2025 Resolution

     The final blog for 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks is Resolution.  I am not usually a person who lists resolutions.  I come up with new ideas and challenges throughout the year and either chose to tackle it or not.  

     In the past several years, and with advancing age, I have tried to keep up with Flipside.  Over the decades I have been the family genealogist.  Family members have given me numerous family mementos, photographs, stories and family owned items.  Not having current family members who are showing much interest in genealogy, and fearful that my treasure trove of "stuff" will end up in a landfill, my resolution for 2025 is to continue to add to my blog.  

     I need to continue to take photos of items and scans of old cabinet cards and carte de visite's with biographical information and stories to accompany each blog.  

     My brother and I have talked about collaborating on a video of our grandparents and perhaps great grandparents.  It will primarily include photos and documents with me supplying the narration.  I already have a couple of slide shows on my computer and this can be translated into a video with his expertise.  

     There are some snippets of my grandparents on video.  Decades ago my Dad had a professional load his home movies onto a VHS tape.  My brother was able to copy the old VHS onto CD for us to watch with current technology.  And hallelujah, there are some short pieces of film with my grandparents.  Not their voices, but watching them in motion takes me back to another time and brings tears to my eyes. 💖

     Other ideas for 2025.  I have contacted other distant family relations who are working on genealogy through ancestry hoping they might like to have some of "our" family items.  I have not been successful; however 2025 might be the year.  Another idea is to contact historical or genealogical groups in the various towns where my ancestors lived to see if they might want photos or my research.

     I only made it through about half the year blogging on my 52 Ancestors.  Fingers crossed I do better in 2025.  I thoroughly enjoyed reading what many of you shared this year and look forward to reading about your families next year.

     Merry Christmas and Happy New Year wishes to everyone and see you in 2025 on 52 Ancestors.

 

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 All comments are welcome; however, if they are inappropriate, they will not be published.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



Health--Mary Louise VanGilder Wotherspoon

     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 # 23 (June 3-9) is Health. I decided to cover what was an unmentionable health topic that my paternal grandaunt, Mary Louise VanGilder Wotherspoon, suffered and died from in 1962.  

     Mary Louise, nicknamed "Bobs", was born on March 9, 1894 in Morgantown, West Virginia.  She was the oldest child of George Ethelbert VanGilder and Jessie Poole VanGilder.   

     Mary Louise's father died when she was ten.  Her mother decided to open a boarding house for West Virginia University students in their home to make ends meet financially.  Living in and helping her mother run a boarding house was a substantial portion of life for the four young VanGilder sisters.  

     When "Bobs" was seventeen, the family moved from the Morgantown area to a new steel mill town in Woodlawn, Beaver County, Pennsylvania.  Again, the VanGilder women were engaged in running a boarding house for the steel workers.

     Mary Louise returned to Morgantown to live and work between 1912-1914.  There are a couple of newspaper articles of her visiting her Aunt Sarah Louise Poole Pinyard "Aunt Pinny" in North Charleroi, Pennsylvania.

     

     There is also an article of Mary Louise and her Aunt Pinny vacationing in Atlantic City in 1914.  

     By 1920, the four VanGilder sisters and Mom, were living together in Pittsburgh.  Mary Louise was employed as a stenographer for an oil company in the city.  

     From the few stories I have heard about Aunt Bobs, she was a fun loving gal.  I was told she was a flapper during the 1920's and the picture postcard from Atlantic City certainly gives a nod to that.  She was the one who decided to embellish the surname VanGilder, changing it to VanGuilder.  

     My paternal grandmother must have been close to her oldest sister, Mary Louise, as she traveled to Fairmont, West Virginia to witness the marriage of my grandparents on June 5, 1920.  

     I imagine she may have met her future husband, Robert George Wotherspoon, through employment associations.  He was employed as a clerk at a steel mill. My paternal grandmother, once told me how handsome he was.  When visited Grams and Pop Pop in Florida in the mid 1960's, the widowed ladies gathered around him.

 

     On November 4, 1923, twenty-nine year old Mary Louise VanGilder married twenty-six year old Robert George Wotherspoon at a ceremony in her Aunt Anna Poole Davis' home in the neighborhood of Knoxville outside Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.  

     Robert was the son of Robert Wotherspoon and Maryann Cadger.  He was born on October 24, 1897 in Whitaker, Allegheny County, Pennsylvania.  Bob was a veteran of World War I having served with the Army stationed in the United States.

     Mary Louise and Bob did not have any children and I have not found any evidence that she was employed after marriage.  Bob was employed with an insurance company and by 1940 with Carnegie Steel Company.   

     Bob's niece lived with them in East Liberty in 1938.  There was an article in the newspaper regarding a fire that destroyed the apartment while Mary Louise and Ruth were inside.  They lived in nice apartments in the Squirrel Hill area of Pittsburgh, as shown on the 1940 and 1950 census reports, and Ruth also lived with them.

     Mary Louise had a health issue.  When it began and how she contracted it is unknown.  Perhaps the young niece was living with them to assist Mary Louise.  

     I have a photo of "Aunt Bobs" attending my Dad's graduation from medical school in 1945.  I was told she wore the wide brimmed hat to shade her face that was badly pock marked.  

     This photo was taken in the early 1950's at my paternal grandparents apartment.  My grandmother is the second from the right and her sister, Mary Louise is beside her.  Bob Wotherspoon is on the other side of my Grams.  

      My Aunt Faith remembered that her Mom, my Grams, would take a streetcar to Squirrel Hill weekly to care for her sister. Faith also took her baby daughter to visit.  

     For years I had no idea what Mary Louise was suffering from.  No one talked about it.  When the Pennsylvania death certificates for 1962 were released I finally got my answer; however, it actually provided more questions.  

     Mary Louise VanGilder Wotherspoon died on November 1, 1962 at age sixty-seven from tertiary syphilis.  

     

The Pittsburgh Press
Friday, November 2, 1962
page 41

         Mary Louise was buried in Homestead Cemetery near other Wotherspoon family members.  My grandparents had already retired to Florida.  

The Pittsburgh Press
Wednesday, November 19, 1975
page 87

     Bob Wotherspoon retired to Scottsdale, Arizona and died there on November 16, 1975.  He is also buried in Homestead Cemetery.  

      I do not believe that I ever met "Aunt Bobs".  She lived in the Pittsburgh area while I was growing up and I was fifteen when she died.  I find it odd that our paths never crossed.  

     Then there is the syphilis issue.  I am aware of how someone gets the disease and yet I wonder how this happened to my grandmother's sister.  Bob Wotherspoon never got it.  Was he a carrier?  

     I had heard that the Wotherspoon's were practicing Christian Scientists.  Penicillin was available in the mid 1940's.  They chose to not use it.  

     This is a story that I have waiting to write due to its sensitive nature.  All people involved are no long alive.  It is sad that this is the ending to a vibrant lady's life.  

Mary Louise VanGilder--Annual Swimsuit Edition

   

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



Creativity--My Two Sons

     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 # 22 (May 27-June 2) is Creativity.   my two sons

          This is a brag on my two son's blog, both artistically talented.  

     My eldest son, Aric, now deceased, was busy drawing from a very early age.  In high school, by his senior year, he was taking art classes in photography and drawing.

TKO
Award Winner
Cinder Block with black and white dots

In Bloom
Cigarette filters

    

       He graduated from Ohio State with honors and a bachelor of fine arts degree.  While at OSU, Aric's primary artistic focus was installation art; however, he also presented works in photography and because he was talented in theater as a high schooler, he did performance art.  

Nuclear Family

     From OSU, Aric was admitted into the Fine Arts Department at the University of Maryland to begin his Masters Degree.  He was able to complete one semester before illness   

     Aric's art was often edgy, always creative and left the viewer thinking.   

*************************

     My son Garrett is a very talented sketch artist.  His ability began to show in elementary school and middle school with his little doodles on school notebooks and pieces he drew in art classes.  Soon Christmas and birthday gifts were sketch books.  A gamer, his art tended toward fantasy figures and dragons in particular.  

      In middle school he participated in art shows and in high school he was awarded a one semester scholarship to the Cleveland Museum of Art.

   

Garrett presenting his stole of honor
to his brother
2012 graduating Magna Cum Laude

     A time came when he put his sketching materials away and began writing.  A short play that he wrote while in community college was performed on stage.  Garrett graduated from the two year program and entered Cleveland State as an English major, continuing to write and graduating magna cum laude.  

     He immediately entered the Master's Degree program in English, concentrating on Black American writers and graduated in 2016 with a Degree of Master of Art in English.

     Imaginative, concise and edgy portrayals define Garrett's writing and his art. 

     So proud of the creativity of both of my sons and I think it is a combination of Hiser and Hughes genetics.

 

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



Nickname

     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 # 21 (May 20-26) is Nickname.   

     I have had a variety of nicknames during my seventy-seven years all of them from childhood.  Only one continues to 2024.

Summer 1949
Brigantine Beach, New Jersey

     The name Linda converted to Linda Lee and Lindee.  My brother, Ken, called me Deeow when he was very young.  

     A favorite nickname of my Dad's was calling my Pickle Puss.  I see many early photos of me making a face like I had just eaten a sour pickle.  Perhaps that was where the nickname came from.  

     My paternal grandmother, Grams, wrote my first name as Lynn.  In college my nickname came from my last name......Hughesie.

Package sent to me by my brother

     And finally, Lin, which is the nickname that has continued to today.

 

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



Taking Care of Business: My Dad

     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 # 20 (May 13-19) is Taking Care of Business. My Dad, George VanGilder Hughes is my focus in this week's blog. 

George VanGilder Hughes

     Dad had some pressure from the beginning to excel.  A son and first born to a father who had immigrated from England with his parents, there was an expectation that Dad would succeed.  He began to take care of business from an early age.    

       The Hughes family lived in the Brough of Avalon outside the city of Pittsburgh and Dad attended church and school there from an early age.  I do not  have much elementary school information; however, from his high school yearbooks, imagine he was a scholar even at an early age.  He also excelled at sports, in particular, football.

     Back in the late 1930's the classes at Avalon High School were small.  Dad, and my Mom's, graduating class was eighty-nine.  Dad was the quarterback on the high school football team and won the Jack Brice Memorial medal for excellence in football, he was the president of the class and the salutatory speaker for commencement among his many activities.

     He enrolled at Washington and Jefferson College on a full scholarship with a major in pre med.  Dad continued with his love of football playing at W&J as the center.  He was a member of a fraternity, president of his freshman class, several honorary societies and graduated in three years taking courses in summers.

     On November 23, 1943, my Mom and Dad married.  They had known each other and attended the same school since first grade, dated at the end of their senior year and throughout college. 

     Dad was already enrolled in the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.  He was a member of ROTC, the Army paid for his education and he graduated with his medical degree in June 1945.

     Dad served at Deshon General Hospital, Butler, Pennsylvania for the Army when I was born in 1947.  His Internship was at a hospital in McKeesport, Pennsylvania and Residency at the Veteran's Hospital in Aspinwall, Pennsylvania.  

     

      Following his residency we moved to a new house near Perrysville, Allegheny County, Pennsylvania and Dad was beginning to set up his medical practice in Internal Medicine.  

     To make some additional income in 1949 he enlisted with the Pennsylvania National Guard.  Just as his practice was beginning to take off he was sent to active duty at Camp Carson, Colorado and then to the front lines in Korea serving as a Captain at an aid station with the 2nd Infantry Division, 2nd Medical Battalion. 

816 Perry Highway
Dad's office was in the middle apartment building

     Dad returned from Korea in the summer of 1953 and was able to begin his private practice in Internal Medicine.  I can remember stopping by to visit the office at 816 Perry Highway across from our church, Hiland Presbyterian, on my way home from elementary school.

 

558 Perry Highway, West View

     Around 1961 Dad bought this house and relocated his practice to West View.  

     Dad was on the staff at three local hospitals during his medical days:  Allegheny General Hospital in Pittsburgh, Suburban General Hospital in Bellevue and Chief of Staff at North Hills Passavant Hospital.

     He never forgot his roots growing up during the Great Depression.  When I was married, patients stepped forward to  donate the wedding cake, flowers, etc. to give back to Dad for his kindness.  When he retired, over 200 patients organized a heartfelt retirement party.

     Dad was the doctor we would like to have today.  He made house calls, even getting out of bed to drive to attend to a patient.  During his thank you remarks at the retirement party he said, "If a patient has taken the time to come to the office for a visit because he is not feeling well, it is the responsibility of the doctor to actively listen.  The best clue to a diagnosis is what the patient has to say."

  

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