More pictures of Ora

Since all I really know about Ora are the pictures I have of her, here are some more glimpses into her life.

Ora (left) and Hattie Vaughn

The note on the back says April 1899, (written in my own handwriting but I'm guessing based on information provided by Corinne) which would make her 15 in this photo.

Ora, on the right, with a neighbor friend.

Scanned from a tintype, Ora (front right) and Clarence (back left) with Hattie and I'm assuming Hattie's husband John Cheeseman.

Another tintype, different pose. This one is in poorer shape, but Ora and Hattie are in the back and Clarence and John Cheeseman (I assume) in the front.

Possibly her high school graduation photo, which would place the year at 1902.

Ora and Clarence

There's a lot more I could (and probably will eventually) say about Genevieve, but since my goal with this blog is to learn more about the earliest settlers of Walworth County and write about some of the incredible primary resources I've uncovered, let's jump back a generation to get closer to these amazing pioneers.

Genevieve at about four months

Genevieve was born at home in July of 1910, home being Potter Farm - on Potter Road, east of Elkhorn. (The farm is still there, and Genevieve's brother's widow still lives on it, though she rents out the fields now.) Gen was the first child born to her parents, Clarence Potter and Ora Vaughn Potter. Her parents were both about 26 when she was born; census records indicate they were both born in 1884 (though census records are notoriously imprecise sometimes.)

Clarence and Ora's wedding photo

Both Ora and Clarence were born into families that were some of the original settlers of this area, but for clarity's sake, let's focus on Ora's family for the time being. Ora was born around 1884 on her parents' farm in Spring Prairie, Wis. Both of her parents had lived in Spring Prairie/Honey Creek almost all of their lives. (Her father was born in Spring Prairie shortly after his family settled there in the late 1830s; her mother moved to Honey Creek from Lincolnshire, England when she was about eight years old.)

Genevieve and her mother, Ora, in their best winter furs, probably circa 1915 or 1916.

Ora was the youngest of three daughters. (Her mother gave birth to four girls, but the oldest, Julia, died in infancy.) From all appearances, Ora and her sisters were very close. Edna, the middle daughter, was Corinne's mother, and since we know that Corinne and Gen stayed close all their lives, this seems to indicate that their mothers did as well. The oldest sister, Harriet (or Hattie as she was called), initially married and moved to Milwaukee, but after the untimely death of her husband, moved with her children back to the Vaughn family home in Burlington.

Ora, Edna and Hattie Vaughn in 1898 at the Loomis farm

I believe the scrapbook I inherited from Corinne that started this whole project was something her mother Edna put together in the 1930s, and there are several clippings from old newspapers that mention the Vaughn girls. Hattie and Edna get the most ink, however. Ora makes almost no appearances in these clippings until she gets married. What I can piece together from these clippings, however, is that when Ora was 4 years old, her parents moved off the farm and into the newly burgeoning town of Burlington.

The scrapbook tells me that they initially lived in "the P.H. Cunningham house on the east side of the Fox River" but that "early next spring Mr. Vaughn will build a fine residence on his lots on the corner of Washington and Dyer Streets, at the rear of the Opera House." (Washington and Dyer Streets no longer exist in Burlington, but the Historical Society tells me that the Opera House was located at the corner of what is now Milwaukee Ave. and N. Kane St. The photo below has a note on it that says it was located at 602 Lewis St., which is not terribly close to Milwaukee and Kane, though, so I am still unclear as to where the house was located.)

The note on the back says, "Otis Vaughn house in Burlington. 602 Lewis St."

Another clipping from the next year tells me that they "moved into their home on the corner of Washington and Dyer Streets and will soon be comfortably settled in their fine, cozy home." Ora's father, Otis (there will be LOTS more on him to come) gave up farming to run a wagon shop in Burlington, and the newspaper assures us, "Mr. Vaughn is a fine mechanic." (His ability to build things is something I can attest to personally. He made a lot of furniture to give to his three daughters, and since Gen's and Corinne's deaths, I have inherited quite a bit of furniture that I can say was hand-made by my great-great-grandfather.)

The lack of clippings about Ora means that I don't know much about her. I know that she married Clarence Potter sometime before 1910, when Gen was born. But beyond that, I know very little  about her, other than what the photographs reveal. Of the three girls, she looks the most like her father. Where Hattie is tall and angular and Edna is fair and dimpled, Ora has a roundness about her, with slightly awkward features and a swarthy complexion; she doesn't smile much.There is no mention of her getting a teaching degree like her older sisters, or of appearing in local plays like Edna or participating in clubs or hosting card games. Which is not to say that she didn't do all of these things; it's just that the record is silent.

She appears in the newspaper clippings only once, when Gen's brother Warren was born. The announcement reads, "A little son was born to Mr. and Mrs. Clarence Potter at their home in the town of Lafayette on Friday, Dec. 28, 1917. It is needless to say that Grandpa and Grandma Vaughn are pleased over their first grandson."

Warren Potter as a toddler

So instead of information about Ora, I mostly have questions. For example: I wonder if it was hard for her to marry a farmer and move to the farm after not having lived on one since she was five years old? Did she feel overshadowed by her older sisters when they were all young? Was she her father's favorite, looking so much like him as she did? Was she a stern woman, as the photos seem to indicate? Or did they simply fail to capture her warm spirit, the way she could hold the attention of a roomful of people with her conversation? These are all things I will probably just never know. 

Recipes: Graham Muffins

From Wikipedia: "Graham flour is a type of whole wheat flour named after the American Presbyterian minister Rev. Sylvester Graham (1794–1851), an early advocate for dietary reform. Graham despised the discarding of nutrients and bleaching with alum and chlorine involved in making white flour and white bread, and believed that using all of the grain (without adding chemicals) in the milling of flour and baking of bread, was a remedy for the poor health of his fellow Americans during changes in diet brought on by the Industrial Revolution."

 

Graham Muffins - Makes 18

1 cup sifted flour
1/2 cup sugar
1 cup graham flour
1 tsp. salt
1 egg, well beaten
3 tsp. baking powder
1/2 c. nutmeals
1 cup milk
4 tbsp. melted butter

Sift flour once, meausre add baking powder, sugar & salt. Sift again. Add graham flour, nuts and mix. Combine egg, milk and shortening - Add flour mixture, beating only enough dough to dampen all flour. Bake in greased muffin tins in hot oven 425F for 25 minutes.

Note: Plain whole wheat flour can also be used as a substitute, but the texture of the resulting baked goods will be different.

Great American Road Trip, Circa 1936: Part 2

This Friday, Nik Wallenda, a professional tightrope walker descended from the famous Flying Wallendas high-wire act, will attempt an 1,800-foot tightrope walk across Niagara Falls, so I figured what better time than now to have a Niagara Falls-themed post?

In the last post, I told you the story of how Gen and Corinne took a road trip to New York City in the summer of 1936 with two of their teacher friends. I believe they took the southern route in one direction and the northern route in the other, and though I have no evidence to verify this, I suspect that upon leaving New York City, they drove north.

Their next stop would have been Niagara Falls. Niagara Falls itself was having an interesting year. In February of 1936, the water flow on the American side of the Falls had reduced drastically due to ice jams further upriver. The reduced water flow allowed the falls to freeze over, and they froze solid for almost 15 days in February. (This has only happened a handful of times in history, and is unlikely to ever happen again due to modern technology and conservation.)

Photographer unknown, photo courtesy of the Niagara Falls Public Library.

Gen and Corinne would have arrived there in the end of June or beginning of July, long after the ice went out.

According to his essay, "A 'New Deal' for Leisure" from the book Being Elsewhere: Tourism, Consumer Culture and Identity in Modern Europe and North America, Michael Berkowitz explains that tourism expenditures continued to rise six years into the Great Depression and that "tourism appeared more integral to the economy of the 1930s than it had been during the previous decade." In other words, these were good years for places like Niagara Falls. Since the early 1800s, Niagara Falls had been a prime North American tourist destination, and by the time Gen and Corinne visited, it was well established as the "Honeymoon Capital" of the country.

Probably aping that reputation, the road trippers took a hilarious picture of themselves swooning at the top of the Falls:

Corinne (left) and Gen (second from right) impersonate happy honeymooners at Niagara Falls in 1936.

They also took a traditional shot:

I imagine the Falls themselves haven't changed much in 200 years.

Gen's snpashot of the Falls.

It looks like they went on a boat ride in Niagara Falls, possibly on the famous Maid of the Mist, which has been operating since 1845:

The teacher friends on a boat in Niagara Falls, 1936.

And of course, they visited the famous lookout points:

Next up, we come to a few photos I can't quite place. I can't tell if this is still Niagara Falls, or possibly a rest stop along the way. (Is it Pennsylvania? Canada?)

Corinne (standing) and Gen (forefront) with their travel buddies and an unidentified fifth friend. Where was this taken?

It seems to have been taken at the same time as this one:

Speaking of Pennsylvania, I should have included this photo with the last batch. It looks like they drove to New York City by way of Philadelphia, stopping long enough to take this one photo, at least. (It took me a while to identify the location, hence the delay. Ultimately it was the partially obscured Public Ledger ad in the background that solved the mystery.)

From Niagara Falls, so far at least, the record is silent. (I always hold out hope that I will stumble across more brochures or photos in a box or folder I haven't looked at yet.) I assume they drove home through London, Ontario and Detroit, though I suppose they also might have come down through Erie, Pennsylvania and Cleveland. I don't know exactly when they made it home to Wisconsin, either. Probably mid- to late-July, in time to start preparing for the new school year.

I imagine they brought home with them memories that lasted their lifetimes. When I was in high school, overachieving and following every rule ever laid down in front of me, I went to visit Gen one day in the nursing home. We chatted a bit, as we always did, but at the end of my visit, she said something that has stayed with me since that day. After listening to my stories about grades and after-school activities and achievements, she turned suddenly more serious than usual, looked right at me and said, "Make sure you have some fun in life, too."

I wonder if she was thinking of this trip as she said it.

Great American Road Trip, circa 1936: Part 1

In the box of photos and documents I went through last week, I found several clues as to the years Genevieve was teaching, which helps me narrow down the year my grandparents got married. (I know that when she got married, she had to resign her teaching position for "someone who needed it," as she always said.) From the last post, I know she was teaching in Evansville in 1929. I found her high school diploma, her original diploma from the Whitewater Normal School, and also a second diploma from Whitewater that they awarded her in 1938, presumably after she had completed enough continuing education or fulfilled enough teaching years to earn a full four-year degree? So sometime between 1938 and 1948, when my dad was born, she met and married my grandfather.

But before that, on summer break in 1936, she went on what I can only assume was a pretty amazing road trip. She and Corinne, along with two other teacher friends, decided to use part of their three months off to make a road trip from Wisconsin to New York City. Think about that for a moment. It was the middle of the Great Depression. Throughout the country, people were out of work and wandering the country aimlessly in search of employment, but traditional tourist travel was significantly curtailed. Those who were still economically sound enough to travel preferred to do so on the decade's new streamliner trains. It was 20 years before the invention of the interstate system would make the Great American Road Trip the vacation of choice for the middle class. Roads were two-lane, often poorly kept up due to Depression cutbacks, and flat tires were a frequent problem. Cars themselves were heavy, physically demanding to drive (before the invention of power brakes and power steering, it took real strength to drive a car.) It was only six years after the first commercial car radio was invented, and it's unlikely that Gen and Corinne's expedition had one for that long trip. It was three years before the earliest air conditioners were installed in cars, and twenty years before air conditioning was widely available. The trip was undoubtedly too hot or too cold, bumpy, long and at times, monotonous. And they were limited to at most three drivers, because Genevieve lived her whole life without getting a driver's license or learning to drive. And yet, from the photos I uncovered last weekend, they look like they had a ball.

Somewhere in the Midwest. Corinne is second from left, Genevieve is on the right. I assume that's the car they took. Anyone have a guess as to year/make/model?

They drove through Chicago, across Indiana, Ohio. They stopped in Toledo to visit a friend named Max. (Whose friend he was, or how she knew him remains a mystery.)

The road trippers visiting a friend named Max in Toledo.

While in Ohio visiting Max, it looks like they stayed in quaint little cabins.

Max with the teacher friends.

Gen and Corinne in front of the cabin they likely shared.

Once they left Ohio, their itinerary gets a little hazy. They definitely took the southern route through Cleveland and Pennsylvania in one direction, and the northern route, through Niagara Falls, in the other. But I can't tell yet if they went north first and south home or vice versa. It's purely a hunch, but I suspect they took the southerly route on the way out east. While in Pennsylvania, they stopped at something called Baker Caverns in Pennsylvania, which advertises itself as being "7 miles south of Chambersburg." (I have the tourist brochure, but haven't gotten it scanned yet. Since I will be visiting Chambersburg for the first time in about a month for my friend Emily's wedding, I took particular interest in it.)

And then... New York City.

Genevieve bought this souvenir guide for 25 cents. It is full of black and white photos of historic sites.

Judging by the photos from this part of the trip, they were having too much fun sightseeing to take many photos. And the ones they did take just have generic city scenes in the background.

New York City, 1936

Possibly the place they stayed in New York City?

There's a snapshot in the bunch of an older lady on the street that I'm thinking might be an early street fashion shot?

Watch out, Sartorialist. My grandma beat you to the punch by 70 years.

Though there aren't many snapshots from New York City, there are plenty of brochures, souvenirs and guides, so I imagine they painted the town. They were there the week of June 21st to June 27th, 1936.

Cover of a brochure guide to everything that was happening in New York the week they were there.

Plays that were up at that time include a comedy called "Boy Meets Girl" that was getting a lot of publicity and the drama, "The Children's Hour." There was one musical showing that week and it was "On Your Toes." (For those who may be interested, I scanned the whole brochure and posted it on Flickr.) Movies that were showing included Sins of Man ("Fine character study of Tyrolean bell-ringer whose ambitions for his sons are unrealized,") Trouble for Two (with Robert Montgomery and Ros Russell,) and Dancing Pirate ("Rollicking tale of Spanish California - all Technicolor dancing musical.") Stores they may have visited included: Abercrombie and Fitch Co., Bergdorf-Goodman, Gimbels, Henri Bendel Inc., Macy's, Putnam Book Shop, Saks-Fifth Avenue and Saks-34th Street, and Stern Bros., among others. (Shopping columnist Viriginia S. Zelius writes, "It's Lanvin's Basque cardigan at Bonwit Teller's. Like a man's sports jacket - the type of jacket for which you'd expect to pay at least half again as much. You can wear it with your sports dresses, or over your culottes.")

Taxi fare at the time was 20 cents for the first 1/4-mile and 5 cents for each additional 3/4-mile. At the time, there were only four main subway lines. They were known as the Eighth Ave. line, the Lexington Ave. line, the Broadway-7th Ave. line, and the B.M.T. subway express from Brooklyn, which went over the Manhattan Bridge. There were also still four elevated railway lines. (Interesting note: If you were a very wealthy person and could afford to fly, there were seven small airfields serving New York City at that time. A trip to Miami on Eastern Airlines would take you 8 hours, and you'd stop in Washington, DC, Raleigh, Charleston, Savannah, Jacksonville and Atlanta.) Finally, there were four Gray Line sightseeing bus tours operating at the time: New York, Chinatown, Harlem night life and a day trip to West Point.

Speaking of sightseeing, next time I'll show you some great photos of their trip to Niagara Falls!

Picture Day 1929

I had one more big box to go through in the basement that I knew was going to be a treasure trove of old family photos and documents. But the box was so big and I was already swimming in family photos and documents... I think I had been putting it off. Well, I've finally managed to dive into it and I'm finding so much great stuff! Particularly about my Grandma Genevieve and her childhood/early adult life.

Remember in the post about her time as a teacher during the Depression, I mentioned that her first teaching placement was in Evansville, WI, a small town west of Janesville? Well, I found her class picture there from the 1929-1930 school year. She taught first grade that year and had 36 students in her class.

On the back, she has them all listed. Do you know any of these little ones?

Left to right: 
First row: Bernice Mathias, Dolores Vreeland, Betty Armbruster, Joyce Bone, Ellen Robinson, Martha Hatling, Virginia parsons, Betty Groh, Jeanne Laschinsky, Gwendolyn McCaslin.
Second row: Alwyn Utzig, Robert Gibbs, Dan Papanz, Harlan Driscoll, Edward Jessessby, Lysle Graham, Lyle Sinnett, Eldon Hoague, Jimmie Johnson.
Third Row: Robert (Buzz) Fellows, Gordon Jorgenson, Phillip Olson, Herman Staller, Robert Olsen, Wayne Hatlenig, Frank Clark.
Fourth row: Robert Kelly, Victor Jenson, John Antes, LaVerne Paulson, Marvin Devlin, Judd Pearsall, Friderich Voegele, Theodore Jackson.
Absent: Vera Trunkhill, Oscar Cole (desceased?)

Interesting sidenote: The photo was taken in November, 1929, which means this would have been no more than four weeks after the Great Stock Market Crash. But as we know, the Stock Market crash followed a decade of agricultural Depression that hit rural Wisconsin particularly hard. You can see that, even dressed in their best clothes for picture day, some of the children are wearing ill-fitting and well-worn clothes.

Recipes: Marion Huml's Stroganoff

Once again, I have no idea who Marion Huml is, but she sounds German, so I assume she knew her Stroganoff. As always, if anyone is bold enough to make these recipes, please take pictures and send them to me!

Marion Huml's Stroganoff

3 lbs. round steak (cut up into small pieces)
2 garlic buds
2 tsp. salt
1 tsp. Accent
2 sm cream cheese
2 cans of mushrooms
6 oz. sherry

Brown meat in butter. Add garlic, salt, and sherry. Cover with water and cook until tender. Soften cheese with some juice from the meat. Stir until smooth and add this to the meat. Add mushrooms, drained. Thicken as much as needed.

Note: I'm not sure what "Accent" is or what "small" cream cheese equates to these days. Anyone with information on this, please comment!

Update: A brilliant and vigilant reader who follows us on  Twitter tracked down the spice known as Accent. To quote her, "It seems to be a cross between salt and MSG. Yum."

Update #2: A chef friend has this to add about Accent: "Accent is just MSG. You don't actually need it though, or if you're one of those crazy food people like me, you can substitute umami paste. It does the same thing, without the headaches."