52.4: Invite to Dinner; Alys Dickey Hilyard

This post is part of a project called "52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks" created by Amy Johnson Crow.

The prompt for this week is "Invite to Dinner". Meet my grandmother, Alys Dickey Hilyard.

Alys Duane Dickey 1924

What inspired me to choose her for this particular prompt are stories my parents tell of huge dinners she made for her family. Before I describe the dinners she made, I'll tell you a little about her.

About a year ago, my genealogy partner-in-crime Deidre asked the family to post on Facebook little things they remembered about Alys, along with a picture representing that memory. She got some great responses.

Lots of our memories revolve around food. Alys and her husband Vaughn always had a big garden, and she preserved a lot of foods.  Her oldest granddaughter, Rita, recalled she always had a bag of dried apples in her pantry.

Apples from the orchard

Deidre, her great-granddaughter, attributes her love of peanut butter and honey sandwiches directly to Alys.

Still yummy today!

My own memories of her big pantry include a jar of chewable vitamin C which I pilfered from regularly, and weird-looking quart jars of what I was told was delicious beef.

Canned beef? Not sure about that!

Her daughter-in-law Ruth recalls being lucky enough to visit on the days Alys baked homemade bread, and usually eating the whole warm loaf while they were there.

Can you smell it?

Another granddaughter, Jill, remembers tomato gravy, still a favorite of mine. I think it is an old German recipe.

Tomato gravy in a cast iron skillet

Ruth remembers this: "About the tomato gravy. Usually when she cooked a meal she left the pans on the wood stove to stay warm and save on dirty dishes. They didn't have water in the house until they were pretty old. But when she did put the meal on the table, she served the gravy in a beautiful German bowl that I would never have used. I still have it sitting safely in my cupboard."

Beautiful bowl Alys served her tomato gravy in

Jill also has memories of the flower beds being filled with pretty flowers. And of the clunky black shoes Alys always wore.

Another great-granddaughter, Amanda, too young to remember Alys, could vaguely recall a "green house on a hill?" (It was actually blue, and sat atop Grease Gravy Hill.

Vaughn and Alys Hilyard, showing the house, flower beds, clunky shoes, and Dandy the dog

Rita remembered, "She wore a white gown and matching bonnet to bed...I'm sure she handmade them. They only had one heater and a fireplace in the living room so that big room always stayed warm but the bedrooms were freezing cold in the winter. She stored much of her canned stuff under the beds to keep them cold." Ruth noted the gown and bonnet were made of white feed sacks.

There was a small box of old toys, including a book called The Little Red Hen. After posting my memory of it, my dad let me have it.

Not my copy, but very similar

Deidre asked the older generation to describe her personality. I noted that as a grandmother, she was "business-like." Rita, who knew her much better, had this to say: "She was a hardworking woman but she was pretty much no-nonsense. Very petite, always wore a dress and most times an apron. She taught school and had beautiful handwriting. She wore hair nets...she drove a car...ate cottage cheese and saltine crackers...played the organ and sang...maybe where I got my love of music."

The organ she referred to was an old pump style. I had it for awhile, and then my cousin Jack took possession of it. Ruth also noted she played the flat-top guitar. Her grandson Steve, a talented guitar player, treasures her guitars now.  This one she purchased new from a Montgomery Ward catalog in 1922.

Alys' 1922 guitar

Once we primed the well, memories started flowing. Rita recalled, "She would make a skillet of cornbread to feed the chickens...she tied one end of a string to the momma hen's leg and the other end to a stick so she knew where she and the chicks were...she gathered eggs and used her apron as a basket."

Alys' glass nest eggs

Her grandson Craig shared this memory: "One time me and her were in her chicken coop and saw a snake with a bulge halfway down its body. Somehow she knew it had swallowed one of her glass nest eggs. She got her hoe, chopped the snake in half, popped out the egg, wiped it off on her apron, put it back in the nest, then chopped off the snake's head. I was amazed. She was so humane she would shoo a fly out the door rather than swat it. Seeing her brutally murder that poor snake seemed very out of character."

Craig shared another memory, and oddly enough when I asked his brother (independently) for a memory, he recalled the exact same story.  "Us boys and paw were sitting at her table eating. For some reason paw hit me on top of the head with a spoon. Mammy came up behind him and cracked him really hard with a big wooden spoon and asked, "How do YOU like it?" In Steve's version, Alys hit their dad on the bottom, with a plywood hot pad grandpa Vaughn had made.

Alys was in her 30s during most of the Great Depression. Rita: "She took all the little pieces of bars of soap and tied them up in a nylon stocking to use completely up...she didn't throw anything away if it had a purpose.  They would butcher a cow or hog in the fall and would can or freeze everything but the oink or moo. She made her own lye soap with the fat I think."

Ruth:  "She made little cakes for her dogs (dog bread) out of old grease and leftovers. She kept them by the back door. I loved them and pinched off a bite quite often. That's the only time she ever got after me. For eating her dog bread! She never let the dogs come in the house, but Dandy was scared to death when it stormed, so she let her come in and lay under the cookstove, and she never moved. Laid right there till the storm was over.  When she did the laundry they had to haul the water, heat the water, and she used a wringer washer. We have it so easy!" She says this is just what the washer looked like.

Imagine the work!

She also cooked on a wood cookstove. This type of stove takes a lot of finesse to bake in it; you have to be able to get the oven up to the right temperature, and maintain that temperature consistently over the time needed to bake the bread. This is the only picture I can find of her actual cookstove.

Great-grandkids of Alys in front of her cookstove, about 1988

So, back to what inspired this blog post in the first place.  Alys would frequently have her family over for Sunday dinner. If both her sons were there with their wives and children, that would be a dozen or so people.

Now on a holiday, that number might swell to 35 or 40 people. She would make a traditional holiday dinner in her big country kitchen. The family ate in shifts around the kitchen table. The men got to eat first, then the kids, and lastly the women.  Alys was cooking these dinners when she was in her 50s and 60s.

I had planned to focus on the meals my grandmother made, but this turned into a little character sketch of her, and I like it.  This petite powerhouse of a woman, a well-educated school teacher with no running water and a wood-powered stove and oven, was compassionate to frightened dogs and houseflies but unafraid to mete justice upon egg-stealing snakes, and cooked in cast iron but could serve in beautifully painted ceramic. 

If anyone deserves an invitation to dinner, it is Alys Dickey Hilyard. I'd want her to sit back and enjoy letting someone serve her. I could learn a lot from her.

Alys Dickey Hilyard 

52.3: Longevity; John Summers

This post is part of a project called "52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks" created by Amy Johnson Crow.

The prompt this week is longevity. The ancestor that immediately springs to mind is John Summers.  John Summer's provenance is a little sketchy, but I believe him to be my 6th great-grandfather. I have a clipping of unknown origin describing him here:

John Summers at age 112

I was able to locate another article, written after John's death at 116, that mentions him along with others:

Final paragraph: John Summers lived to be 116

This second clipping came from page 2 of The Evening Post, published in New York City on 18 Dec 1833.  This article notes he died in Kentucky; however, I found a census listing in 1820 that I feel sure must be this man living in Delaware County, Indiana:

1820 Federal Census Delaware County, Indiana, entry for John Summers

The census taker noted this about Mr. John Summers: "This man is 114 years old never lost sight or hearing has upward of 400 descendants and has had two wives by each had ten children."

I have a lot more work to do proving the statements about John Summers, but he is an interesting read if nothing else.

52.2: Favorite Photo; William H. Holtzapple

This post is part of a project called "52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks" created by Amy Johnson Crow.

The prompt this week is Favorite Photo. This one is tough for me; I am blessed to have a lot of family photos, and many are treasured. The ones I enjoy most are where people are smiling or having a good time. So many old photos are posed and stilted and so...serious!

My father has this photo in his possession. It is his great-grandfather, William Harrison Holtzapple.

William H. Holtzapple (1848-1926) with...a cone?

There are many things about William I notice, and I hope will be the subjects of future prompts. For one, the facial hair! It went through many iterations over the course of his life. What about the missing finger (only recently spotted by my keen-eyed daughter)--what happened to it?

But in this photo, it has to be the ice cream cone. Why does he have an ice cream cone? Did someone make him hold it, or did he refuse to give it up for the photo? Did he have a special affinity for ice cream?

What makes me love this even more? The existence of a second photo.

I contacted a cousin that I found through findagrave. He shared several pictures of the Holtzapples I had never seen before, including this one:

Oh yes, it's a cone. And I think he likes it.

There seems to have been a photo shoot that day. I don't know of photos of any other family members taken then, with the cone or chair. But I'm so glad these were!

52.1: Start! My Great-Uncle Ed

I'm participating in Amy Johnson Crow's "52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks" to challenge myself to blog more. Each week she provides a prompt that can be interpreted any way the writer chooses.

Week 1's prompt is "Start". Amy gives a few suggestions as to what this might mean, and I want to talk about the person who got me started in genealogy. He was my great-uncle, Ed Moore.

Ed Moore

I think my first genealogy memory was of a thick manila envelope Ed mailed to my mother around 1980. It was full of what I now know to be pedigree charts and family group sheets. I was captivated from the first glance. I was 10 years old.

There wasn't a whole lot a 10 year old in 1980 could do from a research standpoint. I checked out every genealogy book I could from my town library. I wrote my own charts. I even got bold enough to write some letters to older relatives who are now all gone. 

About a decade later, I was married and far removed from my Indiana family, living on an Air Force base in California. I picked up my genealogy again, and ran with it, thanks to Ed.

I feel like I know so little about him, so I welcome the opportunity to write down the information I do have.  Edward Stewart Moore was born in Paoli, Indiana in 1916. He was the second of a set of twins; his sister Edna was stillborn.  I discovered where his middle name came from by his birth certificate; he was delivered by a Dr. Stewart. He had two older sisters, and an older brother Lee who was my grandfather. There was another son, Robert Clarence, born after Ed, but he died at the age of two from bronchopneumonia, two days before Christmas in 1921. Robert Clarence had always been just a name and two dates to me, but I got to visit Ed once, and asked him about the boy. Even as an old man, he got a little emotional when he talked about "Little Bob".  That really personalized the child in my mind.

Ed went to school in Paoli until 8th grade, which I think was pretty common at the time. My grandfather Lee did the same.

Ed Moore as a boy

In the 1920 and 1930 censuses, Ed lived at home with his parents, Fred and Della Moore. Fred was a laborer at various jobs and Della was a homemaker. By 1940, Ed had moved to Arizona and was working on a dairy farm.

I'm not sure what took him to Arizona (perhaps it was the CCC?), but he spent the rest of his life "out West", ending his days in northern California.

**Added 8 Jan 2018**
After reading this post, my mom (Ed's niece) called her brother. He related that during the Depression Ed and his brother Lee went to join the Army. The Army physical revealed he had tuberculosis, and Ed was told if he didn't move to a different climate he would be dead in six months. The family pooled all their money to buy him a ticket. When he arrived in Arizona, he had $8.00 left to start his new life.
********************

I have from his records that he married Emily May Turner in late 1940. They never had children together, but Emily had a child or children from a previous marriage. My mother said she was a Mormon, and I think this is what sparked Ed's interest in genealogy.

Ed and Emily Moore

When World War II started, Ed enlisted in the Army. I am fortunate enough to have received some of his memorabilia from that time.

Ed Moore in uniform

Ed was a tank commander and achieved the rank of corporal.  I have his shoulder patch from the 16th Armored Division. I know he attended reunions with his unit mates until late in his life. I was unaware until very recently that Ed received the Purple Heart during his time in the war. I learned this when I found his grave marker on findagrave.

Ed Moore and his tank "Beaugeard"

Ed Moore and Crew--Ed center back
Do you know any of these men?

After the war, Ed lived in Phoenix for some years, then in northern California in the Eureka area. At the time of his death in 1997, he lived in Kelseyville.

I met Ed a time or two as a child, though I don't really have any memories of those visits. I did make contact with him in the early 1990s when I was living in southern California and taking a more serious interest in genealogy. His notes were alway terse but friendly.

Letter from my uncle Ed prior to my visit

When I graduated from college, my mom flew out to California, and we made the drive up the state to visit her uncle. Ed was in the very early stages of Alzheimer's; a little forgetful but he still knew he was forgetting. He seemed truly glad to see his brother's daughter and granddaughter, and we had a good visit. He lived in a little trailer on his step-daughter's property that he called his wig-wam. The property had a gate, and he always opened and closed it for the cars coming and going. He struck me as a gentle, humorous, and very tall person (6'2", a full foot taller than me).

I wish I knew him better. Thank you, Ed, for introducing me to this wonderful lifetime hobby!