Water and Bugs

The kids had a blast in the lake at the AFI picnic at Lake Harmony on August 2, 2008.

Elliot was especially fun to watch as he enjoyed falling forward on his face in the water.

There were bugs along the shore that he enjoyed exploring, so that's what he is talking about and pointing to.

Happy 124th Birthday, Ernest Martin!

Ernest Hiram Martin was born August 15, 1884, in Eaton County, Michigan. (The family Bible has him as Hiram Earnest.) He was the only child of Hiram Francis Martin and Laura Henrietta Craun. Each had been previously married and had children from those marriages. Hiram had been married to Sarah Craun, (Laura's cousin?), , and was the father of Charles Seymore, Martha May (May), Cora Ellen, and Viola Sarah (Ola). Laura had been married to Benjamin Franklin Stoner and was the mother of Maude, Earl, and Guy. Interestingly, Earl and Ola married each other, of course not illegally, but frowned upon by some.

Ernest in his little blue velvet suit.

Gail has a hand-colored copy of this in an oval frame. Lovely! From that, I could never tell if this was a photo or a drawing, because the proportions look odd. But now that I've seen this photo, I guess it's real!

This is the Martin homestead on Royston Rd. Ernest, Hiram, Erle, Guy, Laura, Viola (in door).

Grandpa said he remembered crawling behind the heating stove in this house and seeing a blue racer snake.

Ernest Hiram Martin

Handsome Fellow!

Another photo at home.
Laura, Erle, Hiram, Ernest

Now here's a whole bunch of family in the yard! Many of the children are Grace Stoner Densmore's. Popular thing to have the cars in the picture!

Ernest and Gretta are just about in the middle, with Doris beside Gretta.

Erle, Doris, Laura, Ernest, Donna, Gretta, Hiram about 1917

Gretta, Roial, Donna, Belle (Roial's first wife), Ernest in the 1920s

Here's the barn on Royston Rd. after the "cyclone" hit in the early 1930s.

This is in 1949 at Aunt Doris's house on Water Street in Eaton Rapids. It was right across from the river.

Ola, Sam, May with Bonnie, Mary, Gretta with Jon, two of Hannah's(?) Ernest

Erle, TH, Doris, Donna, Don, Gail, Ardyce, two more of Hannah's(?), Hannah, Hubert, Claude

Can you find Norman?

I always loved this picture of Grandpa eating watermelon. I remember having lots of snacks (especially corn or watermelon) out in the yard. And Grandpa did love watermelon!

Rod Wright, Mary Wright, Gretta, Ernest

First United Methodist Church, Albion, Michigan

September 15, 1962

Grandpa went to school on picture day and had his photo taken.

This was in 1974 at Doris's house on Bellevue Hwy. south of Eaton Rapids.

I think it might be at Ernest's 90th birthday party. If not, it was right around there.

Back: Steve, Kristie, Mary, Nancy

Front: Amy, Bonnie, Donna, Ernest, Jeff, Kevin

Amy wasn't too happy in this series of pictures.

August 16, 1975

TH and Doris

Ernest with Aaron, Donna

Jeff, Amy, Kevin, Kristie

This was (again) at Doris's house, just before we left to move to Utah.

You can tell the kids had been swimming in the pool.

Ernest died on his 92nd birthday, August 15, 1976. He is buried in Maple Grove Cemetery in Charlotte, MI.

Ethan and Mallary's Wyoming Book and Quilts for Mally and Molly

I finally finished Ethan and Mallary's little Wyoming booklet this weekend. I loved the Flair cowboy papers. Here are a few of the pages:

I finished Molly's quilt last fall and Mally's last week. They were both fun to piece, but especially Mally's, because it involved several steps of cut-and-sew. I had started it in a greater variety of colors, but realized that she would like mostly pink (and green), so I have quite a few blocks for another project. The Pinkalicious label refers to a book she got for her birthday about a little girl who loves pink cupcakes.

Happy Birthday, Gretta Belle Staley

Gretta Belle Staley was born on February 14, 1885, in Tiffin, OH, the daughter of Joshua Clayton Staley and Alice Edith Loose (that’s a long o). Her father owned a drayage business. She had two brothers, Ellsworth Greg, born August 3, 1883, and Roial Clayton, born July 4, 1886. She remembered them teasing her the year she questioned Santa Claus by putting soap and coal on her plate instead of the usual fruit and candy.

Gretta and Ells, 1885

Alice and Clayt in front

Roial, Gretta, and Ellsworth in back

Gretta's first job was in a ladies’ clothing store. When she went to Michigan one summer to visit relatives, she attended the Eaton County fair, where she met Ernest Hiram Martin. They were married on 12 March, 1907, in Tiffin. For their honeymoon, they took the train to the big city of Akron, OH. They moved in with Ernest’s parents’ on Royston Rd. between Eaton Rapids and Charlotte, MI, and began building a small home on the same property south of the homestead. Their first child, Doris, was born on December 7, 1907, just after they moved in. Gretta remembered lying in bed in the new house with the new baby, watching the plaster dry. Donna was born on 1 September, 1915.

Probably in 1919, they bought a lot and built a larger home on a hill a couple miles south on the same road . On November 11, 1919, after Ernest, Gretta, and Donna had been to Lansing for the day, the home burned to the ground. Donna remembers her dad and the man across the street moving the piano out of the house to save it, and 7 men moving it back in after it was rebuilt. All the harvest of cabbage, apples, and potatoes, which had been stored in the basement, was well-cooked, and had to be shoveled out and fed to the animals. Donna’s doll and wicker buggy were also saved, although the buggy suffered a burn hole. While the family rebuilt on the same foundation, the across-the-street neighbors moved to town (he was a barber in Eaton Rapids), and the Martins moved in to their house, keeping the two children so they could attend the country school down the road.

The Martins also lived through a tornado, which destroyed their barn in 1929 or 1930. A few years later, while Donna was in college, Ernest and Gretta were returning home from a visit to family in Kalamazoo, and were in a head-on car accident. Gretta broke her pelvis and spent several months in a full-length cast with a stabilizer bar between the feet. From that she recovered fairly well, but after a fall in Carter’s Market in the late 1950s (she caught the strap of her boot on a display)which caused another broken bone, she had difficulty getting around.

When Hubert was drafted into World War II, Ernest and Gretta sold their farm and moved in with Donna and Mary, who had recently moved to Battle Creek. Ernest got a custodial job with the Battle Creek Public Schools, and Gretta babysat, while Donna worked at the dairy and ice cream bar across the street. Sometimes in the afternoon Gretta would send Mary over to pick up a treat. Her favorite was a pineapple sundae. After the war they stayed a few years in Battle Creek, then purchased a home in Charlotte, where Ernest worked at the Armory. Not long after, they moved to a 40-acre farm on Packard Highway. In the 1960s they moved to Crane St. in Eaton Rapids. By then, Grandma spent most of her days in a chair and rarely went out. She died of a stroke on October 25, 1972. She is buried in Maple Hill Cemetery in Charlotte.

Gretta was probably a typical farmer’s wife for most of her life. She spent a lot of time making a home for her family and cooking. She also helped out with the farm work and did the gardening. Being tied to a farm and somewhat isolated out in the country, there was not a lot of social time or travel, but Donna remembers going to pedro parties on occasion. Family was the main social connection. There was no church near, so they did not go to church. It was a great thing in the early 1950s when they got a phone with a party line—phone number 1248J2.

I remember Grandma spending a lot of time in the kitchen. On Saturdays she baked bread and pies and cooked beans in a little enameled pan with no handle. She made her bread from a potato yeast she nurtured from week to week. She canned jam, apple butter, and pickles of all kinds—even watermelon, beets (for use with eggs), and peaches (a good Pennsylvania Dutch meal always had plenty of pickles). She made sweets such as stuffed dates, taffy, popcorn balls, molasses cookies, and penuche. She cooked her own chicken from scratch—that means she got the chicks, fed them, killed them, eviscerated them, plucked them, and cooked them. I remember being banned from the kitchen during the more gory parts of the process, but we did get the feet to play with afterwards. They drove the dogs crazy when we pulled the tendons and scratched the dogs’ heads with them.

Grandma also did quite a bit of embroidery and crochet. She made a lot of doilies, which she put to good use on the arms and backs of chairs so Grandpa wouldn’t get the chairs dirty. Her pillowcases all had embroidered flowers or crocheted edgings. She used to collect Gold Bell gift stamps from the grocery store. They would be pasted into little booklets, which could be turned in for all kinds of neat things pictured in the Gold Bell catalog. But she always seemed to turn hers in for pillowcases, which cost one book for a set of 2.

She did a lot of gardening, mostly out of necessity, but also out of enjoyment. During our weekly visit, we usually had a garden tour to see the progress of all the plants, and we often spent a while shelling peas or snapping beans at her direction. She enjoyed her rose of Sharon bushes, and also had quite a green thumb when it came to plants inside. She had a large basket of ferns in the dining room, and her violets, Christmas cactus, and other plants seemed to flourish. She often had jars of cuttings getting ready to give to someone.

Grandma liked to do jigsaw puzzles, and there was often a card table set up with a puzzle in progress. If we visited on Saturday, and stayed for the evening, we’d watch her favorite things on TV—Lawrence Welk and professional wrestling.

Gretta in her young years

When Donna moved from her Fitch Street home in 2001 she had a tag sale in the house. Afterwards, the sale manager cleaned the remaining things out and prepared the home to be sold. Mary and I went through the empty house. In the bedroom, I noticed a 1" scrap of paper on the floor, which I almost left there. It wasn't my job to clean up! But I decided I should be responsible and put in the trash. Imagine my delight when I turned it over and found Grandma, which picture I had never before seen!

Ethel Fredericks (Gretta's friend from Tiffin), Ernest, Gretta

On the porch of the first home, probably 1908

Ernest, Gretta, Roial(?), Doris

Doris, Gretta, Ernest

Donna, Tom Hall, Gretta, Ernest, Emma Hall

Uncle Tom and Aunt Emma lived in Washington, D.C.

About 1922

Ola Martin Stoner, May Martin Royston, Donna Martin, Gretta,
Hannah(?), and Laura Stoner Martin

At a camp meeting in 1924

Edward and ? Curtis, Gretta, Donna, and Doris (behind the truck)

There was plenty of gravel on that land, which made some good money and helped pay off the debt on the property.

Gretta, Ernest, and Roial

Gretta, Sue Ann Bowyer (first great-grandchild), Ernest
1953

Ernest and Gretta on back porch (on Packard Highway in late 50s?)

Ernest and Gretta on Crane Street
About 1968

Happy Birthday, Hubert Kenneth Gaskell!

Hubert Kenneth Gaskell was born on January 23, 1914, in Grelton, Henry County, Ohio. He was the son of Eugene R Gaskell and Mary Effie Fish Gaskell. He had two older brothers, Jesse Gerald, born June 24, 1904, and Robert Eugene, born January 16, 1912.

The family lived in Grelton, Homer, MI, Tekonsha, MI, and Albion, MI, during Hubert's growing-up years. Hubert graduated from Albion High School in 1931 and Albion College in 1936, with a major in music and a teaching degree. He married Donna May Martin on October 7, 1937. They lived on East Michigan Ave in Albion. He may have worked at the Post Office during that time.

In October, 1943, Hub's brother urged him to apply for a job at Post Cereal. He got the job, so they purchased a home on East Michigan Ave in Battle Creek. In December of that year, he was notified that he was drafted into the US Army. Ernest and Gretta Martin sold their Eaton County farm and moved in with Donna and Mary while he was away. Hub went to Fort Lee, VA, for basic training, then worked in New York City with the APO during the remainder of the war. He told the story of the day a plane crashed into the Empire State Building. When he heard about it, he went over to see the building. I remember him also telling about eating at the Automat, an early restaurant version of vending machines, where you put in your nickel or dime and opened the little glass door to get your sandwich or pie. After the war was over, he served on ships which took prisoners of war back to Europe and picked up US prisoners of war. He docked once in Italy and once in Belgium, and may have gone one other time. He served in the entertainment area, showing movies, playing music, helping with leather crafts, etc.

When he returned home, he, Donna, and Mary took a vacation to the west, going out by way of Mt. Rushmore, visiting through California, and returning by way of Colorado, where an army buddy lived. He was considering taking a job there, but his dad called him and reported that a position was open at the Albion PO and that he should get right home, which he did. They bought a house at 707 N. Berrien, then moved to 302 College Court in the early 1950s. He worked the rest of his career at the PO, first as a clerk, and then as Superintendent of Mails.

He belonged to the Methodist Church. He and Mom went to Fortnightly Fellowship there (every other Sunday night), and sometimes it met at our house. He sometimes ushered at church, which meant he got to pass the collection plate. He and Mom also played bridge maybe monthly with a group of maybe half a dozen couples. It was fun to have them at our house, especially after my dad built the lazy susan table. We would set it up in the dining room--the center wheel with a round tabletop on it for the dishes-to-pass, then the four quarter-circles of masonite around the outside where the dinner plates went.

He was active in Eastern Star, locally and state-wide. I remember going to plenty of potlucks and square dances at the Masonic Temple. He also was involved in Knight's Templar, for which he had a pretty cool uniform, including a plumed hat and an awesome sword. He also attended Rotary Club every Thursday noon. He played the sousaphone in several bands, including the Albion Community band, which put on summer concerts at the band shell. I remember sitting on the lawn on a blanket, seeing night fall as we listened to music and watched fireflies. If it was cold or wet, we sat in the car and honked the horn at the end of songs. There were lots of Sousa marches, which were especially fun because someone would always come out and twirl the baton during them. When I was younger, I would take my little black-tipped baton along and try my best to twirl it. He also played in the Grand Rapids Shrine Band, which practiced every Monday night--was it at the Pantlind Hotel? I don't remember any concerts, but they did play when the circus came to Grand Rapids, and I do remember going to the circus, especially the strange smells that accompanied it. I believe that both bands honored him for longevity in playing for them. Was it 60 years with the Albion band?

Hub had several hobbies. Besides the sousaphone, he played piano and organ. He could play lots of popular songs from memory, and I remember lying in bed many a night, listening to his piano or organ music as I fell asleep. He tinkered a lot with pianos and organs. The fraternity guys across the street would bang on an old grand piano on their porch, until my dad offered to take it. He worked on it for quite a while until it looked beautiful and played OK. We also had a player piano that he worked on. Sometimes he would arrange the hammers or strings on it so that it sounded like a honky tonk piano. We were often among the first people to have a new invention. That was true of our reel-to-reel recorder We got the parts for it in Grand Rapids and Dad made a box for it and hooked up a speaker. My friends and I would spend hours recording "radio programs" that we made up. Our favorite was to do take-offs on Art Linkletter kids segments. Hub also was interested in photography. He took lots of photos and had his own darkroom in the basement. Hub often solved problems in clever ways--they sometimes took more time and energy than you might have had to spend, but they were always elegant. When he gave us his oldest organ, we had to get it out of his basement on Lombard St.--and it was HEAVY! He rigged up ramps and a series of pipes that we rolled it across, taking the back pipes up front as it rolled along. In this manner, he and Aaron and I were able to move that organ up from the basement, across the front room carpet, back down the front steps, down the sidewalk, and up into our van. I don't remember how we got it into our house.
Hub married Mary Pauline Fraser in 1962. He died on January 5, 2001, and is buried in Riverside Cemetery in Albion, Michigan.

Robert, Gerald, and Hubert in 1915

Hubert in June, 1926

This may have been his college picture. It was taken at Ludwig Studios in the 1930s.

He and Mom were friends with their daughter Margaret Ludwig and Bill Cargo, who later married.

Mary, Donna, and Hubert at the National Zoo in Washington, D.C.

in the early 1940s.

Dad did a lot of photography and often made our Christmas cards.

This was the 1958 card.

You can see that Trudy was with us that year.

Back: Hubert, Donna, Gertraud, Mary. Front: Jon and Bonnie

Our first Polaroid picture. I think we were at the Cargos home in Maryland.

Same people, same order, except reverse Jon and Bonnie.

Marcia, Bonnie, Hubert, Matthew, Andrew, and Pauline.

At Marcia's on Golden Ave in Battle Creek. 1996

I think Carl, Marcia's husband, took that picture. He died August 15 of that year.

Grandma Gaskell's Birthday

Happy Birthday, Mary Effie Fish!

Mary Effie Fish was born January 17, 1881, in Lenawee County, MI. She was the daughter of Orlando Bascom Fish and Mary Anna Staples Fish. Her family included Julia Ann, born in 1873, Theodore Aldin (Thede), born in 1875, Edmund Ronayne (Roa), born in 1878, Augustus William (Gustus), born in 1884, Jesse Glenn, born in 1886, and Anna Pearl, born in 1888. Jesse died in 1890. Uncle Bob remembers hearing he died of appendicitis, but I have an obituary that mentions "inflammation of the brain". Does meningitis run in families?

Grandma grew up on a farm about two miles down the road from Grandpa. Uncle Bob remembers the house being tiny, with a larger part added on. By the time he was around to visit it, the larger part belonged to his Uncle Thede, while his grandparents had the smaller part. He also remembers a pump organ in the house, a dinner bell, buggies and sleighs in the barn, a scary woods, and Bible-reading and prayers after breakfast.

My mom lived next door to my dad's family one of the years she was in college. She says she remembers Grandma working all morning around the house in her house dress. Grandpa would come home about 1:30 from his post office job and they would have their main meal. After she did the dishes (Mom remembers her using a bar of Fels Naphtha soap to work up suds on her dish cloth), she would change her clothes and take the dollar Grandpa gave her and head downtown to do her grocery shopping. Anything she had left from the dollar she would squirrel away and save for things she wanted. Mom says she might buy clothes with it, and she thinks she also bought her china cabinet with that money. (That's the china cabinet Mom now has in her living room.)

Grandma had a grand piano that always had cool music on it. I don't remember seeing music for it, but one song she liked was Mocking Bird Hill. I remember her playing once, while some ladies were there--maybe for a meeting. She also had a pump organ upstairs--I wonder if it was the organ Bob remembers in her parents' house. Grandma sewed quite a bit. I know she made quilts--I have one of them. She also taught me how to cut little squares with a cardboard pattern and sew them together with a backstitch to make quilt squares. I remember her sewing a few things for me. One was an apron, but I didn't like to wear aprons. One was a pink and white tiny gingham check dress with a white collar, puffed sleeves, and a tie in back. It was quite a bit too big for me, and I refused to wear it. I'm not sure I ever did wear it. I think I did wear pajamas she made me, even though they always seemed big, too. I remember staying overnight at Grandma's only once. For breakfast she fixed us oatmeal, and I wouldn't eat it. Wow, I guess I was pretty rejecting!

I remember Grandma driving their gray Ford (1954?) around town and to our house. I think she had a cushion she sat on so she could see better over the steering wheel. Jon and I thought she had an odd style of driving--her hands would go back and forth as she turned the steering wheel just a tiny bit at a time.

Grandma belonged to the Entre Nous Club and was president of it for a while. Back then, they all dressed up for meetings, hats and gloves included. She also was quite active in the Methodist Church and participated in the women's society and in the choir (Grandpa, too).

Uncle Bob reports that Grandma had appendicitis when he was four or five and had to go to Ann Arbor for an operation. She had breast cancer in her later years. She had a radical mastectomy and was in the hospital quite a bit. I remember her being absent at Grandpa's 80th birthday party, and also in the hospital when he died a couple months later.

Grandma died on May 4, 1960. She was buried next to Grandpa in the Lime Creek Cemetery.

The Fish family in the mid 1890s.

Back: Orlando, Julia, Mary Anna.

Front: Roa(?), Pearl, Effie, Gustus, Thede(?)

Mary Effie Fish Gaskell

Birthday Cards and Plant Tags

While I'm posting, I guess I'll add a picture of some of the purses. I'll do better photos later, but I do have this one. The two back ones are Kristie's and Beverly's. The purple is Mara's, of course. The brown is Vanessa's and the green one is Sandy's. You can see that I didn't have all the handles finished.

Here are the plant tags I made for the cyclamen plants. They're made on a very stiff Pellon--it actually looks like it's 1/16" foam. On the tags there is some silver metallic thread, and on Beverly's card, I used copper. Hers is 4x6, but the tags are 2 1/2 by 2 1/2. As you can see, the color isn't true. On the pink one, the plant picture is closer to the true color. None of the purples is quite right. But I am happy with the tags themselves.


The company name will be EffieMae. I'm going to try to design the tags on the computer and print them myself on an iron-on material.