Little Fur Family

In honor of Groundhog's Day I post a Sepia Saturday addenda featuring small furry creatures venturing out in the sunlight.

Garth Williams' little fur toddler

My little fur father, 1919

My little fur mother, 1922

Sepia Serendipity: First Look at a Great Grandfather

Today for Sepia Saturday I offer the only known photos of a man I believe is my father's grandfather, John J. Bentley.  However, since the theme for the week involves bicycles, I'll open with this one of my father Nelson with his father George and sister Dorothy, circa 1920.  There - that's out of the way!  Now:

The memory of my mother, 90, has been getting worse for a couple of years now. About a year ago when we went to the bank to see what was in her safety deposit box, because she couldn't remember, we realized that she had misplaced the key. Rather than having them expensively drill out the lock, we decided opening it wasn't a priority.

Last weekend, as we moved her into an assisted living apartment, I by chance decided to pack one of her jewelry display cases. This necessitated removing and wrapping the knick-knacks within it; I happened to open one of these, a silver box I remember being fascinated by as a child. Inside the box along with some special edition quarters and foreign coins was the missing key. The following day we returned to the bank.

In the safety deposit box, along with various legal and financial papers, was a motley collection of memorabilia only a mother could love: my sister's and my own baby hair in tiny envelopes; everyone's birth certificates; my grandfather's death certificate; my parents' high school and college diplomas... and (jackpot!) several envelopes of old photos of my mother's and father's families - most of which I had never seen.

I am astounded that even though I have been rabidly researching our family for nearly ten years, my mother never mentioned that these photos existed. And at this point neither she nor I know where she got them or how long they were in her possession.

I place this photo also at 1919-1920; the nipper gripping the steering wheel is my father, the girl his sister Dorothy, who would have been about 8, and despite the dubious quality of the photo I think I can make out the features of my grandmother Jessie Bentley.  The vehicle may well have been the delivery truck for the Bentley General Store; note the roll-down sides and what look like oval isinglass wing-windows.

I don't know much about John Bentley. He was born in 1850, and it's not unlikely he was born in the same house we see here in Elm, Michigan, a very rural suburb of Detroit. His father, George Nelson Bentley, from Saratoga, New York, had settled in the area in 1835.

A fat, happy baby Nelson enjoying the view from the front porch.

In 1869 John married Margaret Bredin, whose family had arrived in 1864 from the Londonderry area of Ireland. (I have a separate Sepia Saturday post about her and the fairies that accompanied her on the voyage.)

This shot, alas with no captions, demands a few guesses... first, that this was taken a few years earlier than the others (say 1913) because the young child (age 3-4?) looks more like Dorothy than baby Nelson, who was born when Dorothy was seven. Secondly, I'm not sure who the middle couple is: my guess is Aunt Gladys and Uncle Clyde, older brother to my grandfather George, on the left behind his wife Jessie, who's wearing a peculiar smirk. Thirdly, I'm assuming that that's Grandma Margaret Bredin. Everyone's all dolled up for this shot; Gladys (if it's Gladys) looks poised to take the next one, with her accordion-style camera.

And here's John with Nelson again, this time on what looks like the back stoop. I can't tell what's up with the back door...it looks like a rug is sticking out the bottom (keeping out the sand?)...

Here Grampa John hoes, with my father (age 2-3?) apparently helping to weed.  Were it not fore the caption "Nelson," I might have thought this was his sister because of the fetching sundress and hat. This does not look like my father's house, so must be John's.  This may have been the last time my dad did any gardening.

John Bentley died in 1922 when my father was about four, not long after this photo was taken.

Great Aunt

Back into the Sepia Saturday fray with: Sophie Singer. 

Sophie was born in Russia in 1875. The eldest of four sisters, she was nearly 20 years older than her only brother, Arthur, my grandfather. Until recently I had only seen a couple of photos of her, taken when she was in her eighties. Via Ancestry.com and some other sleuthing I was sent these photos of her, from descendants of her sister Ida.

Here's a photo I am given to understand is Sophie with her husband Louis R. Gold, who was born in 1871 in Rumania. They apparently met in Minneapolis after she had settled there with her parents in 1887. My guess this was taken around 1890. Louis Gold was a furrier - as in fact Sophie's father Isaac Singer was, which would suggest that if Louis didn't actually work with him, they might have known each other professionally. There is plenty of fur in evidence in these outfits - as good for the Midwest winters as they would have been in Eastern Europe.

  A few years later, Sophie models what I assume is a gorgeous example of her husband's handiwork. I wonder what, if anything, she's wearing under it! Notice that she seems to have bleached her hair.

Here is Sophie with a twentyish Arthur, which would put the date around 1915 and her age around 40.

Here in 1915, Sophie dandles her granddaughter Winifred, whose mother Ida (born in 1892 and named after Sophie's sister) was the eldest of Sophie's three children.

And after a long photographic lapse, here is Sophie in the 1940s, having moved to Los Angeles, with daughter Ida. I had thought the man was Louis, but there is some suggestion that he might have died as early as 1921. She still has a beguiling smile.

And here in the 1950s, in the foreground, we have another of grandpa Arthur's sisters, Annie, in the striped dress, and Sophie in the black dress, with my grandmother Helen. (One of Annie's daughters is standing with Arthur.)  Alas, I never met her, although she was still around when I visited L.A. in 1975.

Protest

Haven't taken many photos recently, given inclement weather and being occupied with family maelstroms... So last Sunday was a much needed photo op, as I and Robin braved frigid (though uncharacteristically sunny!) weather to join over a thousand Seattleites on a march and rally in memory of the butchered children and teachers of Sandy Hook, Connecticut.

It was redolent of the peace marches I participated in during the 60s - signs and costumes, kids and dogs and grandmas. There were singers, speechifiers, politicians, and interdenominational clergy, as well as the mayor and the head of the teachers' union.

Lurking among those protesting the inexcusably unfettered availability of pure killing machines were a handful of anti-protestors who by and large think that their own paranoid male fantasies trump the health and welfare of 297,000,000 other Americans. Insensitive and arrogant of them to flaunt their personal weapons at such a somber occasion. The black shirt is a telling touch, don't you think?

They seem to believe that if we all carry these (and larger) weapons at all times, we will all be safer. In that event, we would become accustomed to the site of blue steel. How, then, would we be able to tell which of the myriad gun-toters around us might be the psycho about to open fire on the crowd? What's to say that having access to such power at everyone's hips would not tempt those who otherwise might tamp down their frustrations to simply satisfy their flash of anger with the flash from a gun barrel?

American society contains large swathes (though fortunately not a majority) of sick, sick people. Some of them already have sizable arsenals. I am far more afraid of their agenda than of the "tyranny" they claim to be preparing to resist. We must prevent any more of these "weapons of mass destruction" from entering the populus. We're better than that.

The following two photos of "law-abiding Americans" are courtesy of my friend Kathleen Atkins. You can see more of her photography on Etsy.  

(This ignoramus has a slight "understanding" problem himself: Having bare arms is not  constitutionally protected.)

And the next four are courtesy of my friend Al Garman. You can see more of his rally shots on Flickr.

I was pleased by President Obama's speech today (1/16) as well as the one following the school Connecticut shooting. Here's hoping Congress can get their act together to follow through on his proposals without any more shameful politicking.

Holiday Backstage

This weekend, the neighborhood's annual holiday bazaar materialized briefly in the vast space once occupied by the Red Apple grocery. I was there in the early hours before the throngs showed up to shop for jams, candles, scarves, greeting cards, jewelry, and other mostly locally produced gifts. As always, I was more entranced by what lay behind the scenes, in the bowels of the old store: vacancies within the larger vacancy, relics of commerce.