Where Did Miss Culver Live When She First Moved to Seattle?

If you recall my posts about Jennie Culver, and her daughters Rhea and Lela, moving to Seattle, you will see that this photo fits neatly into the move. Try this post if you need a reminder or are new to the story:

Bingo: When Aunt Jennie Left for Seattle

On the back, one of the girls has written “my present domicile” and on the front, the date is 1918, the year other photos showed them at the train station, ready for the move.

I glanced at some of the other unidentified Culver photos to see if this apartment building (I assume it is apartments) shows up. Only one other photo with square brick columns shows up, but it can’t be of the same building. See here:

Notice what confuses me here. The square brick column, the white round column–the same as the first photo, right? But the white siding in the second photo is not in the first photo, right again?

I will say the age seems right for Seattle in this photo. The more I look at the Culver photos, the more Kalamazoo photos I suspect might be in the collection.

So who wrote “my present domicile” on this photograph? It wasn’t Jennie because the scrapbook and its photos clearly belonged to one of the daughters.  My confusion began with information I noticed that I wrote about in this post:Who Went Where When?. According to the newspaper, Rhea, the stenographer, moved to Seattle mid-August 1918. Jennie and Lela were not mentioned. But at some point Jennie and Lela did move to Seattle and lived there the rest of their lives. Somewhere around 1918. And Rhea did, too, except that in 1920 she was “spotted” living in Kalamazoo (see my post).

Can I assume that Rhea did go to Seattle August 20 as the newspaper and photograph verify? And that “my present domicile” was where Rhea lived? If so, can I conclude that the scrapbook belonged to Rhea. And that this photo I posted earlier was, in fact, Rhea in the plaid?

Is the handwriting on the above photo, the same as on the back of the first photograph I posted here?

Barely any letters to compare. They each have a final “le”–in Seattle and domicile. While nobody’s handwriting is completely consistent, are these in the bounds of what could be written by the same person? I will say there is a similarity to MY handwriting, weirdly. Both Miss Culver and I produce the triangular Ts of Emily Dickinson.

As usual, I manage to produce more questions than answers. This is becoming a disturbing trend!

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Riverside Drive is Where Exactly?

Some of you might remember the beautiful scrapbook of photographs that I was given by a very kind stranger. It belonged to one of the two adult daughters –Rhea or Lela–of my great-great-grandfather’s sister Jennie DeKorn Culver.

At least one of the three Culvers moved from Kalamazoo to Seattle on August 20, 1918. If only one Culver moved at that time, it wasn’t long before all three were living in the state of Washington. I have not been able to figure out exactly how the move occurred–or why–but it doesn’t stop me from being fascinated with the photos.

 

Although the majority of the photographs in the album are from 1917 and 1918, this one is marked 9-4-1915. It says it is on Riverside Drive. But what are those initials after the street?

In 1910 Jennie lived with her two daughters at 59 Kalamazoo Avenue in Kalamazoo. She was a seamstress in a corset factory. Rhea was 19 years old and a stenographer in a “paper stock company.” Lela, 21, was a teacher in a public school. I would really love to find out if Lela went to Western Normal School to become a teacher.

So is this Riverside Drive in Kalamazoo or elsewhere? According to Mapquest and Google, there is a Kalamazoo Avenue in Kalamazoo, but not Drive. Both Kalamazoo Avenue and Riverside Avenue are on the east side of Kalamazoo. There’s a famous Riverside Drive in NYC. I’m going to make a guess that those initials say N. Y.–New York City. Do you agree?

And is this one of the sisters? Unfortunately, I would say NO as both sisters had narrow faces. My guess is that this is a friend of the scrapbook owner.

On a slightly related subject, I just wanted to say:

CONGRATULATIONS to the WMU Broncos!!!

They are undefeated this season!!!! This is my alma mater. This is the alma mater of so many of my relatives. YAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

If you want to get hyped up, watch the video and ROW THE BOAT!

 

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Who Went Where When?

OK, we’re going to try this again. You might have seen my post last week about this–which I subsequently deleted when it became obvious I’d missed a clue.

My great-great-grandfather’s sister Jennie DeKorn Culver (divorced) and her two adult daughters moved from Kalamazoo to Seattle at some point. All three women died there. Only Lela seems to have married–at the age of 63.

Two weeks ago, I posted the photo that gives the exact date the Culvers moved to Seattle. Here it is again with the date of August 20, 1918 written on it. One of the Culver daughters is in this photo.

 

I also posted a photo of all three Culver women–Aunt Jennie DeKorn Culver and her daughter Rhea and Lela–with some identified travelers or perhaps people seeing them off on their travels.

After much searching I did find one newspaper “jotting” that mentions the move. It was posted in the Kalamazoo Gazette on August 13, 1918.

 

Of COURSE, the mystery deepens. Why does it mention only Rhea and not her mother or sister? I can’t believe they wouldn’t be mentioned if they did, in fact, move at the same time.Maybe Rhea went with the other people in the photo? If so, when did Jennie and Lela move?

I will say that Jennie does look as if she is dressed for travel (she is the 3rd from the left). Do you agree with me? The other daughter, the one in the striped silk could be dressed for travel–or not.

In 1918, Rhea (born 1890) was 28 years old. She was single and a grown woman. I wonder if she went with any of the Culver family or she went with a religious group. Lela was also single and 30 that year. Jennie was 61. I will be 61 this summer. I can’t imagine making that move with my two daughters if I didn’t know anybody else in Seattle.

Also, this new information sheds light on that photo of the young Culver woman with the older woman (above). Maybe that is Rhea and she IS going with that woman to Seattle.

This is where it gets even more confusing.

In the 1920 census, Rhea, stenographer, is living in Kalamazoo with a cousin and the cousin’s husband, Charles Pierce, and daughter! The cousin is Cora DeSmit Pierce, the daughter of Jennie’s sister Mary. WHAT? So Rhea left for Seattle on her own and came back to Kalamazoo? Homesick?

Cora DeSmit Pierce

But wait.

Also in the 1920 census, Jennie and Lela (teacher) were living in Seattle! So Rhea moved to Seattle, according to the paper. It doesn’t say she joined her family there. It sounds as if she is the first Culver to move to Seattle. But how did the others end up in Seattle and Rhea NOT by 1920?

Can this get any more confusing? I will have to study the photo album more to see if I can find any other clues in there. I would like to examine yearly city directories in both Seattle and Kalamazoo, but even if I could, it still might not divulge what happened.

What do you think? Did Rhea move first and the rest of her family come later? Any ideas on where to research next?

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Bingo: When Aunt Jennie Left for Seattle

Last week I was given the most wonderful identification of the church that I thought was in Seattle circa 1918. It turned out to be First Congregational Church in Kalamazoo, Michigan, 1917!!!

In searching for the other photos of the church and the uniformed man and the child identified as Carl Sadler, I found a very significant collection of photos. One is even labeled that gives the answer to my long-standing question of when Aunt Jennie and her daughters Lela and Rhea left Kalamazoo for Seattle. Take a look.

The young lady in plaid is a Culver, I’m sure. I don’t know who the other lady is. All dressed up for travel. What does the caption say? STARTING FOR SEATTLE AUG. 20, 1918. Hah, you can’t ask for anything better than that in genealogy and family history research. The actual answer–to the day–complete with new outfits and a Gladstone bag in the hand of the older woman. Look it up. It was named after Prime Minister Gladstone, and it’s a very specific and stylish type of luggage. I know this because . . . ta dum . . . I used to own a luggage store. Look at how crisp their clothing was. These poor orphanage girls, daughters of a woman who had to figure out how to make a living for her family of divorce, looks like they are doing pretty well. No idea why . . . .

Here are other photos. Tell me: what does it look like. Are these other people traveling with the Culver women? If so, why are they going to Seattle? Are they all planning to settle there? They seem to be “of a group” because the man is carrying a bag. But what if he’s holding the lady’s Gladstone for her? Maybe they aren’t all going.  I’m confusing myself. What I do believe is that that is Jennie to our right (and their left) of her plaid-skirted daughter. And I think the boldly decorated young lady on plaid’s right (to us she is farthest left) is the other Culver girl. 

 

Remember that this date is before the end of WWI, which ended in November.

While I have solved the mystery of when the Culver women left for Seattle, I still do not know WHY or WITH WHOM.

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You Won’t Believe Where This “Seattle” Building was Located (A Mysterious Uniform redux)

Last year I posted a photo that I believed was taken in Seattle. It was in the Culver-DeKorn photo album that was so kindly sent to me by a “caretaker” of the photos for decades. I wondered what the uniform was that the man was wearing and what the building was that is shown behind him. My assumptions have been shaken to the core. The old post is in quote marks, and below that is what I discovered!

First let me tell you a little more about Jennie DeKorn Culver, my 3rd great-aunt. She is a very sympathetic character to me. She went through a divorce when very few people did so, and she lost her daughters to the orphanage for a little while because of that. She was an artist when that was not approved of for a woman, especially from her background.

Jennie’s parents and two siblings were all born in the Netherlands, but Jennie was born in 1857 in Ottawa, Michigan.

When Jennie was 7, her mother died. When she was 16, her father died. The year before her father died, her oldest sibling, Richard DeKorn, married Alice Paak  on May 10, 1872. Her sister Mary married John DeSmit on October 4, 1872. So when their father passed away, that left Jennie alone. Jennie didn’t marry John Culver until she was 25. What did she do from age 16 to 25 and where did she live?

Here is the old post:

(The Culver-DeKorn family: my great-great grandfather’s sister, Jenny DeKorn Culver, and her daughters, Lela and Rhea, who moved from Kalamazoo to Seattle 100 years ago.)

In the scrapbook which I received from a blog reader I found this photograph. Any ideas on the type of uniform? Since this would have been around the time of the end of WWI, does the uniform have to do with the war?

I don’t know who the man is. Most of the Culver photos are of women.

But the clues would leave me to believe the photo was taken in Seattle in or around 1918. But did Seattle have old elegant buildings like this at that time?

###

Well, my goodness! I had a surprise yesterday when a blog reader posted a comment that upset my whole way of looking at the photo album in general:

That building is the old First Congregational Church in Kalamazoo. It burned down in 1925. There is a colorized view of the building halfway down this page.

http://www.kpl.gov/local-history/religion/first-congregational.aspx

Please check out the link because the colorized photo indicated shows a beautiful building in its entirely–smackdab in KALAMAZOO! Not Seattle. Right on the northeast corner of Park and  Academy Streets.

Here are other photos from that “photo shoot,” and they are all in Kalamazoo! The photos are identified as 1917, and the baby is Carl Sadler.

 

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

I always had a feeling the man was standing in a park-like setting. Suddenly, it occurred to me. The church must have been where the current church is today. It is one of several “First” churches that ring the town square of Kalamazoo–they must have been standing in my own beloved Bronson Park! I have so many memories of that park.

And that gorgeous church belonged to Kalamazoo.

A bigger question remains: who is Carl Sadler?

I can’t find a Carl Sadler in Kalamazoo who would be born around 1915 or 1916. Since these photos were taken in 1917, I am estimating that he was born around that time.

Another thing to consider: how many other photos in the album are from Kalamazoo?!

But stay tuned for the next installment of Aunt Jennie. Because I have some more new info about her!

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A Mysterious Uniform (at least to me)

Remember the Culver family: my great-great grandfather’s sister, Jenny DeKorn Culver, and her daughters, Lela and Rhea, who moved from Kalamazoo to Seattle 100 years ago.

In the scrapbook which I received from a blog reader I found this photograph. Any ideas on the type of uniform? Since this would have been around the time of the end of WWI, does the uniform have to do with the war?

I don’t know who the man is. Most of the Culver photos are of women.

But the clues would leave me to believe the photo was taken in Seattle in or around 1918. But did Seattle have old elegant buildings like this at that time?

 

What about the building? My first inclination was a church, but I don’t see any crosses. Are those rosettes for ornamentation?

 

 

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Jennie, Lela, and Rhea Culver from Seattle (and Kalamazoo)

Reminder: Jennie DeKorn Culver, 1857-1947, moved to Seattle from Kalamazoo with her two adult daughters, Lela and Rhea, around 1915

Since I did not have any photographs of Lela and Rhea Culver as adults until I received the scrapbook, I have had to make guesses on the identity of people in the scrapbook photos. I did have a good photograph of Jennie’s face as a young woman, so that does help.

I’m hoping you can help me decide which photos do have Jennie, Lela, and/or Rhea in them. After the new photos, I’ll repost a couple I’ve posted before for comparison.

Because the photos were all in the scrapbook together–and some of them were loose–it would help to know what year fashion the clothing is in each photograph (since the years may be all mixed up). Clothes, hair, background, compare faces: whatever ideas you have, lemme have ’em, please! I’ve numbered the new photos. Also, you can click on each photo to enlarge.

 

From Scrapbook (haven’t posted before)

Photo 1

 

Photo 2 (I feel fairly certain this is Jennie and her daughters)

 

Photo 3

Photo 4

Photo 5

Photo 6

Photo 7

 

From scrapbook (posted in earlier posts)

Photo 8

Lela and Rhea Culver
Seattle, WA

Rhea and Lela Culver
Kalamazoo, Michigan

Jenny DeKorn Culver
1857-1947

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What Did Lela and Rhea Culver Do at the Orphanage?

I wrote that the Jennie DeKorn Culver’s daughters Lela and Rhea were at the Children’s Home in Kalamazoo during the divorce proceedings of their parents.

According to articles in The Kalamazoo Gazette, they were there from at least December 1896 to May 1897.

Here is an article about a Christmas program Lela performed in:

I find it curious that the backup singers or performers (Lela was one of them) are called “Nineteenth Century Children.” There were still three full years of the 19th century left at this point.

I’d love to know what gifts the children received–and if they were from the community. Would children like Lela and Rhea with living parents have also received gifts from their parents? Or would that have been against the rules?

1896 Christmas Tree

Since I had proof through the Kalamazoo Gazette articles that the girls were at the Children’s Home in 1896 and 1897, I contacted Lakeside Academy, the current name of what was the Children’s Home during the Culver girls’ time. I had heard through another blogger that they still had records from the late 1800s. Don Nitz, the CEO of Lakeside for Children, was so kind to search for me. Unfortunately, there are gaps in the records, and he could not find any documentation of Lela and Rhea’s stay with them.

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Why Did Jennie Move to Seattle?

The story of Jennie DeKorn Culver begins in Michigan. It turns out that, even with the beautiful scrapbook, she is one of the biggest mysteries of my family tree.

Jennie’s birth name was Adriana. She was named after her grandmother, Adriana Krijger (the mother of Johanna Remijnse, Jennie’s mother). According to Adri van Gessel, in the dialect of the Goes region at that time, she would be called Joâne–a name that doesn’t sound like Joanne. There is no English equivalent, so she was called Jennie.

Jennie was born in Ottawa County, Michigan, in 1857 or 1858, one or two years after her parents moved to the United States, so she never lived in The Netherlands herself. Her mother passed away in 1864, so Jennie would have only been 6 or 7.

On December 25 (Christmas Day!), 1882, Jennie married John P. Culver in Kalamazoo. John was born in 1854,1855, or 1856 in Climax, Michigan, to Oliver C. and Almira Carney Culver. John had six siblings. He was about 12 years older than Jennie who was 25 or so.

The couple had two daughters:

• Lela Almira Culver, born in Kalamazoo, on September 27, 1888
• Rhea A. Culver, born in Kalamazoo, on November 13, 1890

The Culver girls before their parents divorced

At some point before 1898, the couple divorced. I know this because John remarried on July 7, 1898, at Muskegon, Michigan. His new bride was Florence V. Potter (Flora), daughter of William H. Potter and Florence King. Florence was born in 1876 and died after 1940, possibly as late as 1964.

Florence was married about 1900  to Norman Brant. The couple had two daughters. Florence went on to marry again, too.

John Culver himself probably had a 3rd marriage, possibly to Gladys E. Simmons.

Back to Jennie. I couldn’t find a divorce record online for her divorce from John, so I resorted to Genealogy Bank to look up the local newspaper, The Kalamazoo Gazette. That’s when I found articles that show that the couple certainly did divorce, and while the girls were so young. Jennie didn’t come from people who divorced, so for her to divorce her husband (and with young daughters at home, too), they must have had a drastic problem.

The following newspaper articles tell part of the story. Several of them are attached in .pdf form because they were too long for me to take screen shots of them. If you click the links you will find the newspaper articles. Be sure not to pass by the last one without clicking and reading.

Before the storm you could get lunch at Culver’s: Jan 5, 1895 lunch at Culver

It begins in the fall?

Kalamazoo Gazette
4 October 1895

The Gazette had a list of Circuit Court cases in the paper on Dec 6, 1895.  Jennie Culver v. John P. Culver was listed as a divorce case.

More about the divorce on May 8, 1896 .

As if to counteract the bad publicity the day before, the Gazette lists something innocuous about John on May 9, 1896. It merely states that he has been given the refreshment concession at the Recreation Park.

On May 14, 1897, there were two articles. One was in Jottings and shows that John Culver has changed something small or large about his livelihood.

Apparently, one can no longer get lunch at John Culver’s on North Burdick.

There there is one that tells me that the divorce was finalized before May 14, 1897.  Heart-breaking. This one you need to click through to read.

The children were at the Children’s Home! Not with their mother! I tried to find something about the Children’s Home in Kalamazoo at that time. All I could find was a list of the children in the home in 1900.

CHILDREN’S HOME LIST 1900

Note that the girls are not on the list, so it’s likely that they were living with their mother by 1900.

Here are some articles about the Children’s Home:

1. General history

2. More general history

I’ve written to the blogger who wrote both these articles because it appears that her relatives lived at the home at the same time the Culver girls lived there.

When did Jennie move to Seattle with her daughters? And why?

Rhea and Lela Culver
Seattle, WA

The 1910 census shows Jennie still in Kalamazoo, and the city directory shows her there in 1915.

Many of the Seattle photographs in the photo album seem to be from about 1915-1925.  Remember that Jennie would have been around 58 years old in 1915!

Jennie died in Seattle on July 4, 1947.

The answer to the title is: I don’t know! I guess I have to keep researching. Jennie doesn’t appear to have remarried, although it is possible.  The daughters remained single for a long time (not sure if one of them ever married), so it wasn’t to follow a daughter’s husband’s job or family.

Any guesses on why she would have moved to Seattle in or just after 1915?

 

 

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Is This Jennie DeKorn Culver in A Velvet Coat?

We will get back to Theresa Pake, but I am working on so many branches of the family. I can’t let the other leads I have lie there untracked. I need to follow them, too ;).

Let’s start to explore the wonderful scrapbook of the DeKorn-Culver family again (while not forgetting about Theresa or Jennie DeKorn Culver’s sister Mary DeKorn DeSmit’s family either). For more information on this story, see the related posts below.

To remind you, I had wondered what happened to one of the sisters of Richard DeKorn (my great-great-grandfather). Her name was Jennie, or perhaps Jennie Adrianna, and at some point she moved with her two daughters, Lela and Rhea, from Kalamazoo, Michigan, to Seattle, Washington.  She may have been divorced in Kalamazoo. A lot needs must be explored at this juncture because why would a woman with two daughters move so far away from home–especially in those days?

A reader in the northwest United States who happened to have a scrapbook that belonged to Jennie’s family contacted me. What a surprise! She was so kind to send me the scrapbook. When I finish making both .tif and .jpg copies of the photos I will send her a CD of the photos. My daughter did the preliminary work on the copying, but I need to do more and to “cut apart” the copies that were taken of multi-photo scrapbook pages. In other words, my daughter copied pages so as not to damage the book, but I want to copy the copies and then crop the photos so that they appear separately on the screen.

I wrote to Bayview Manor in Seattle to try to find out if this scrapbook belonged to Lela or Rhea Culver. This is the facility where the scrapbook was found. Unfortunately, I have not heard back from them.

To begin to  identify these photos I need to start with what I know. I have a photo of Jenny when she was a young woman. And there is a photo in the scrapbook which I think looks strikingly like Jennie.  I want to see if you agree or if you think these are different women.

THIS IS JENNY DEKORN CULVER (1857-1947):

Jenny DeKorn Culver
1857-1947

 

HERE IS THE WOMAN IN THE VELVET COAT. IS IT JENNY?

 

And is the coat velvet or fur? I am assuming it is velvet, although I did find a picture of a fur coat from around 1920 that had a similar look. However, the main reason I think it’s velvet is that it looks like velvet at the points where the fabric bends.

What do you make of the shadow at the bottom of the photo? Is the setting a garden or a lawn?

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