On 12 December 1899, my granddaddy Orvin Owen Davis was born to Walter and Mary Frances Jollett Davis in Shenandoah, VA.
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| About 1901 |
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| My favorite photo of Granddaddy |
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| I don't know how old he was here, but he was a young man, probably in his late teens or early twenties. |
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| Definitely in his prime! |
Wendy
© 2021, Wendy Mathias. All rights reserved.
My grandaunt Helen Killeen Parker died 11 Oct 1980.
Helen Parker 1957
My grandaunt Catherine Walsh Barany was born 12 Oct 1909.
Cat at home in DC
My great-grandfather John Fleming Walsh died 15 Oct 1918.
The only known photo of John F. Walsh
(these 2 chips are about 1")
My grandfather Orvin Davis died 16 Oct 1963.
Granddaddy and me
Wendy
© 2021, Wendy Mathias. All rights reserved.
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| 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.
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| Davis Store in the 1920s |
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| Walter Davis 1933 |
Among the boxes of STUFF retrieved from my grandparents’ attic after 70 years are several bundles of receipts from the store.
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| Envelopes containing receipts |
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| My grandmother Lucille Davis behind the counter of the Davis Store |
J.D. SNYDER
Most likely J.D. was John David Snyder. He grew up in Shenandoah, and like his father, he worked for the railroad in the 1920s and 30s. Shenandoah was a boom town even during the Depression because of the railroad. If someone in Shenandoah didn’t actually work FOR the railroad, they had a relative who did. In spite of having a steady job, Snyder always seemed to owe money at the Davis Store. The receipts are dated from October 1935 to July 1936.
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| The last receipts of JD Snyder |
The Snyder shopping list was modest, usually Wheaties, bread, lard, soap, beans, bologna, “weinies,” eggs, and bacon. Other practical items included notebook paper, envelopes, and a pencil. The most extravagant purchases were chewing gum, candy and cakes. Occasionally he bought cigarettes. If times were hard, he made an effort to be thrifty and conservative. Nevertheless, he ran up a bill over $60. According to the inflation calculator, that equates to the buying power of $1138.67 today.
1936 was about the time Snyder moved his family to Baltimore, Maryland where he, a son and a daughter went to work at the steel mill. The last three receipts indicate he worked hard to pay off his debt. According to the last receipt, though, he still owed $35. That equates to about $665 today. No wonder my grandparents held onto the receipts. They must have hoped he would finish paying them back.
E.D. ROTHGEB
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| Receipts showing purchase of medicine |
His receipts are all dated from October-December 14, 1938. The timing of going to work for the WPA and the purchases on credit make sense. Times must have been hard. The last receipt shows he put down $2.00 in cash reducing his debt to $20.58. That equates to about $385 in buying power today.
Like the Snyders, the Rothgebs did not seem to be extravagant in their shopping. Most of the receipts are for the typical necessities like bread, lard, meat. However, purchases of aspirin, cough drops, Bromo seltzer and “medicine” suggest someone must have been sick. The holidays meant Essie Rothgeb needed yeast, nutmeg, sugar, flour, and coconut.
ERNEST COMER
Paper-clipped together is the thinnest collection of receipts from Ernest Comer, a farmer by trade. They are dated from July 1937 to October 1938. However, a death record indicates he died in 1936. I know I have the right Ernest Comer because a couple of the receipts are written to his wife Lottie. Aside from the date confusion, what makes this group of receipts interesting is that part of the family debt was paid in goods, specifically meat in November 1937 and potatoes in June 1938.
When I first opened the envelope, I thought Mrs. Moore was a customer at my grandfather’s garage. All the receipts are from his car repair shop. Only one receipt shows work done on her car.
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| 2 tubes and a condenser only 75 cents for labor! |
The rest of the transactions, however, show she was a customer at the grocery store. I wonder if this was about the time that my grandfather took over at the store. Maybe he had not had new receipts printed yet.
Because there were a number of families named Moore living in Shenandoah, Virginia in the 1930s, I did not think I could identify the woman who ran up a debt at the Davis Store in 1933. Robert and Charlotte Moore lived on Seventh Street, just a block behind the store which certainly would have made shopping there convenient. By 1940, the couple was divorced. That made me rethink all the accounts at the Davis Store. Since men were the bread-winner in most households, the accounts were likely in their name even if the wife did the shopping. As a divorced woman, Mrs. Moore had her own account. Unfortunately, the envelope holding her receipts was marked “Judgment.” I think that indicates my grandparents must have sued for payment.
REFLECTIONS
If my grandparents kept a ledger or other bookkeeping system, it did not survive. Only these envelopes of detailed receipts attest to who shopped at the Davis store, what they purchased, what they still owed. With no Excel spreadsheet and no calculator, my grandparents carefully carried the balance forward on each carbon-backed receipt and calculated debits and credits. It was a simple system.
One story I always heard was that customers who could not pay their bill often left diamond rings as collateral. I wonder if these receipts are for the very customers who owned those diamond rings and never came back for them.
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| Ring my mother had made from the diamonds left at the Davis Store |
Amy Johnson Crow continues to challenge genealogy bloggers and non-bloggers alike to think about our ancestors and share a story or photo about them. The challenge is “52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks.”
Wendy
© 2021, Wendy Mathias. All rights reserved.
I come from a long line of dedicated teachers. It is therefore no surprise that some dusty old textbooks have been saved and passed from one generation to the next along with pieces of china, crystal, and silver. These books belonged to my grandfather, his father, and his uncle.
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| My grandfather's textbooks |
Looking
closely at these very old books (over 130 years old) makes me rethink the
one-room country schoolhouse. I always assumed those poor kids probably got a
second-rate education because the school couldn’t afford to do any better. However,
I see now that Rockingham County and Page County picked the best textbooks to
be had in their day.
WALTER’S ARITHMETIC BOOK
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| Walter's arithmetic book |
My great-grandfather proudly wrote his name on several pages of his arithmetic book. “Walter B. S. M. Davis.”
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| Inside cover of Walter's arithmetic book (Did he really need 3 middle names?) |
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| Amaziah Nathaniel's initials |
The book
was “Ray’s Practical Arithmetic, Part Third.” The Ray’s series was one of the
most respected textbooks of its day because it emphasized “real life” math that
students could apply to practical pursuits of running a farm, a business, a
household, even a grocery store. Early on, the series was praised for beginning
with the basics using concrete items like blocks and marbles in order to
prepare students to be able to visualize the abstract later on. Ray’s almost
exclusive use of word problems is credited with improving students’ reading
comprehension.
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| This textbook is very unappealing by today's standards. No colorful charts. Very little "white space." |
Ray
believed teaching could help students develop high moral character. To that
end, he structured his math problems to show honest men and women hard at work plowing
fields, planting and harvesting crops, building, buying and selling, being
generous and sharing their goods. Look at some typical problems:
Although Dr. Joseph Ray died in 1855, his arithmetic books are still in use today, especially among homeschoolers. However, I’m not sure how the homeschoolers feel about the explanation of pints, barrels, and hogsheads required in beer measurements. But I must admit, the explanation of apothecary measurements could be helpful to today’s drug dealers who might need to know how to answer this one:
(Who knew drug dealers had scruples?)
ORVIN’S HISTORY BOOK
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| History of Virginia - New Edition |
His book
is about the size of a 5”x7” photograph and just about ¾” thick. The last
chapter is entitled “The Reconstruction
Period 1865-1890.” I guess there’s something to be said for being born
early.
ORVIN’S LITERATURE BOOK
The
introduction to the book says it all:
“…its authors aimed to include nothing but good literature …. The
tendency of the day is to scrappy reading. It is fostered by newspapers, periodicals,
and compendia of literature; and it is hoped that these Readers will help to
combat this unfortunate tendency, and lead to the reading of good books.”
As textbooks always do, this one gives teaching suggestions, especially on ways to improve oral reading. The authors are not shy about saying Americans have poor speech habits and “disagreeable voices.” They deem it a “national defect.” They even recommend calisthenics to improve students’ carriage, breathing through the nostrils, drilling for proper enunciation, using a dictionary to assure proper pronunciation, and learning to incorporate the right inflections to express the feeling of the written word.
So noble. But these are fifth graders.
Here is what fifth graders did to their books even in 1910:
Flipping pages, I found this on page 25:
On page 300, there's this message saying "She ran away from me and nobody knows where she is."
So who was she, for crying out loud?? DARN! I thought books held the key to all knowledge. What a let-down.
Amy Johnson Crow continues to challenge genealogy bloggers and non-bloggers alike to think about our ancestors and share a story or photo about them. The challenge is “52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks.”
Wendy
© 2021, Wendy Mathias. All rights reserved.
Josy Davis was born on August 1, 1901.
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| Josy Davis 1901-1903 |
She was the fourth child and first daughter of my great-grandparents Walter and Mary Frances Jollett Davis.
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| Millard, Orvin, Josy Davis 1902 |
She was also the second of their children to die very young.
This picture of my grandfather and Josy was always on the fireplace mantle in my grandparents’ home.
Josy and Orvin
© 2021, Wendy Mathias. All rights reserved.
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| Orvin standing |
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| Orvin Davis and Raymond Clift |
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| L to R: Clyde Strole and Millard Davis |
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| from Harrisonburg Daily News Record 11 Jan 1933 |
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| from Harrisonburg Daily News Record 10 Feb 1933 |
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| Stuff from the attic |
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| Part of ad for Michigan State Auto School appeared in Popular Mechanics from Google Books |
