Dedie and Michael Augustus Ward Family History

Here is my Great-Grandmother Edith Ward Cleveland, who I was most fortunate to know when I was a tiny girl and she was a widow, living in San Francisco.  When I was very small, she would take care of me when my parents had other things to do, probably theater things.  I can remember her home in the San Franciso brownstone very slightly, the joy in walking into the living room, a jar of butterscotch on the fireplace mantle, and a fold-up bed on wheels that was taken down for me.

It just now occurs to me that this same twin size folding bed was the one my mother slept in just a few years before when she was a student at San Franccisco State University and was living with her grandmother and grandfather George and Edith, known to everyone as Dedie.  I remember walking with her down the hill to a park and a playground, and I can find both on Google maps today.

My other memory is standing on a stool in her kitchen, bright sun in the window, and she is peeling an apple for me with a knife, working around the apple to make one very long peel.  It was the most magical thing I had ever seen up to that young age.

This photo is taken in Coquille, and if I'm a teenager then it would have been about ten or twelve years after she peeled that apple for me.  Here is a photo of her as a young woman, in 1923 when she was 36 years old.  And, I have recently made a Find a Grave memorial for her as well.

 

In going through my file, I found again the family history of Dedie's father and mother Michael A. and Molly Moran Ward.  What a story about then leaving New York during the Civil War, taking a ship to Panama, crossing to the Pacific on a stage coach, another ship to San Francisco, and then a train to Portland and later land in farm near Salem.  With three little children and Mary also pregnant.   You will enjoy reading this story of how the family eventually ended up in Prosser, Washington, with 12 children spread across the Pacific Northwest.  I was surprised to realize that some of the stories that Dedie had told me did not mesh with this written historical account.  Of course, I may not have remembered them correctly, but no, none of her four brother died in the wheat harvest, a story that I had retold others.

I have followed up several of the last names through Find a Grave and found several graves, and suspect that there are distant cousins out there also writing up family history someday.  I hope that they find this blog.

Yay:  I was able to find an email from my mother about where Dedie and Buddy lived:

"THE  Cleveland address as late as the mid 1950s was:  #3  Central  Avenue.   Across from Buena Vista Park.  Both Central and Buena Vista came up hill from Haight Street.  Follow the map out Haight...not as far as Ashbury.  Central Ave homes had three and four floors and fronted right on the cement side walk.  There were always stair leading up to the front entries.  Because the hill was so steep.  But Dedie's house was at the top of the hill and so you could also walk around the side on the street level and enter by french doors at the side of the house. There were five apts in the house.  Theirs was the lower front "flat"... large and roomy with bay windows in the L.R. facing the leafy park across the street.  It was as large as your Washington St. Apt in Evanston, Candy, but not as many light-filled windows as you had in yours.  I loved visiting them.  Buddy and I would walk in the park and feed the squirrels with peanuts he always had in his jacket pocket.  He'd sneak a cigarette on the walk and I always had to promise not to tell Dedie. I have vivid recall of climbing up that hill on foot.  Bus from SF State stopped at the bottom on Haight St.  And whether you took Buena Vista up or walked right up Central...you could sure feel it in your legs!  Dedie did it with bags of groceries almost every day.

And so, here is a screen shot from Google maps: 

Baby Pictures and Deep Memories

After thinking more about this blog, I see that it gives me the opportunity to explore deep memories of my family and grandparents, as brought up by looking a loved ones, but it also let's me talk a bit about my life today.  If  future generations find these photos up in the cloud they will have plenty to learn about my children, but my Internet imprint, though growing, will not be as extensive.

On a snowy Evanston day, after having  made granola and nibbling on saffron buns in honor of St. Lucia's day  (first time, pretty good), waiting for a delivery of a box of oranges in support of the local Rotary club, it feels right to take another hour to sort through family photos.  I'm very sure that these photos have been taken, developed, sorted, filed, stored, unearthed, looked over, culled, sorted for new owners, packaged to be mail, traversed the country in planes and trucks, arrived at my door, sighed over, tucked away again, and now uploaded to a new digital life.  I will sort them again into earnest piles, books, storage bags, a protected corner somewhere in the tiny town home and it is hoped that someday they will make it into a nice scrapbook, the easier to share with future friends, relatives and grandchildren.

Of course, I am perfectly aware that I make these scrapbooks for me and only for me.  I want to have them, display them and look them over and remember.  Alas, I am not yet one of those people who makes a scrapbook page and then uploads the whole page to general acclaim and admiration, but that day may come with a larger scanner.  We will see.

Today's photo is a scanned collage of the photos all taken just a few days after my birth.  I believe that I have a memory of this crib, but it would be of when my brother was in it.  Featured here are my Lagergren and Moore grandparents, my mother Karen Lagergren Moore and tiny me. The reason these are so crisp is that I found the negatives and had them reprinted.  I love the rich color here.

Whoops, I'm older in the photo with Lorraine.  There's another photo I have around here of my mother in the crib with me.  This would be in the Southern California, our family lived in several houses there before we moved to Oregon and my memories are quite faint.  But, look at the cool outdoor fireplace!

Baby photo of Candy

After working on my first child's baby book, and when visiting my mother in Oregon, I asked her if she had a baby book for me, and she did.  Like many baby books, the first few pages were carefully completed, the final pages, not so much.  But, tucked in the back, along with a curl of my hair, was a packet of photo negatives, the kind that used to sit in piles in the backs of drawers, because someday we might want to print those photos again, which no one ever did.

Without asking, I took those negatives back to Evanston, Illinois, with me, and to the camera shop that got a lot of my money over several years (and then disappeared with all the other camera and print shops), and had them print a set of photos from what were then 35 year old negatives.

This is what I got, a picture of me as a tiny baby and all four of my grandparents.  They look in the photo as they look in my mind, as I first saw them as an infant and during my childhood.  All four of them were just thrilled with me, see the crafty room decor made with peppermint candies to match my name.  While we could guess that this photo was taken in Richmond, it just as well could have been taken in Sacramento at the home of my Lagergren grandparents, especially since they would have had a nice guest room for the Moore grandparents.

They are from left to right, Paul Lagergren, Lorraine Moore, Hal Moore and Dorothy Lagergren.  Many years later we got a hint that Hal and Dorothy were very fond of each other, friends of course, but always pleased to be able to spend time together.  But, that's another story.

Candace

Using the Website Find a Grave to create Memorial Pages

Lorraine Yeargan Moore at Find A Grave

I have an account at Find A Grave, where I have been building memorials for early believers of the Baha'i Faith and now, members of the family.  This is where we can pinpoint where the members of  our family are buried and record birth and death dates and connections with their parents and children.  It's a very handy site and easy to use.  I am hopeful that by using Find a Grave and connection this blog that someday we will connect with other branches of the family.

We can ask Narcissa Whitman, the first white woman to travel to Oregon to be our muse, since it looks like all four branches our family came to the West Coast to follow a dream.  She is buried at this National Historic Site in Walla Walla, Washington.

Candace

Lorraine Yeagan as a Young Woman, our Grandmother

This is Lorraine Yeargan, as a young woman, perhaps before she met our grandfather Hal Moore.  Lorraine's story in our family was so singular that the family told it over and over again, often enough that we remember most of the best parts of it.  But, we are the older generation now, our parents and grandparents and aunts and uncles are passed away and our memories of them are all that's left.  If these stories are to be remembered still, then we should place them somewhere, that when they come to look for them, our children and grandchildren will be able to find  them.  Hence, Molly Moore Emmons and Candace Moore Hill will commence to upload the family photos that have been filtering down to us from estates and house clean-outs and do our best to remember the stories of those we knew and loved.