Love and Marriage--My Grams and Pop Pop

     Amy Johnson Crow has a 52 Ancestors Week blog challenge which I have decided to join.  I am hoping it may help me to pinpoint someone or something that I have researched and not blogged about on Flipside.  AND push me to blog about family each week in 2024.  Sometimes I get lazy. 😁  Let's see how well I keep up.

     Week # 18 (April 29-May 5) is Love and Marriage.  

     Sweethearts from day one, my paternal grandparents, George Henry Hughes and Sarah Margaret VanGilder.

     The story passed down was that my Grams and her family were living in Woodlawn, Beaver County, Pennsylvania, when the Hughes family moved into town.  Who ever saw and met Pop Pop first, is not known; however, when Grams first saw him, her question to her sisters was, "Who is that handsome new fellow."  😍   Both Grams and Pop Pop would have been in the fifteen-sixteen year age group.  

Woodlawn, Pennsylvania
Main Street
1914

     Woodlawn was the Jones and Laughlin Steel Company town.   The VanGilder's moved from Morgantown, West Virginia and Mom, Jessie VanGilder, was probably running a boarding house there for steel workers.  The Hughes Family had moved from the Southside of Pittsburgh where another Jones and Laughlin plant was located.   

Dated 1915
Sketched by George Henry Hughes
of
Sarah Margaret VanGilder

     Grams was one of four VanGilder sisters.  Pop Pop had dated one of the VanGilder girls before he asked Grams out.  Their dating relationship lasted while Pop Pop served in World War I with the Canadian Expeditionary Force stationed in Siberia. When he was discharged in May, 1919 the VanGilder women had moved from Woodlawn to the city of Pittsburgh.  Grams and Pop Pop resumed seeing each other traveling by the P & L.E. train from Pittsburgh to Woodlawn.  

     On June 5, 1920, while Pop Pop's Mom and Dad were visiting family in England, Sarah and George were married in Fairmont, Marion County, West Virginia by Rev Herman Goethe Stoetzer, pastor of the Presbyterian Church.  Sarah's oldest sister, Mary Louise VanGilder was a witness.    

      Grams and Pop lived in the Pittsburgh area, raised three children and retired to Florida in 1962.  Before they left, the family met for a reunion at my parents house. Pictured above is the photograph from that day with all of the Hughes family to that date.  Three more grandchildren were added.

     The family celebrated Gram's and Pop Pop's fiftieth wedding anniversary in 1970.  

     In 1985, we visited Grams in Florida.  Pop Pop had passed twelve years earlier.  When my brother showed Grams the photograph of the 1960 family reunion, she exclaimed, "How I loved that man," pointing to Pop Pop.

 

I WOULD LOVE TO HEAR FROM YOU. All comments are welcome; however, if they are inappropriate, they will not be published.    PLEASE post your e-mail in the comment section if you would like to network about a particular surname or topic. I will capture it for my use only and not include it when I publish your comment.

© 2024, copyright Linda Hughes Hiser



War--With Nature

     Amy Johnson Crow has a 52 Ancestors Week blog challenge which I have decided to join.  I am hoping it may help me to pinpoint someone or something that I have researched and not blogged about on Flipside.  AND push me to blog about family each week in 2024.  Sometimes I get lazy. 😁  Let's see how well I keep up.

     Week # 17 (April 22-April 28) is War. 

     We moved into our current house in the summer of 1988.  It is a pie shaped lot with the majority of the yard behind the house.  The backyard was covered with a very deep tree canopy causing little to grow and dirt showing more than grass.  

     I didn't pay much attention to gardening then.  I had two growing sons and part time employment which kept me busy.  However as the boys grew up and I became tired of looking at the horrible backyard, I became a gardener.  

 

     Some trees were removed, a two story deck added and I began to get my hands dirty planting various varieties of Hosta's and numerous perennials.  Garden areas were dug out around the deck and the back of the house.  I added two different paths.  

  

     By 2000 the gardening had become an obsession.  Annual photos and notes were saved and early spring garden and perennial planning began.  Every spring a new garden area was added.  

     My city had been trying to put a road through an area nearby.  The ecological fight was that it would cross a portion of a nature reserve and a wetland area.  In 2014 the road was built and sound barrier walls erected on either side of it.  Deer were trapped in our residential area.  Lacking their usual food resources they began to eat what they found.  As Dr. Ian Malcolm said in Jurassic Park, "Life expands to new territories.  Painfully, perhaps even dangerously.  But life finds a way."

     And find a way they did.  My entire backyard became a feeding area for deer.  Sometimes a small herd of them would be outside eating the Hosta's and every other tasty perennial and annual to the ground.  What was once a lush and beautiful yard was complete devastation.  I was sick!

     I fiddled around with it for a year or two.  Trying different types of deer repellants that frankly, did not work.  In 2017 I began my war against the deer.  I do research for my genealogy.  Why not do research finding plants that are deer resistant?  And research I did.

  

     All Hosta's were potted and moved up on the deck.  Grasses and fescue became my friends and they come in so many different varieties and colors.  Metal fencing enclosed all outside gardens where perennials grew that the deer would eat or trample.  A beautiful patio area complete with water features and a fire pit was added.    

     Today I don't mind visitors.  In fact, I welcome them.

 

I WOULD LOVE TO HEAR FROM YOU. All comments are welcome; however, if they are inappropriate, they will not be published.    PLEASE post your e-mail in the comment section if you would like to network about a particular surname or topic. I will capture it for my use only and not include it when I publish your comment.

© 2024, copyright Linda Hughes Hiser



Step--Mom Stepping Out of Her Comfort Zone

     Amy Johnson Crow has a 52 Ancestors Week blog challenge which I have decided to join.  I am hoping it may help me to pinpoint someone or something that I have researched and not blogged about on Flipside.  AND push me to blog about family each week in 2024.  Sometimes I get lazy. 😁  Let's see how well I keep up.

     Week # 16 (April 15-April 21) is Step. 

     Several decades ago, before she passed, I had my Mom stay overnight for a genealogy sleepover.  I wanted to interview her about her memories of family.  Two items she brought up, that thoroughly shocked me, was that she had always been an introvert and when she was in elementary school she had a speech impairment--she stuttered. 

     My mother was a very outgoing woman and one area in which she excelled was theater.  I knew about her life "on the boards".  She was active in community theater when I was in elementary school.  Following her death I was able to go through many photographs and school yearbooks that were part of her estate.  If her statement regarding her shyness and lack of confidence speaking in front of a group due to her stutter is true, in many areas of her life, my Mom stepped out of her comfort zone.

  

     Early in her elementary school years, it was decided that my Mom should take elocution lessons to improve her speech.  She had an aunt, Emily Stark Miller, who was a well regarded elocution teacher and performer.  Aunt Emily lived nearby in the Borough of Avalon, outside Pittsburgh.  She became my Mom's teacher.  

The Pittsburgh Press,
December 20, 1931,
page 33

     At age 10, my mother, Martha Jean Stark, began presenting oral readings at the local Parent Teacher Association meetings. 

     Mom was active in junior high school and high school.  Her 1939 Yearbook featured some of her interests and accomplishments among them the Editor-in-chief of the school yearbook, acting in two plays, producing a Christmas play, feature writer on the school newspaper and class vice president.  She and Dad, George VanGilder Hughes, were both Commencement speakers.  Frankly, she does not appear to be either an introvert or have any residual speech problems by her senior year in high school.  

Mom modeling college fashions
Kaufmann's Department Store
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Mom with her pearls
College of Wooster
Senior Year 1943

     Off to the College of Wooster.  By her junior year, she had pledged, was performing in the school's theater and member of the honorary, was on the debate seminar and a department head of the school newspaper.  In her senior year she was elected to the Big Four Cabinet, Debate and member of the honorary and member of the Student Senate. 

     Following graduation, Mom and Dad married and in 1947 I was born.  After my brother Ken's birth in 1952, Dad spent a year and a half in Korea.  Mom was now in charge.  Two young children, maintenance of the house and finances plus she had to learn how to drive!  

Sight Unseen Program
1957

The Allegheny Journal
Thursday, May, 25, 1957

Royal Family Program
1958

Pittsburgh Post Gazette
May 13, 1959
page 12

     In the mid 1950's into 1962, Mom joined church and local organizations, entertained and became very active in the church's theater group, The Hiland Players.  

Pittsburgh Post Gazette
Thursday, March 24, 1966
page 35

     The move to a new home in a new neighborhood ended Mom's theater days for a decade.  Instead she now turned to leadership in the Boy Scouts, church circles and hospital organizations.  

     Back to the boards in the 1970's for some community theater.  Mom and her son, Jeff, were cast in Kismet and she did makeup for Carousel.

     In the 1980's and until her death in 1999, Mom was active in the Cleveland, Ohio area where she moved.  Church circles and activities, volunteer at the local hospital, College Club West, The Women's Board of a local hospital and Women's Committee of Great Lakes Theater Festival.  

     Introvert?  If she was, she stepped out of her comfort zone for decades.  I am an introvert and strive to push myself out of my comfort zone daily.....just like Mom.     

 

I WOULD LOVE TO HEAR FROM YOU. All comments are welcome; however, if they are inappropriate, they will not be published.    PLEASE post your e-mail in the comment section if you would like to network about a particular surname or topic. I will capture it for my use only and not include it when I publish your comment.

© 2024, copyright Linda Hughes Hiser