Labor Day: Celebrating the Labors of Our Ancestors

First Labor Day Parade in the US, 5 Sep 1882 in New York City. Via Wikimedia.
First Labor Day Parade in the US, 5 Sep 1882 in New York City. Via Wikimedia. (Click to enlarge.)

 

Labor Day officially became a federal holiday in the United States in 1894. “The Gilded Age” included the rise of big business, like the railroads and oil companies, but laborers fought- sometimes literally- for their rights in the workplace. Grover Cleveland signed the law to honor the work and contributions, both economic and for society, of the American laborer. Celebrated on the first Monday in September, ironically the holiday was a concession to appease the American worker after the government tried to break up a railroad strike but failed.

The Labor Day weekend is a good time to think about our ancestors and the work they did to help move our country and their own family forward.

Jefferson Springsteen was a mail carrier through the wilds of early Indiana, traveling for miles on horseback through spring freshets (full or flooding streams from snow melt), forest, and Indian villages. Samuel T. Beerbower, who would be a some-number-great uncle depending on your generation, was the Postmaster in Marion, Ohio, for many years. “Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.”

Edward B. Payne, circa 1874. Image courtesy of Second Congregational Church, Wakeman, Ohio.
Edward B. Payne, Pastor, circa 1874. Image courtesy of Second Congregational Church, Wakeman, Ohio.

Bad weather, gloom of night, ocean crossings in the mid 1800s, and the threat of disease or injury did not stay our minister, deacon, and missionary ancestors from their appointed rounds either- especially since the felt they were appointed by a higher power. We have quite a number of very spiritual men in the family. Henry Horn became a Methodist circuit rider after coming to America as a Hessian soldier, being captured by George Washington’s troops in Trenton, NJ, then taking an Oath of Allegiance to the United States, and serving in the Revolutionary Army. The family migrated from Virginia to the wilds of western Pennsylvania sometime between 1782 and 1786. A story is told of how he was riding home from a church meeting in the snow. The drifts piled up to the body of the horse, and they could barely proceed on, but Henry did, and was able to preach another day. He founded a church Pleasantville, Bedford Co., Pennsylvania that still stands, and has a congregation, even today. Edward B. Payne and his father, Joseph H. Payne, Kingsley A. Burnell and his brother Thomas Scott Burnell were all ministers, some with formal schooling, some without. Edward B. Payne gave up a lucrative pastorate because he thought the church members were wealthy and educated enough that they did not need him. He moved to a poor church in an industrial town, where he was needed much more, however, he may have acquired his tuberculosis there. He also risked his life, and that of his family, by sheltering a woman from the domestic violence of her husband, and he testified on her behalf.

Abraham Green was one of the best tailors in St. Louis, Missouri in the early 1900s, and many in the Broida family, such as John Broida and his son Phillip Broida, plus Phillip’s daughter Gertrude Broida Cooper, worked in the fine clothing industry.

Edgar Springsteen worked for the railroad, and was often gone from the family. Eleazer John “E.J.” Beerbower worked for the railroads making upholstered cars- he had been a buggy finisher previously, both highly skilled jobs.

Sheet music cover for "Bless Your Ever Loving Little Heart," from "The Slim Princess."
Sheet music cover for “Bless Your Ever Loving Little Heart,” from “The Slim Princess.” (Click to enlarge.)

The theater called a number of our collateral kin (not direct lines, but siblings to one of our ancestors): Max Broida was in vaudeville, and known in films as “Buster Brodie.” Elsie Janis, born Elsie Beerbower, was a comedienne, singer, child star in vaudeville, “Sweetheart of the A.E.F” as she entertained the troops overseas in World War I, and then she went on to write for films. Max Broida also did a stint in the circus, as did Jefferson Springsteen, who ran away from home as “a very small boy” to join the circus (per his obituary).

Collateral Lee family from Irthlingborough, England, included shoemakers, as that was the specialty of the town. They brought those skills to Illinois, and some of those tools have been handed down in the family- strange, unknown tools in an inherited tool chest turned out to be over 100 years old!

Will McMurray and his wife Lynette Payne McMurray owned a grocery store in Newton, Iowa. Ella V. Daniels Roberts sold eggs from her chickens, the butter she made from the cows she milked, and her delicious pies at the McMurray store. Franz Xavier Helbling and some of his brothers and sons were butchers in Lawrenceville, Pennsylvania, near Pittsburgh, and had their own stores.

Some of our ancestors kept hotels or taverns. Joseph Parsons (a Burnell ancestor) was issued a license to operate an ‘ordinary’ or “house of entertainment” in 1661 in Massachusetts, and Samuel Lenton Lee was listed as “Keeps hotel” and later as a saloon keeper in US Federal censuses. Jefferson Springsteen had a restaurant at the famous Fulton Market in Brooklyn, NY in the late 1840s.

From left: Edgar B. Helbling, (Anna) "May" Helbling, Vi Helbling, and Gerard William Helbling, on Flag Day 1914.
From left: Edgar B. Helbling, (Anna) “May” Helbling, Vi Helbling, and Gerard William Helbling, on Flag Day 1914. Note ‘Undertaker’ sign- yes, it was all done in his home. (Click to enlarge.)

Many of our family had multiple jobs. William Gerard Helbling (AKA Gerard William Helbling or “G.W.”) listed himself as working for a theater company, was an artist, then an undertaker, and finally a sign painter. George H. Alexander was artistic as well- he created paintings but also worked as a lighting designer to pay the bills.

Sometimes health problems forced a job change. Edward B. Payne was a Union soldier, librarian, and then a pastor until he was about 44 when his respiratory problems from tuberculosis forced him to resign the pulpit. For the rest of his life he did a little preaching, lecturing, and writing. He also became an editor for a number of publications including, “The Overland Monthly,” where he handed money over from his own pocket (per family story) to pay the young writer Jack London for his first published story. Edward B. Payne even founded a Utopian colony called Altruria in California! He and his second wife, Ninetta Wiley Eames Payne, later owned and conducted adult ‘summer camps’ that were intellectual as well as healthy physically while camping in the wild and wonderful northern California outdoors.

Other times, health problems- those of other people- are what gave our ancestors jobs:  Edward A. McMurray and his brother Herbert C. McMurray were both physicians, as was John H. O’Brien (a Helbling ancestor), who graduated from medical school in Dublin, Ireland, and came to America in 1832. He settled in western Pennsylvania, still wild and in the midst of a cholera epidemic that was also sweeping the nation; he had his work cut out for him. (It appears he did not get the same respect as other doctors because he was Irish, and this was pre-potato famine.) Lloyd Eugene “Gene” Lee and his father Samuel J. Lee owned a drugstore in St. Louis, as did Gene’s brother-in-law, Claude Aiken. Edith Roberts McMurray Luck worked as a nurse since she received a degree in biology in 1923.

We have had many soldiers who have helped protect our freedom, and we will honor some of those persons on Veterans Day.

We cannot forget the farmers, but they are too numerous to name them all! Even an urban family often had a large garden to supplement purchased groceries, but those who farmed on a larger scale included George Anthony Roberts, Robert Woodson Daniel, David Huston Hemphill, Amos Thomas, etc., etc. We even have a pecan farmer in the Lee family- William Hanford Aiken, in Waltham County, Mississippi, in the 1930s-40s.

Lynette Payne, December 1909, wearing a purple and lavender silk dress.
Lynette Payne, December 1909, wearing a purple and lavender silk dress. (Click to enlarge.)

We must also, “Remember the ladies” as Abigail Adams entreated her husband John Adams as he helped form our new nation. He/they did not, so 51% of the population-women- were not considered citizens except through their fathers or husbands. Many of these women, such as Lynette Payne McMurray, labored to get women the right to vote, equal pay, etc. (Lynette ‘walked the talk’ too- she was the first woman to ride a bicycle in Newton, Iowa! Not so easy when one thinks about the clothing involved.) Some men, like her father, Edward B. Payne, put their energy into the women’s suffrage movement as well. Many of our ancestors worked for the abolition movement too, including the Payne and Burnell families.

A woman worked beside her husband in many families, although she would get little credit for it. Who cooked the meals and cleaned the rooms for the Lee and Parsons innkeepers? Likely their wives, who also had to keep their own home clean, laundry washed, manage a garden and often livestock- many families kept chickens even if they didn’t have a farm. They raised and educated their many children too, sometimes 13 or more. Oh yes, let’s not forget that women truly ‘labored’ to bring all those children into the world that they had made from scratch. (Building a human from just two cells makes building a barn seem somewhat less impressive, doesn’t it?) Some of them even died from that labor.

June 1942- Claude Frank Aiken and his wife Mildred Paul in their drugstore.
June 1942- Claude Frank Aiken and his wife Mildred Paul Aiken in their drugstore in St. Louis, Missouri.

Working alongside one’s husband could be frightening due to the dangers of the job. A noise in the Aiken family drugstore in St. Louis, Missouri in 1936 awoke Claude and Mildred Aiken since they lived in the back of the store. Claude look a gun and went into the store while Mildred called the police. Claude fired the gun high to frighten the intruder- Mildred must have been very scared if she was in the back, wondering who had fired the shot and if her husband was still alive. Thankfully he was, and the police were able to arrest the thief, who wanted to steal money to pay a lawyer to defend him in his three previous arrests for armed burglary and assault.

 

We applaud all of our ancestors who worked hard to support their family. Their work helped to make the US the largest economic power in the world, and a place immigrants would come to achieve their ‘American dream.’ We hope our generation, and the next, can labor to keep our country prosperous and strong.

 

Notes, Sources, and References: 

  1. There are too many folks listed here to add references, but using the search box on the blog page can get you to any of the stories that have been posted about many of these persons. Of course, there is always more to come, so stay tuned!

 

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Mystery Monday: Maria and Blackie

Maria and Blackie. "Maria/Marcia passed on Feb. 7 (Tues.) 1935. Blackie Nov. 20 - 33" on reverse.
Maria and Blackie. “Maria/Marcia passed on Feb. 7 (Tues.) 1935. Blackie Nov. 20 – 33” on reverse.

Who is Maria?  Does this really say Maria, or is it Marcia? (Don’t know of any ‘Marcia’ in the family.)

This photo was in with Lee-Aiken family papers and photos.

The reverse:

"Marcia passed on feb. 7 (Tues.) 1935. Blackie Nov. 20 - 33" - Reverse.
“Maria/Marcia passed on Feb. 7 (Tues.) 1935. Blackie Nov. 20 – 33” – Reverse.

Here are some other pictures that were in the same group. Vada (Kovich) Lee (second wife of Gene Lee, and she also lived in the Alamo house), had originally said this was Dottie Lee, but then decided it was not. She believed it to be an older version of the sunroom on Alamo, the Lee family household for generations in St. Louis, Missouri. She was unsure as to who it was, as she had not known Gene’s grandparents.

Unknown woman- possibly Maria Louisa Brandenburger?
Unknown woman- possibly same as above? Maria Louisa Brandenburger?

One possibility is that it is Maria Louisa (or Louisa Maria- Germans switched their two names about and were often called by their middle name) (Brandenburger) Lee. Maria was married to Samuel Lenton Lee, and their eldest child was Samuel J. Lee, who owned the home on Alamo. Samuel L died in June of 1932, so Maria would have been a widow after that, and possibly lived with her son or other children, or just made extended stays to St. Louis from their original home in Bunker Hill, Illinois. Maria died 06 May 1934 in Bunker Hill, not the 07 Feb 1935 as noted on the back of the first picture, but memories written on the back of pictures are not always accurate.

Unknown woman, possibly Maria Louisa Brandenburger Lee or Minnie Schoor?
Unknown woman, possibly Maria Louisa Brandenburger Lee or Minnie Schoor?

Could this be the same woman? We don’t know for sure who she is either. It would be great to find someone with these same images!

 

Notes, Sources, and References:

1) Lee Family Treasure Chest, reviewed with Gene and Vada Lee in the 1980s.

 

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Wordless Wednesday: Lee Family Clock

Lee Family Clock, St. Louis, Missouri
Lee Family Pillar Mantle Clock, St. Louis, Missouri

The family oral history is that this clock sat on the fireplace mantle in the household of Samuel Lenton Lee (1849-1932) and later his son, Samuel J. Lee (1879-1964), and then grandson, Lloyd Eugene “Gene” Lee (1907-1991). It is known positively that it belonged to Samuel J. Lee and Gene Lee, but not verified that it was owned by the elder Samuel Lee. The two younger Lees lived on Alamo in St. Louis, Missouri.

Lee Clock- Detail
Lee Clock- Pillar Detail

Inside it has printing on how to use and regulate the clock, and states “Made and sold by Seth Thomas, Plymouth Hollow, Connecticut. Warranted  Good.”

Lee Clock- Face
Lee Clock- Face

The clock is a wood veneer, possibly rosewood, with ebonized pillars and gold at the cap and base of the pillars. It appears that the clock face has been replaced as it has little wear. Note the “S” and “T” on the hands of the clock.

Further research is needed to date the clock. My very brief research suggests it may be from 1870-1875 or so.

The clock has not worked for more than a day or two since it has been in our possession, despite numerous rides to the clock repair shop.

Samuel Lenton Lee immigrated to Bunker Hill, Illinois in 1870, per censuses, at age 21, from his birthplace in Irthlingborough, Northamptonshire, England. (Family oral history stated the year as 1856, but he would only have been 7 at the time.) He arrived in New Orleans and took passage on a boat up the Mississippi to Macoupin County, Illinois. On 7 Oct 1878, he married Louisa Marie Brandenberger- perhaps the clock was a wedding gift? Samuel died in Bunker Hill, and his son Samuel J. moved to St. Louis, Missouri, sometime between 1906, when he married Dorothy Adele Aiken (1884-1953) in Bunker Hill, and 1910, when he is found in the US Federal Census in St. Louis, Missouri.

 

So okay, I really cannot do a Wordless Wednesday post, and this will be my last. But what good is seeing an artifact if one does not know the history to make it a family treasure?

 

Notes, Sources, and References:

1) Family  treasure.

2) Source Citation: Year: 1900; Census Place: Bunker Hill, Macoupin, Illinois; Roll: 324; Page: 10B; Enumeration District: 0051; FHL microfilm: 1240324. Ancestry.com. Accessed 7/2/14.

3) Source Citation: Year: 1910; Census Place: St Louis Ward 23, Saint Louis City, Missouri; Roll: T624_821; Page: 8B; Enumeration District: 0355; FHL microfilm: 1374834.

4) Dating clock: https://www.antiqueclockspriceguide.com/labelstrademarks.php?lm=Seth%20Thomas

5) See also Five Family Photos for Friday- Samuel J. Lee of St. Louis, Missouri  and That Place Thursday: Samuel J. Lee and Son Pharmacy, St. Louis, Missouri.

 

 

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Copyright 2013-2014 by Heritage Ramblings Blog and pmm.

 
We would love to read your thoughts and comments about this post, and thank you for your time! All comments are moderated, however, due to the high intelligence and persistence of spammers/hackers who really should be putting their smarts to use for the public good instead of spamming our little blog.



Five Family Photos for Friday- Samuel J. Lee of St. Louis, Missouri

A portrait of samuel J. Lee taken in St. Louis, Missouri. He appears to be about 3 or 4, so this would have been taken around1882-3.

A portrait of Samuel J. Lee taken in St. Louis, Missouri. He appears to be about 3 or 4, so this would have been taken around 1882-3.

[Click on any image to enlarge.]

 

Samuel J. Lee was born to Samuel Lenton Lee (1849-1932) and his wife Louisa M. Brandenburger (1859-1934) in Bunker Hill, Macoupin, Illinois on 29 Jun 1879. He married Dorothy Adele Aiken (1884-1953) on 1 Dec 1906 in Bunker Hill. They moved to St. Louis, Missouri by 7 Sep 1907, when their son Lloyd Eugene Lee was born.

Samuel J. Lee (left) in his Chouteau Ave store in St. Louis, Missouri, circa 1920?
Samuel J. Lee (left) in his Chouteau Ave store in St. Louis, Missouri, circa 1920?

Sam Lee had a drugstore at 4067 Chouteau Ave. in St. Louis. When his son also became a pharmacist, the store was called “S. J. Lee & Son.”

Samuel J. Lee home at 6204 Alamo Ave., St. Louis, Missouri. 1930s or 1940s?
Samuel J. Lee family home at 6204 Alamo Ave., St. Louis, Missouri. 1930s or 1940s?

The Lees purchased their home at 6204 Alamo in St. Louis sometime between the 1920 and 1930 censuses.

Christmas, possibly 1960s, at the Samuel J. Lee home on Alamo in St. Louis, Missouri.
Christmas, possibly 1960s, at the Samuel J. Lee home on Alamo in St. Louis, Missouri.

Samuel J. Lee in His Drugstore in St. Louis, Missouri, possibly 1940s or 1950s?
Samuel J. Lee in his drugstore in St. Louis, Missouri, possibly 1950s or 1960s?

Sam died 24 Sep 1964 in St. Louis and was buried in Memorial Park Cemetery in Jennings, St. Louis Co., Missouri.

 

Notes, Sources, and References:

1) Birth information for Samuel J. Lee: Source Citation: Registration State: Missouri; Registration County: St Louis (Independent City); Roll: 1683856; Draft Board: 24. Source Information: Ancestry.com. U.S., World War I Draft Registration Cards, 1917-1918 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2005. Accessed 12/11/13.

2) Samuel J. Lee and Dorothy Adele Aiken marriage certificate in family artifacts.

3) Birth record of Lloyd Eugene Lee: Source Information: Ancestry.com. Missouri Birth Records, 1851-1910 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2007. Original data: Missouri Birth Records [Microfilm]. Jefferson City, MO, USA: Missouri State Archives. Accessed 12/11/13.

4) 1920 US Federal Census: Source Citation: Year: 1920; Census Place: St Louis Ward 24, St Louis (Independent City), Missouri; Roll: T625_960; Page: 1A; Enumeration District: 468; Image: 245. Source Information: Ancestry.com. 1920 United States Federal Census [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2010. Images reproduced by FamilySearch. Accessed 12/11/13.

5) 1930 US Federal Census: Source Citation: Year: 1930; Census Place: St Louis, St Louis (Independent City), Missouri; Roll: 1245; Page: 1A; Enumeration District: 0239; Image: 830.0; FHL microfilm: 2340980. Source Information: Ancestry.com. 1930 United States Federal Census [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2002. Original data: United States of America, Bureau of the Census. Fifteenth Census of the United States, 1930. Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, 1930. T626, 2,667 rolls. Accessed 12/11/13.

6) Find A Grave Memorial # 56893479, http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=56893479. Accessed 12/11/13.

7) Note: edited 7/2/14 and changed “George Lenton Lee” to “Samuel Lenton Lee.” George Lee was the father of Samuel Lenton Lee; Samuel’s mother was Eliza Lenton.

 

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Copyright 2013 by Heritage Ramblings Blog and pmm.