Posted: January 4th, 2009 | Author: Mark | Filed under: Fort Worth, Genealogy | No Comments »
My father wasn’t the type that spent a lot of time with friends, preferring to focus his attentions on family. A genuinely kind and generous person, dad had a small number of friends by choice, and at the top of that select list was L.S. “Stan” Orrick. It was Stan who had first come to Fort Worth to work at General Dynamics, calling dad (Doug Stevens) to tell him that the giant defense contractor was hiring. This lead prompted dad leave the family behind while he drove to Texas to look things over. This resulted in the family moving to Fort Worth in 1949.
Our family lived in two or three different homes during the first eleven years in Fort Worth, but in 1960 built a new home. This one was right down the street from Stan and his wife Marie, and where my mother and father would live the rest of their lives. I remember Stan walking down the street to visit Dad, and I recall them sometimes going to the library or a book store together. They didn’t socialize often, but always maintained contact. When my mother passed away on September 12, 2004 dad was devastated by the loss, and he was ill prepared for the death of his friend Stan little over a month later, on October 21st. Two years later Marie passed, on November 28, 2006. I knew that dad was beginning to feel as though he were the last of his group, the lone survivor from the old days.
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Posted: January 2nd, 2009 | Author: Mark | Filed under: Genealogy, Ohio | Tags: goldie, parker | No Comments »
Fragments of family history can be gathered from a number of sources, but one can’t underestimate the value of word-of-mouth. Anecdotes handed down through the generations can be informative, inspiring, even humorous, and contain data that would otherwise be forgotten.
My aunt Dorothy Jean Murray is the “go-to person” when researching the Stevens’ family in Ohio, and she mentioned something recently that I thought was rather amazing. Almost as an afterthought, D.J. mentioned that a bit of confusion accompanied my grandmother’s birth. It seems that my grandmother, born Goldie Irene Parker (shown here with my father, Doug Stevens), had the wrong name put on her birth certificate. That’s right, the story goes that her birth certificate read Madge Parker. I don’t have to tell anyone with genealogical experience that records are often peppered with errors, but this is major. What prompted the mistake, and how was it resolved? It’s thought to have been some sort of clerical error, but that is, I believe, supposition. Over one-hundred years has passed, and the details of these events were not preserved with any clarity. I would think that the name would have been promptly corrected, but that didn’t stop me from searching for public records pertaining to Madge Parker. While I was unable to turn up anything, I can’t help but to wonder if a copy of that birth certificate exists somewhere. Who knows, Dorothy Jean might come through again.
Posted: December 27th, 2008 | Author: Mark | Filed under: Childhood Memories, Fort Worth, Vintage Postcards | No Comments »
This postcard shows the sign that served as a beacon for the Fort Worth Zoo for decades. Located just off University Drive, the sign greeted southbound traffic as they crossed the Trinity River, just in time for them to take the next left on Colonial Parkway. I don’t know when the sign was first erected, but it was certainly in place prior to 1960. I’m also unclear as to when it was taken down. I want to say it was just removed only ten or fifteen years ago, but I can’t find a definitive answer. One thing I do know is that the sign was an important Fort Worth landmark, one of many that have disappeared over the past 25 years. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: December 22nd, 2008 | Author: Mark | Filed under: Genealogy, Miscellaneous | No Comments »
For those who haven’t already found them, I wanted to point out the biography and photo album pages. Accessible from the menu at the far right, each of these pages consists of a brief biographical sketch of a family member as well as photographs, most being clickable for viewing larger versions.
For obvious reasons, the depth of the biographical data, and the number of photos, varies greatly from one individual to another. The creation of new pages and inclusion of additional photographs will be ongoing, and represent a large percentage of the work put into this site. In other words, please be patient, as this is a big project.
I’ve added a couple of new albums in the past few days, my grandfather Fred Caldwell being one and my great-grandmother Mary Belle Tipton (shown at right) the other. Over the next few weeks I’ll be adding more family member pages as well as adding photos to the pages already online, so stay tuned!
Posted: December 18th, 2008 | Author: Mark | Filed under: Childhood Memories, Vintage Postcards | Tags: amusement park | 3 Comments »
I’ve already mentioned Aquarena Springs in San Marcos, Texas, but there was another great amusement park we patronized, one much closer to home: Six Flags Over Texas. Six Flags was a key factor in establishing the city of Arlington the playground of the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex that it is today.
Six Flags opened in 1961 and was conceived as a Disneyland-like theme park, but with a regional market instead of a national one. The late ’50s and early ’60s saw the opening of a number of similar parks, slow-paced family oriented theme parks that showed no sign of the thrill-ride emphasis that would gain favor years later.
My memories of the park are primarily from the 1960s, and until this past summer I hadn’t visited the park since “Senior Night”, 1976. As I expected, a lot had changed in 32 years. I missed the old rides, many having undergone major transformation or complete replacement. Two personal favorites, the La Salle Riverboat Ride (see postcard) and the Spee-Llunker Cave were both lazy water rides that have been replaced by the Roaring Rapids and the shamelessly commercial Yosemite Sam and the Gold River Adventure, respectively. I’ll cover The Cave and other attractions in future posts, but this time I’m going to focus on the Riverboat Ride. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: December 14th, 2008 | Author: Mark | Filed under: Childhood Memories | Tags: christmas, cordone | No Comments »
Besides contributing photographs of my great-grandparents Henry and Emily Parker, my aunt Dorothy Jean also came up with this surprising shot, surprising because I hadn’t seen it before! Dad seems to have been more interested in 8mm home movies during this period, so not many photos exist. It’s odd that mom and dad didn’t have this one in their archive of family snapshots, and it makes me wonder if there’s a yet to be discovered stash somewhere.
This photograph, obviously taken by my dad, shows my mom, my sisters Carol and Gail, and myself at the age of 7 months. Yep, this was 1957, my first Christmas. This house, on Cordone St. in Fort Worth, had a perfect window for displaying a Christmas tree, angled ninety degrees. My memory of the entire family celebrating Christmas together like this is dim at best, as my sisters were out of the house and starting families of their own just a few years later. But over the years we’ve always tried to reunite at Christmas time, a tradition that continues today, even now that it’s just us kids.
Posted: December 12th, 2008 | Author: Mark | Filed under: Genealogy, Ohio | Tags: goldie, mcmurray, parker | No Comments »
I can’t believe it. I didn’t think that any photographs of my great-grandparents (Goldie’s parents) existed, but then these two, over 140 years old, turn up courtesy of my aunt Dorothy Jean. The photos, studio portraits of Henry Graham Parker and Emily Robinson McMurray, are said to have been taken around the time of their wedding. Having decided to wed prior to Henry leaving to serve in the civil war, they were married immediately upon his return, on August 25, 1865.
These photos add nothing to the nuts-and-bolts of the family tree, but there’s an undeniable significance to connecting a face with a name. It makes the people come alive. Remember my earlier post about the father learning of his daughter’s death from a Ouija board? This is that man, Henry Graham Parker.
One bothersome aspect of the photos are the dates notated on the back, indicating their date of marriage as August 25, 1865. This contrasts to the data contained in the family outline, which gave the date as October 25 of the same year. That’s something I’ll need to quiz Dorothy Jean about. For now I’m still having trouble getting very far beyond Henry Parker on the family tree, and the marriage date doesn’t provide any clues regardless the date used. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: December 10th, 2008 | Author: Mark | Filed under: Childhood Memories, Tiptonville, Tennessee, Vintage Postcards | Tags: edgewater, reelfoot | No Comments »
Here it is, Edgewater Beach, where we always stayed on our vacations to Tiptonville, Tennessee, at least until the Airpark Inn opened. This postcard probably dates from the late ’50s, and shows the beach much as it was during our stays. What isn’t shown here are the cabins, which faced the beach and are off to the right in this photograph. It’s probably been 40 years since our family stayed there, which could account for the nostalgia it invokes.
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Posted: December 8th, 2008 | Author: Mark | Filed under: Ohio, Vintage Postcards | Tags: cambridge | No Comments »
A few days ago I wrote of Brown High School in Cambridge, Ohio, the school my father attended in the early ’30s. That post was illustrated with a postcard of the school, a rather ordinary-looking card that I found on eBay. I hadn’t thought much more about that postcard until I came across this photo in dad’s 1931 annual. The similarities were striking, and I wondered if the photo could in fact have been used as a template for the postcard. But while the photo obviously dates from 1931 or earlier, these postcards are usually found with postmarks from the ’40s. Basing postcard art on preexisting photos was commonplace, but would they have used so old a photograph? Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: December 3rd, 2008 | Author: Mark | Filed under: Childhood Memories, Tiptonville, Tennessee, Vintage Postcards | Tags: edgewater, reelfoot, vacation | 1 Comment »
Among my earliest recollections of Tiptonville, Tennessee is Edgewater Beach. We always stayed at one of the cabins there when on vacation, and got in some swimming when we weren’t at my grandmother’s farm. But that all changed with the opening of the Airpark Inn, ten miles north of Tiptonville. Located at Reelfoot Lake State Park, the 20-room Inn immediately became our new place to stay during our visits. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: December 1st, 2008 | Author: Mark | Filed under: Fort Worth, Vintage Postcards | Tags: downtown, theater | No Comments »
Once upon a time, before the development of suburban areas, the heart of any major city was “downtown”. It was the destination for both shopping and entertainment, and I’m fortunate to have been able to experience Fort Worth’s “old downtown” as a child. Seventh Street was the place to go for movies, with the Worth, Hollywood and Palace theaters all situated in close proximity to each other. I vaguely remember seeing Babes in Toyland (the 1961 Ray Bolger version) at one of the downtown theaters at the tender age of four, but the James Bond movies (Dr. No, Goldfinger) definitely made a bigger impression.
The view shown in this postcard is very similar to what I recall from when our family would go downtown, as we always approached from the west on Seventh Street. I have no idea when this photo was taken, but I’m guessing the late ’40s. This view clearly predates the addition of the neon “Reddy Kilowatt” sign at the corner of the Texas Electric building, Reddy being their cartoon mascot and spokesperson. That sign was a real landmark, one that has gone the way of much of historic downtown Fort Worth. I could be way off here, but I also seem to recall a Planter’s “Mr. Peanut” advertising sign somewhere in this vicinity as well.
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Posted: November 29th, 2008 | Author: Mark | Filed under: Ohio | Tags: byesville | No Comments »
It was many years ago the last time my father mentioned it, and to be honest it could have been the only time. You see, Pop didn’t talk about his personal experiences much, a trait that seems to have been handed down by his father. While few details accompanied the story, I distinctly recall his saying that he and his father saw the wreckage of the Shenandoah, the the first rigid airship built in the United States. Caught in a severe storm on the morning of September 3, 1925, the enormous ship was torn in two by a series of violent updrafts and downdrafts. The control car broke free and crashed near the farmhouse of Andrew Gamary, killing the seven occupants. The stern portion, over 400 feet long, came down a half-mile away and dragged along a treeline, eventually coming to rest on a nearby hillside. The 200 foot bow section, controlled by seven crewmen, remained airborne for nearly an hour, eventually coming down on the farm of Ernest Nichols, six miles southwest of the stern.
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My father wasn’t the type that spent a lot of time with friends, preferring to focus his attentions on family. A genuinely kind and generous person, dad had a small number of friends by choice, and at the top of that select list was L.S. “Stan” Orrick. It was Stan who had first come to Fort Worth to work at General Dynamics, calling dad (Doug Stevens) to tell him that the giant defense contractor was hiring. This lead prompted dad leave the family behind while he drove to Texas to look things over. This resulted in the family moving to Fort Worth in 1949.
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