Sepia Saturday challenges bloggers to share family
history through old photographs.
This week’s Sepia Saturday prompt is a busy street scene
that offers any number of interpretations. However, the men in the bottom right
corner looking at a pile of stuff inspired me to take another look at this
photo:
The photo is in a scrapbook that belonged to my grandaunt
Velma Davis Woodring. I assumed these were friends and that the photo was taken
probably between 1921 and 1928. But who were these men? What was this place? It
might have been some place in Harrisonburg where Velma was studying at
Harrisonburg Teachers College (now James Madison University - Go DUKES!), or it
might have been a building in her hometown of Shenandoah, Virginia.
And was this place under construction? Undergoing
demolition? Or was it a storage place? Where are the doors? And what is that
thing under the tarp? At first I thought it was a small cannon, but that makes
no sense. Is it a spool? A speaker? A handle to that thing behind it?
Eh ~ never mind. Back to my original question: Who were
these men? The one on the left seemed familiar, and then it came to me. He
looks like a younger version of this man on the right:
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| Frank Wysong and Jacob Hockman scanned from Shenandoah: A History of Our Town and Its People |
The bow tie, the tilt of the hat, the air of authority. If
my suspicions are correct, the man in the wood pile was Jacob Hockman, the neighbor
and good friend of my great-grandparents Walter and Mary Frances Jollett
Davis. The families lived on the same side of Sixth Street in Shenandoah,
Virginia. Their daughters were best friends.
Jacob “Jake” Hockman and his wife Attie started the Home
Fuel and Supply Co, Inc. in 1918 dealing in both building supplies and coal.
In 1927 Jake Hockman was featured in the Shenandoah
Magazine as part of a series on local businessmen. He was praised for his
business philosophy which was to provide “proven material that must stand the
test of time and wear.”
The Hockmans started small but over the years Jake
expanded his business to include a warehouse, lumber house, lumber yard, and
coal yard. Its location with the railroad on one side and highway on the other
made it easy to supply local contractors with cement, plaster, lime, paint,
varnish, and, of course, lumber and coal. As the magazine noted, Jake “spared
no effort to make it a progressive and successful business, and, in so doing,
he has gained the confidence and approval of those who have known him.”
The building and STUFF look more like a salvage yard than
a one-stop-shop for fresh building supplies, but there is a kinship in the two.
Probably one of Jake’s best customers was my great
grandfather Walter Davis. He was a carpenter and house builder who built not
only his own home on Sixth Street but also many of the houses in Shenandoah,
quite a few of them right there on Sixth Street.
I have thought maybe the man on the right of the first photo was Walter. The
hat is his style.
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| Walter Davis and his car |
However, most of the photos of Walter Davis are from the late
1920s when he was in his late 50s-early 60s.
With that realization, I am now doubting that the other
man is Jake Hockman. Perhaps it is his son Paul who in 1930 was the manager of the coal and lumber yard.
The bottom line - I’m back to where I started. Who were
these men? What was this place?
See how others were inspired at Sepia Saturday.
Wendy
© 2018, Wendy Mathias.
All rights reserved.
