Sepia Saturday: Turning the World Upside Down

Sepia Saturday challenges bloggers to share family history through old photographs.

This week’s Sepia Saturday photo prompt shows a line of children draped across a bar viewing the world upside down.  One photo in my great-aunt Velma Davis Woodring’s scrapbook from her freshman year at Harrisonburg Teacher’s College (now James Madison University – Go Dukes!) suggests the ladies of HTC did their share of viewing the world upside down too:

Left to right: Velma Davis,
Leta LeVow, Thelma Haga
Upside down - ??
Velma captioned this photo "On the Dayton Pike
March 28, 1925"

However, nothing turned the 1920s world upside down like the flapper.  A poem in Velma’s scrapbook announces that the modern woman is different from those of previous generations. 

The Flappers Choice

There was a little flapper girl

Who bobbed her hair and skirts;

And she was known in town as one

Of its most vampish flirts.

Her face was powdered – coated,

With a heavy smear of red,

Which came off on the pillow

When at nite she went to bed.

She laughed and smoked & danced

In perfect happiness.

Some people said she’d go to - - - -

Whenever she was dead.

She soon upset their theories

And went to heaven instead.

When St. Peter questioned her

Beside the pearly gate

And asked her what she’d ever done

She answered him quite straight.

He let her in; she took up her harp

. . . .

There the white ink is so faded that I cannot make out the words.  What a pity.  If Velma wrote this, she did Dorothy Parker proud.

Judging by Velma’s scrapbook, bobbed hair ruled the day at HTC.

"Courtney G"

Velma, Bill Porter,
Leta LeVow, Unknown

Bill Porter, Leta LeVow, Velma

Velma Davis (Woodring)

But that wasn’t always the case.  In fact, HTC tried to discourage students from cutting their hair.  Student teachers were expected to keep theirs long or at the very least disguise the awful truth with hairpins and nets. 

Then in 1924 Mrs. Beatrice Varner entered the picture.  The new dean of women was the perfect combination of attractiveness and ability.  She set the example of good taste in dress and standards of conduct.  No doubt the administrators and faculty were confident that under Mrs. Varner’s leadership this flapper business would soon end.

Those thoughts were short-lived, however.  Mrs. Varner attended a conference in Atlantic City, and while there she treated herself to a new haircut. 

Mrs. Beatrice Varner
(from the yearbook 1926)

When she returned to campus, the president of the college just gave up.  From then on students – even student teachers – were allowed to follow the example of the dean of women, a woman who possessed the spirit of the flapper and turned the HTC world upside down. 

Varner House - Built in 1929, the home economics
practice house was named in honor of Beatrice Varner.
I'm not sure how this building is used today at JMU.

If you want to see people standing on their heads and children at play, please visit Sepia Saturday.  Without a doubt, there will be something there that will turn your world upside down.

Wordless Wednesday: Women and Their Wheels

Wordless Wednesday is a daily prompt at Geneabloggers that asks family historians to create a post in which the main focus is a photograph or image.

Nowhere is the playful nature of my great-aunt Helen Killeen Parker more apparent than in these photos of grown women taking turns posing on a child’s riding toy.  

"Our Ford"
Helen Killeen Parker in the front
and sister Lillie Killeen in the back
Portsmouth, VA about 1918-20

"Jitney"
Portsmouth, VA about 1918-20

"Wanta ride"
Helen Killeen Parker in the back
Unknown in the front
Portsmouth, VA about 1918-20

Sepia Saturday: Those Who Can

Sepia Saturday challenges bloggers to share family history through old photographs.

This week’s Sepia Saturday prompt featuring a chemistry classroom is right on target for Teacher Appreciation Week here in the United States.  Coming from a family of teachers, I’ve always disliked the old expression, “Those who can, Do.  Those that can’t, Teach.”  However, I was happy when some smart person added, “And those who can’t teach, teach teachers.”  OH YES! – you have to have sat through education courses and dealt with administrators to appreciate that brilliant declaration. 

I have written HERE and HERE about my great aunt Violetta Davis Ryan, mostly about her education at the Harrisonburg Normal School (now James Madison University – Go Dukes!).  So today, it’s about Violetta, the teacher.

Some school pictures from Violetta's days teaching at Pleasant Hill School

Likely following her graduation from college, she lived at home in Shenandoah, Virginia and taught at a nearby elementary school.  However, in 1930 she began a long teaching career at Pleasant Hill School in Harrisonburg, Rockingham County. 

Originally the school was a typical one-room frame building used for community meetings, but in 1875 local citizens decided to convert it into a school.  Fifteen years later they added a second room and then a third room in 1907.  By 1916, the school population had grown such that a new building was necessary.

The original Pleasant Hill School
photo courtesy of Rockingham County Public Schools

Land was purchased across the street for the construction of a fine brick building.  The Pleasant Hill School operated from 1917 until 1963, and Violetta spent 28 years there.

Pleasant Hill School, Harrisonburg, VA
photo courtesy of Rockingham County Public Schools

The school was used as a training facility for education majors at Madison College (formerly the Normal School and now James Madison University – Go Dukes!).  Violetta supervised countless student teachers.  Because of that role, she was considered part of the faculty at the college.  Her official title was Supervisor of Junior High. 

Violetta is second from the left.
That's her husband Dick Ryan
along with some of her graduating student teachers.

In 2004, I received a lovely email from one of Violetta’s former students:

Just wanted you to know that your Great Aunt Mrs. Ryan was the Principal and my 7th Grade Teacher at the old Pleasant Hill Elementary School in the years of 1943-44.  I started there in the 2nd Grade and remember her well.

Further, she used to give me jobs cleaning her house back when I was young, since our family lived on the farm east of Harrisonburg, now the home of the new James Madison University! 

Just thought I would let you know!

[Name withheld for privacy]

Harrisonburg, VA

Sixty years later and he still had fond memories of his seventh grade teacher.  

And that is why those who CAN, TEACH – the hope of making a difference. 

Source:

Huffman, Larry.  History of Rockingham County Public Schools.  Rep.  Rockingham County Public Schools, 2001.  Web.   8 May 2013.  http://www.rockingham.k12.va.us/rcps_history/rcpshistory.html

Your assignment is to visit as many Sepia Saturday participants as you can.  So run along now.  Don’t be tardy.

Sepia Saturday: When Smoking Was Cool

Sepia Saturday challenges bloggers to share family history through old photographs.

This week’s Sepia Saturday prompt shows a happy lady, cigarette in hand.  No doubt she was one of the cool kids. 

I grew up when smoking anywhere and everywhere was widely accepted.  However, smoking was for adults.  When I was in school, most teens who smoked tried to hide it from their parents.  But the more rebellious ones didn’t care.  In fact, they were allowed to smoke out by the smoke stack behind the school.  No doubt a school administrator with a sense of humor set that policy.

Cradock High School Portsmouth, Virginia
The smokestack is on the left, towering above the school.

Harry Escue on the right.
I believe that is his son Emile, but I'm not sure.

Historically, smoking was the man’s domain.  That might explain why my distant cousin’s husband Harry Escue proudly posed for a formal portrait with his favorite cigar in hand.

My grandfather Fred Slade, Sr. seemed always to have a cigarette too:

Fred Slade as a young man farming
and smoking on the job 1919

Cigarette in the ashtray  

I guess Granddaddy wasn't
worried about ashes falling
on that sweet baby's head.

Granddaddy Slade smoking in an orange grove

The same can be said of Granddaddy Davis and my own father, but alas, no proof in photos.

By the 1920s, the first wave of women’s liberation brought women smokers out of the closet.  But in the colleges, women were to be ladies.  At Harrisonburg Teachers College (now James Madison University - Go Dukes!), smoking was expressly forbidden.  In fact, the no-smoking rule extended even to traveling for the holidays between home and school although I do not know how that rule was enforced or what the punishment might have been. 

Leta LeVow 1925
Harrisonburg Teachers College

Yet here is my great-aunt Velma Davis Woodring’s college roommate sitting IN her underwear, ON the dresser IN their dorm room, with a cigarette.  That blurred hand must have just put out the match.   

Scandalous!

My mother was also one of the cool college-age smokers.

Mary Eleanor Davis, Christine Westbrook, Betsy Ward
Mary and Betsy have cigarettes.  

In fact, she smoked Pall Mall until a few years before her death in 2005.  When and why she quit is a mystery.  She never announced her intentions to quit.  She never complained about withdrawal or expressed a desire for a cigarette. She just quit.  Out of the blue.  I wasn’t even aware she was quitting.  One day I noticed she wasn’t smoking.  I didn’t hear the familiar inhale-exhale when we spoke on the telephone.  She had quit for good.  Daddy was banished to the garage whenever he needed to smoke. 

He was also known to smoke in the car, the very one Daughter #1 at about age 5 dubbed “a smoker’s car.”  She even informed her younger sister, “We’re going for a ride in a smoker’s car.” 

"the smoker's car"

As for me, I’ve never smoked and have never been tempted to sneak a drag.  I remember watching television the night reporters were all abuzz over the latest research connecting smoking and cancer. I took those reports seriously.

But that didn’t stop us from enjoying candy cigarettes and pretending to smoke.

My sister -- too cool for school in those Go-Go boots!
While we loved candy cigarettes, she is holding
a REAL cigarette.  

If you’re ready for a cigarette break or just a break in general, please visit my friends at Sepia Saturday.

A to Z April Challenge: Z is for Zenith

This is Day 26 – LAST DAY – of the A to Z April Challenge.  My theme is women with unusual names although I must cheat now and then or I’ll have a name and no story.

is for Zenith Hubbell.  “Zenith” means the highest point in the path of a star, the peak, the apex, the culmination.  Appropriate name for the end of the A to Z Challenge, don’t you agree?

Much of Zenith’s life seems rather unremarkable.  She was born in 1901 to Flossie Bucklew and Nelson Hubbell, a clayworker in a factory in Brazil, Indiana.  She attended school, and at age 15 she married Harry Sanders Boes.  However, in three short years she was divorced and back home living with her mother and working as a telephone operator.

In 1921, Zenith married Lee Roy McDonald, my first cousin twice removed.  (Side note:  Lee Roy’s parents were Malvina Davis and Grattan McDANIEL – I’m wondering when and how McDaniel morphed into McDonald!).  They had one son, Lee Roy Jean.

But what interests me about Zenith is that in 1942 she enlisted in the Women’s Army Corps. 

I wonder why.  Was it a burst of patriotism?  Was it for pay and some sense of security?  Sigh ~ another question that will probably never be answered.

Zip, Zoom, or Zigzag over to the A to Z April Challenge Zone for Zillions of Zesty Zingers by Zealous Zanies before they are Zapped.

A to Z April Challenge: Y is for Yonnie

This is Day 25 of the A to Z April Challenge.  My theme is women with unusual names although I must cheat now and then or I’ll have a name and no story.

is for Yonnie Virginia Mathias Cook, my aunt by marriage.  That is, she was my father-in-law’s sister.

Yonnie Mathias

Yonnie was the last child and only daughter born to John Roy and Essie See Mathias on June 5, 1923.  Throughout her youth she lived in Lost River, Hardy County, West Virginia. 

John and Essie Mathias

Essie and Yonnie
When Yonnie grew up, she looked
just like her mother!

However, when she married Ernest Franklin Cook, they became hard-working dairy farmers in Timberville, Rockingham County, Virginia.  In addition to raising cows, they raised four children:  two boys and two girls. 

Ervin, Yonnie, Wilmer, Marvin
Mathias

A family reunion was an important event to Yonnie and her brothers.  It was always held on Father’s Day at Lost River State Park in Mathias, West Virginia.  After Yonnie’s parents died, she assumed the role of matriarch over the Mathias brothers and cousins and saw to it that the family reunion continued.  On Father’s Day.  Yonnie loved the symbolism of honoring the Mathias ancestors on that date.

In recent years, the younger generation has grumbled over the timing of the reunion, mainly because those who married a Mathias are deprived of spending Father’s Day with their own fathers.  Even though Yonnie passed away in 2009, no one has been brave enough to propose a date change.  Soon my husband’s cousin will send out the reminder of date, time, and place for the Mathias Reunion. 

The love and admiration Yonnie and her three brothers had for their parents, and then their children had for their grandparents is a testament to John and Essie Mathias.  That the reunion continues to bring cousins together – on Fathers Day! – is a testament to Aunt Yonnie. 

Yippee!  There will be no Yawning over the Yarns Yielded by Yuppies, Youngsters, Yokels, and Yodelers over Yonder at the A to Z April Challenge.

A to Z April Challenge: X is for the eX Wife

This is Day 24 of the A to Z April Challenge.  My theme is women with unusual names although I must cheat now and then or I’ll have a name and no story.

is for X-wife.  OK, give me a break.  Not many people have a name that starts with “X.”  So I give you a strange family situation involving an ex.

I wrote about Margaret Ann “Maggie” Johnson previously, the mother of Sudie Belle Life.  Mother and daughter were married to the brothers Sell and Will Shiflett. 

Margaret’s oldest daughter Mary was born out of wedlock.  Margaret later married and was widowed by two men:  Jacob Life and George Hott.  Margaret had 2 daughters by Life and 3 daughters by Hott.  I doubt it’s fair to call a widow an “ex wife,” so let’s move on.

Then Maggie married a Mr. Ford about 1894.  The couple and her six daughters settled into farm life in Rockingham County.  The two added three more children to the group:  2 girls and a boy. 

And then the unthinkable happened.  Ford ran off with Maggie’s oldest daughter Mary.  Margaret became the ultimate X-wife in 1900. 

Before December 1954
Maggie Johnson Life Hott Ford Shiflett in the bed
Sell Shiflett holding one of his grandchildren
Alice Lam Shiflett Wolf, Sell and Maggie's ex-daughter-in-law
holding another grandchild
photo courtesy of Erica Shiflett

If you’re caught between a Xenolith and Xylols, you might want to head over to the A to Z April Challenge for some Xeroxing.