am presently pursuing. Please respect the copyright of these images. Thank you, Mary Prevo
Mary Aye Prevo, Woodstock, 1958, by George Prevo
I am busy working on historic family photographs this summer. I am going to use this post as a place to put links to pages as I construct them. Hope it works!
I read a file of family letters yesterday. The title of the folder in looping handwriting is “Stallforth Sisters and Brothers.” The letters (about 50) run from 25 May 1945 to June 1949 with one coda written in August 1964. These are my first impressions after leafing through the letters, which are in English, German, and Spanish.
The letters give a glimpse of the difficulties facing German families in the wake of WWII. They also document the estrangement of my branch of the family from the others.
Players:
Federico Stallforth – the oldest brother living in New York City (my great grandfather)
Albert (Alberto) Stallforth and his wife Gertrude – They are in Mexico and worried about their children and grandchildren left in Germany.
Alfred and Ilse Stallforth
Hermann Stallforth
Gustavo “Bawo” Schultze
Emilia “Milly” Stallforth Schultze and her husband (Bawo?) – also in Mexico. She is a sister –
Lore and her two children, who travel from Germany to Mexico with Federico’s help.
The family, with the exception of Federico, is in Mexico and trying to get on their feet again. It is pretty clear that they have recently (when exactly, I don’t know) come to Mexico from Germany to resurrect their business interests and property there.
By the end of the file, Milly’s daughter, Lore, and her two children have managed to get to Mexico City, travelling through Paris to New York City and then Mexico. Alberto’s son died – Alberto’s letters of worry and grief are there.
There are other matters also under discussion – possibilities of Woolworth’s opening branches in Mexico and hiring Stallforth children who were tri-lingual and grew up in retail; renewing mining operations; timber harvesting – all these issues relate to ways of making money. There are also, particularly in 1946, very dramatic cries for short term loans of relatively small amounts from $100 to $1000 from Federico, who is the oldest and who has spent the war in New York City pursuing business in relative peace and security. And hovering between the lines is the question of each person’s nationality – were they born in Mexico and Mexican citizens, etc.
On August 30, 1964, exactly four years after Federico’s death, Albert and Gertrude sent their nieces, Gioja and Anita, a note on picture postcards. The envelope is addressed, “Miss Anita Stallforth/Mrs. Benjamin L. Webster/Woostock (Ulster Co.)/Catskill Mts./New York – U.S.A.” From “Albert and Gertrude Stallforth/8806 Neuenettelsan/Ansbach/ H.v. Bezzelstn. 4/ Germany.”
The ink is smudged by drops of water. I’m pretty sure the writing is Albert’s.
“Dear Anita, dear Gioja – We’re sorry that we never had a word from you again, although you promised to write after you sent the telegram 4 years ago today. Notwithstanding, our thoughts many a time wander back to former years when we all were so close! And to you, Anita and Gioja – we often wonder how things have been faring with you all. We retired to this lovely little town situated about halfway between Nurnberg and Ansbach – the latter of Bach Festival fame. I indicated our apartment. Won’t you let us have a work from you sometime soon?
Onkle Alfred and Tante Ilse now live in Munchen, also Hedi Peltzerin the same building – along the line of a nursing home. The address is: 8000 Munchen 9. Wetterstiners Tr 8. Onkel Hermann and family live in Cuernavaca. Their daughter Lore (Goessler) has 6 children and lives in Tubingen, whre her husband is director of the Humanstiische Gymnasium. All of the Schulze family live in Mexico City. So here’s family news in a nutshell. I thought you’d like to have these old fotos. Maybe you no longer have them! We do hope to hear from you. Much love, Albert and Gertrude.”
For some reason, that I don’t understand, Gioja and Anita (Gumma and Dita) didn’t maintain contact with any of these people – even when Gumma went back to Bavaria. I met her there in 1979 and met the Hannau family. We know she kept in contact with Doni. I don’t know what the story was – if she and Dita felt guilty for not staying in touch and didn’t know how to reconnect. . . . Perhaps Lawrence can comment.
Happy Birthday, Benjamin Webster Prevo.
These pictures were taken by our father, George Prevo, in our NYC apartment, the playground around the corner, the barber shop, and in our grandparent’s house in Woodstock. The pictures were taken around 1960.
I posted these as a birthday present to Ben on June 15, 2011.
Love, Mary
Tagged BenSunday September 13, 2009
The other day as I was sewing binding tape to the hem of a pair of my son’s trousers, I looked down at my Singer Featherweight sewing machine and thought that of all the sewing machines I have used in my life, this was my favorite. I think of myself as having worked up to this one, which I know now from the internet, was manufactured on June 11, 1937. (Featherweights have a fan following and you can find out lots about them on the web.)
As a very little girl I was given a tiny machine that you ran with a hand crank so I could sew alongside my mother. It was never very useful – I seem to recall that my brother and I used it more to perforate paper. So the first sewing machine I used seriously was my mother’s, on which I learned to make real clothes. It was a portable electric model, but large, with a round bobbin and an electric foot treadle. My grandmother’s, to which I moved next, was an earlier electric with a knee-treadle and a spindle bobbin. It was a also portable machine, but big with a beautiful arch-topped wooden case. In between these two I had the first machine of my own, which was more of a repair project than a productive sewing machine. It was a pre-electric treadle model still set in its own table with drawers on either side for thread, etc. I purchased it for $12.50 at a junk store down the road, fixed its belt, oiled its parts, and figured out its ancient bobbin. It worked okay, but I never sewed much more than doll clothes on it and I’m not sure what happened to it after I moved to live with my grandparents. That is when I first used my friend’s Singer Featherweight––small and light, but solid and strong. The Singer Featherweight sews forward and backward and, with the right attachment, makes a very nice button-hole. The Featherweight became my ideal machine — something to dream of owning one day. Meanwhile I continued to use my grandmother’s machines, including the successor to the lovely knee-treadle model – a Singer Zig-Zag with too many options and clad in off-white plastic. I managed to use it to appliqué patches on my blue jeans, but I never came to terms with its many stitch widths and waggling needle. I still longed for a Featherweight like the one my friend’s father gave her.
Finally, years later, I found my Featherweight in the repair shop across the street from my New York apartment. I was bringing in a larger and older machine for repair and there it was. I convinced the shop owner to buy back my old machine and traded up to the Featherweight. Finally I had my sewing machine. It works reliably and with it I have made and mended clothes for thirty years. I don’t use it very often, but each time I do, it works away with its assured and competent stitch.
Today I am lowering the hem of a pair of Banana Republic slacks from a suit my son purchased at a consignment shop over the summer. A seventeen-year-old boy who is most comfortable in a T-shirt and jeans, he doesn’t wear suits very often and I am happy that he has learned the value of second-hand shopping. He looks great in the suit and fixing it for him gives me pleasure. My used Featherweight and his used suit unite to illustrate our family’s adoption of the notion of ‘mend and make do’ – a British phrase born of the wars and shrinking empire of the last century. Now my son and I find ourselves in a similar place of reappraisal and adjustment at the end of the first decade of our new century. Knowing that we are not alone and others have gone this way before makes things a bit easier.
Last weekend we had guests so I cleaned up the back room and put all the family papers away in the closets. There is a lot of stuff – letters, postcards, photographs. This stuff tells lots of different stories. I can trace families or individuals. I can trace business transactions or birthdays. I can string together a line of unpaid bills or read the heartbroken account of the end of a long love affair. All these stories are illustrated by innumerable photographs of innumerable dinner parties and porch parties and hikes and tennis games and travels. When I start to work on the material, I get lost. I love it when I’m there, but when I’m not there the knowledge that all that stuff is up in my closets makes me anxious. I have to figure out a way to make it okay to fall in. It seems like too much indulgence or navel gazing to just look at my family stuff. How do I make it something more than just genealogy or family story-telling? Or is it okay if that’s what it is – I want to say, “if that’s all it is,” as if that’s not quite enough for it (whatever it is) to be serious. I don’t quite know where to place myself in relation to the things and the stories that ooze out of them. Am I an archivist, whose job it is to describe, count, and place in acid-free folders? Am I an historian, whose job it is to place these people, many of whom I actually knew and some of whom I love dearly, in a cultural context? Is it my job to write down the stories so the rest of my family knows them? Is it my job to make a new narrative out of the stuff? I just don’t know. I do know that I have fun when I fall into the material and dwell there. Hours go by. Time stops. It’s full and rich and textured and real, but I also know that it isn’t quite right or complete and I miss the people who made these things very much. I want them to be here to answer questions. But the questions I have I probably couldn’t ask or I probably would have when I had a chance. I just don’t know. Today I miss not having the chance.
The final step of morning gardening in early July is to pick a few flowers to bring inside before it gets too hot. Whatever needs cutting back or trimming or whatever looks just beautiful gets plucked.
I pile the cuttings up on the back porch and go inside to pick a vase and fill it with water. I follow my grandmother’s method of flower arranging. The tallest first, strip the lower leaves, trim the end at an angle and make a loose triangle of the first three stalks. Their intersecting stems provide the framework that supports the rest. Then I strip, trim, and place the remaining stalks. Placing becomes a short stab, pull up, and adjusting motion as the number of stems and leaves increase. I move quickly so the flowers get into water as soon as possible. In the middle of the summer, I always pick a couple of marigolds to tuck into the base of the arrangement. Their spicy smell reminds me of my grandmother’s garden and her flower arrangements.
The next step is to comb through the tired bouquets in the house to find the few survivors for the new bunch. Today I find two bee-balm and a few carnations, the latter from a grocery store purchase the week before – $5.99 down from $9.99. Who could resist? By now a week later the long stemmed roses have bent over, choked by an air bubble that entered their stems when they were left out of water at some point. Everything else has either shed or wilted. So much for impulse buying at the grocery store. Mixed bouquets never work very well. I’ve found it’s better to stick to single flower bunches: daffodils, tulips, gladiolas or carnations. But I don’t always act on my knowledge in such cases as the grocery store manager who put the flower display up right next to the entrance knew very well. And I did enjoy this mixed bag of all red and pink blooms while they lasted. Still, I have had more satisfaction from my own bouquet picked from my own garden this morning.
Often, as I did today, I have a rose or two that need their own vase and I tromp muddy-toed into the kitchen for a small container: sometimes a champagne flute, sometimes a jelly jar. Today I chose a hand-made, wood-fired sake bottle with a dent perfectly placed for your thumb for two yellow rose buds. They settled in perfectly. Now let’s see if they open.
Finding the right vase is an important part of flower arrangement. My grandmother had a closet full – old crystal, art pottery, big, small, tall, squat, inexpensive ones from flower shop bouquets and heirlooms. We had an older gentleman friend of the family who often sent my grandmother lavish boxes of cut flowers. “I love sending your grandmother flowers because she always has the perfect vase, no matter what I send.” And there they would be in pride of place on the dining room table when he called later for coffee or a cocktail.
These are the things I thought about as I arranged tall stalks of bee-balm and spearmint, a few sprigs of lavender and yellow marigolds this morning. The full blown old fashioned rose went into the bowl of lavender and rose petal potpourri to dry.
The house looks like summer. It’s now mid-morning and time to close the windows and draw the shades against the mid-day heat.
Cyrus J. Lawrence’s collection was dispersed by his family after his death. I have a copy of the sale catalogue somewhere. The Daumier below, now in the Walter’s Gallery, Baltimore, is mentioned in the article announcing the sale.
Cyrus J. Lawrence collections of Daumiers given to the New York Public Library, July 5, 1908
Announcement of sale of collection, NYT Jan 2, 1910
Sale of art collection, NYT Jan 21, 1910
Barye Bronzes bought by Brooklyn Museum, NYT, Jan 23, 1910
Here is a link to the Brooklyn Museum page about the collection http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/exhibitions/barye/
This link will take you to the Walters Gallery, Baltimore and the Daumier that once belonged to Lawrence. http://art.thewalters.org/viewwoa.aspx?id=31440