Photo Friday - Happy 98th Anniversary

Orvin and Lucille 1925
Shenandoah, VA
expecting their first child

My grandfather Orvin Davis was supposed to be driving Lucille Mary Rucker to nursing school, but instead they eloped across the state line to Hagerstown, Maryland, where they exchanged their vows on 17 September 1923.

Wendy

© 2021, Wendy Mathias. All rights reserved.

Sepia Saturday: BFF

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

The minute I saw this week’s Sepia Saturday photo prompt, I thought of this photo:

 

Kathleen Sigler Rinney

This is Kathleen Sigler Rinney, my maternal grandmother’s best friend when they were girls growing up in the Shenandoah Valley. It is a bit of a puzzle as to how Grandma and Kathleen were childhood friends. Kathleen was the daughter of Chester and Mary Alice Sigler of Luray, quite a few miles from Shenandoah. It would have been inconvenient for her to attend school with my grandmother.

Perhaps Kathleen spent time with her grandparents or other relatives who lived closer to Shenandoah. If so, that might be where Grandma saw Kathleen’s grandmother. The story my grandmother always used to tell was that Kathleen’s grandmother was Black; she always wore a large bonnet, probably hiding her hair. The family apparently passed for White. That would explain why I cannot find any evidence of a Black, “Colored,” or Mulatto grandparent anywhere in Kathleen’s family tree. If any of the Siglers were actually NOT White, they did not claim it in a census.

Kathleen’s father was a grocery salesman, so it’s possible he sold to my grandparents who ran a store on Sixth Street in Shenandoah. But would Kathleen have been her father’s sidekick on those sales runs? I rather doubt it.

At any rate, they were friends. When Kathleen married Edward Aulis Rinney in 1928, she moved to Washington D.C. Edward was a native of Finland but had been in the United States since 1914. Like their father, Edward and his brothers were all carpenters. I wonder if they were “finish carpenters” or just “Finnish carpenters.” Yes, folks, I’m here through the weekend. 

About 1934, Edward and Kathleen moved to Takoma Park, Maryland. For a time Kathleen was a clerk for a department store. According to city directories, she was an authorizer for Woodward & Lothrop, a chain headquartered in Washington D.C. Later she became a supervisor at the store. What she authorized and whom she supervised, I have no idea. But she formed a tight circle of friends among her coworkers.

 

Kathleen is 4th one in

At some point Kathleen and Edward returned to Luray, maybe in their retirement years. They are buried in the Evergreen Memorial Gardens in Luray, Virginia.

 

on Findagrave
photo courtesy JAC

Keep smiling and visit my friends at Sepia Saturday.

Wendy

© 2020, Wendy Mathias. All rights reserved.

Sepia Saturday: A Woman in Uniform

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

This week the Sepia Saturday prompt is a photo of a nurse in uniform standing beside an official car marked “Health – Nursing” parked on a city street.  Since I have no nurses in my family, my thoughts went to uniforms and I thought about my maternal grandmother, Lucille Rucker Davis.  She was not a nurse, but her jobs always required a uniform. 

As a kid growing up, I was used to seeing her in the crisp white button-front uniform of a grocery store clerk at Colonial Store.

My grandmother is the last one on the middle row.
Wonder what's in the envelope?  A bonus?

Doesn’t that white uniform say, “Clean.  Professional.  At your service”?

But when I saw this next picture I was really confused.

My grandmother is the first woman kneeling on the front row.

The back of the picture gives the date and names of all the women pictured.  I knew my grandmother lived in Shenandoah, Virginia, at the time the picture was taken, but I didn’t know she had a job that required a uniform.   The building looks like a school – was she a cafeteria worker?  No.  It turns out, this is the knitting mill.  Fancy that – uniforms for factory workers.    

I’ve noticed that in all three photos, women’s uniforms are basic shirt-waist dresses that button in the front.  No commentary -- Just an observation.  

Shopping Saturday: W. B. Davis & Sons

Shopping Saturday is a daily  prompt at Geneabloggers that encourages bloggers to tell about the various stores that our ancestors patronized or perhaps owned.

I always knew that my great-grandfather Walter B. Davis (husband to Mary Frances Jollett) owned a grocery store at the corner of Sixth Street and Pennsylvania Avenue in Shenandoah, Virginia.  Since many family stories were associated with some memory of “the store,” and since summer visits to my cousins in Shenandoah always included a pilgrimage to “the store” like some religious shrine, it is no wonder that growing up I always thought it was THE store. 

Plus, I had studied some history.  It was the Depression.  Weren’t people poor and out of work? 

Davis Store as it looked in the 1920s-30s

So imagine my surprise upon reading in Shenandoah: A History of Our Town and Its People that in the early 1900s Shenandoah was experiencing an economic boom and businesses flourished.  There were several hotels, lots of restaurants, hat shops, clothing stores, bakeries, meat markets, bowling alley and skating rink, dance halls, an opera house, furniture stores, jewelers, a business school, bicycle shop, saloons, not to mention multiples of hardware stores and general stores. 

In the 1920s-30s, Davis Groceries was just one of many family-run stores with names like Propes, Sullivan, Emerson, Foltz, Booton, and Morris.  

Davis Store as it looks today
(Image from Shenandoah: A History
of Our Town And Its People)

No matter which store shoppers went to, they probably all looked much like the Davis store:  shelves with neatly displayed canned goods, sacks of grain, boxes of cigars, and a coke machine dotted around a central wood or coal burning stove.

That’s my grandmother, Lucille Rucker Davis, working behind the counter.  My mother and her brother were probably in the upstairs apartment or playing with their dog Fritz and running through the neighborhood. 

Judging by the receipts in Walter Davis’s accounts book, he carried many staple items like coffee (38¢), sugar (45¢), bread (24¢), peanut butter (25¢), butter (25¢), soap (08¢), salt (09¢), lard (40¢), soap powder (05¢), matches (02¢), oatmeal (10¢), and potatoes (40¢ ).  But a shopper could also count on Mr. Davis for other items like thread (05¢), oil (18¢), chicken feed, and cigarettes (15¢).

This scale from the store must’ve been used for weighing fresh fruits and vegetables, and bulk items like coffee and sugar. 

Even though Shenandoah was a boom town, shopping for everyday items wasn’t easy for everyone.  Among the memorabilia that my family preserved for 80 years is a small stack of receipts paper-clipped together.  Dated from 1924-28, the receipts are all from one family.  They bought on credit and paid down a little here and there with cash.  Occasionally the bill was paid by hauling goods. 

Some people left diamond rings at the store in exchange for goods.  Sadly, the owners never came back for them.  After my grandmother died, my mother had a ring made from the mismatched stones. 

One sizeable diamond plus 4 chips
taken from rings left at the Davis Grocery Store

When I wear this ring, I can see my mother’s hand, but I also imagine the worried hands that reluctantly pawned a prized possession as barter for food at my great-grandfather's store.