Memory Lane

Almost cut my hair

It happened just the other day

It was getting kind of long

I could have said it was in my way

But I didn’t and I wonder why

I feel like letting my freak flag fly

And I feel like I owe it to someone

David Crosby¹

The Hippie culture my parents were part of has been studied, imitated, mocked, twisted, and well documented - so that before I ever learned details about my father’s actual life I had been painted a colorful if distorted picture of his times. Even without knowing any personal facts about my Dad, I could tell you quite a bit about him based on his look. And looking back, the music my father played and that in my memory was the soundtrack of my first 7 years was almost wholly centered on folk rock, and it was woven intricately through our lives. Many of the lyrics of those songs told my father’s story. My father lived in, reflected, and in many ways embodied a great deal of the upheaval and profound change that the 60’s had on the world.

Kenneth Walter Gwyn was the youngest and only boy of my grandmother’s four children. My two eldest aunts were her daughters from her first marriage. My grandfather James was my grandmother’s second husband. He was black but I would say his coloring was close to tan, and he had blue eyes and a wave in his hair not unlike Nat King Cole. My father and his sister were the half siblings of their elder sisters, although no one in the family ever talked or thought of themselves as “half” siblings.

Kenny was the lightest skinned person in his family. With his hair cropped short, it had a light curl. Although he is shown above with an afro, unlike many African Americans who embraced an African culture that had been denied and absent from their lives, I can honestly say I never saw or heard of him adopting any African or even African American cultural aesthetic. He never used a “black vernacular” or wore a dashiki. He incorporated many musical styles over the years including early R&B, but more for its universal appeal than seeking to identify with a particular or separate black experience. He could not deny his black heritage, but at the same time, he looked noticeably different when standing in a crowd of black people. Dad’s was a family who wanted to fit in well in their middle class neighborhood. As a child in the 50’s Kenny loved playing cowboys, his favorite show was Roy Rodgers, he and his sisters learned piano in their home.

My father’s mother Elizabeth was born and raised in Newark by her grandmother after her mother died in childbirth. Eliza Mason Stewart “Nanny” was part of the movement among black women of her era to aspire to the best of Christian womanhood, uplift the race, and live morally exemplary lives. Her influence on our family was strong. At one point she owned several properties in Newark along with the Kearny home Dad grew up in, which she left to my grandmother when she passed away in 1965. My grandmother Elizabeth had been a member of the Kearny Civil Rights Commission and had been selected by the town as a representative to attend Martin Luther King’s funeral. Grandma worked to support the family and was clearly taking part within the system to improve race relations. Her father Samuel Stewart had been a World War I veteran, member of the Essex Co. Democratic Association among other veterans clubs and men’s clubs (in group photos always mostly white). He had run for Newark Council, worked as a school attendance officer from 1942 until 1961 when he retired to be come self employed in real estate before his death in 1964.

Dad’s family was living in a predominately white, blue collar town, on one of the two or so streets in town where the few black families lived. A great deal of the residents of Kearny worked across the river in Newark where in July of 1967 the city broke out in riots.

A variety of factors contributed to the Newark Riot, including police brutality, political exclusion of blacks from city government, urban renewal, inadequate housing, unemployment, poverty, and rapid change in the racial composition of neighborhoods.

Another catalyst of the riots was the “clearance” of 150 acres of “slum” land to build a medical school/hospital complex. Of course, this would involve the demolition of numerous homes in the predominantly black Central Ward.² (My great great grandmother’s home was in that neighborhood, which I learned when I fruitlessly tried to find the location to photograph it for my family history.)

Wikipedia describes “six days of riots, looting, violence, and destruction — ultimately leaving 26 people dead, 725 people injured, and close to 1,500 arrested. Property damage exceeded $10 million.³

When I questioned my family about their experiences during this riot, I was shocked to learn that one of my aunts took part! When she and some friends who lived down the block heard about the riots, they jumped in the car and headed over “on a lark”. They found a liquor store that had been broken into, and proceeded to help themselves to several of the bottles of booze. But later she felt guilty for taking advantage of the situation - she wasn’t one of the people who were so full of rage at their powerlessness that they exploded in an angry wave. She was a teenager out on a fun adventure. While the riots were going on, my grandparents were on vacation in Bermuda! My father was 16 at the time.

While all of these social factors shaped my father’s experience, I feel none was as devastating as the effect of the dysfunctional relationship patterns that ran through my paternal line. Of course, the legacy of slavery left its own scars, but then followed generations of “father abandonment”. Beginning with the untimely death of my great great grandfather Melon Gwyn, a former slave, there followed the death at age 37 of his son James, when my grandfather James, Jr. was only 6 years old. His mother went on to marry a cruel man who abused her and her children. Grandpa married young, abandoned his first wife, then married my grandmother, but while my father was growing up Grandpa had abandoned his second family more than once, leaving without notice and disappearing for months or years at a time, and fathering at least two “outside children.” During the turbulent teen years when my father was just growing to manhood, my grandfather came back home. I only recently learned that my grandfather verbally abused and probably physically abused my dad - though corporal punishment was far more acceptable in general back then - especially for “correcting” a son on the wrong path.

Of course, when I was a child, I knew none of this history - Grandpa was steady and benign presence in my life. He worked for the Post Office and by the time he retired had received a watch for 25 years of perfect attendance. We knew him as a joker and story teller, fish fryer, church goer. But I can imagine my father’s perspective back then: Here comes his “father”, back as the “head of the household”, full of authority and nothing good to say about my father’s wasting his life, failing school, experimenting with drugs and beginning to live his rock and roll lifestyle. I’m sure my father pushed all the wrong buttons, did all the wrong things in his father’s eyes. But who knows what kind of guilt my grandfather might have been trying to come to terms with while attempting to re-engage in the family he left behind and deal with the hurts of the wife he betrayed.

My father grew to reject his class, race, and every other distinction that clashed with his growing consciousness. He dreamed of a world where people saw no color, class or the false trappings of a materialist culture but embraced the new values of Peace, Love & Freedom. He ran headlong into the hippie movement. He grew his hair, wore patched bell bottoms, read “subversive” books, smoked reefer, dropped Acid, played his 45’s, then his albums, and then played his guitar. It became his salvation, and his ticket to a new life.

Kenny had a party on Brighton Nov. 11, 1967. We grooved. Kenny and the Situation Band played the new Jimi style, magic veiled us in our funny flower couture. I wore an old felt hat, bandless and Sally sketched me, while a Dylan poem was repeated, eclipse is both sun and moon… New people were there from Belleville, getting hip, waking from the trance. I remember there was laughter and hypnotism. The next day we went by tube to the village and wound up in Penn Station, where trains went to Belleville. A gloved hand snakes goodbye. It is hard to remember. I did keep notes, and they can remind of tiny details, but never the whole feeling. They are sketches, travel notes from that other place.

~ Thoughts of the Days, 1967. Reflections of Dad’s friend PK from notes in his diary.

While my aunts were at different stages: one an unmarried mother of 2, another graduated from college and newly married, the third going off to college, my father spent a lot of time crashing at his friend’s homes. He had found a new family of friends who were rejecting many of their own families’ values. However, a crucial difference separated many of them. While they dabbled along with my father as they expanded their consciousness in many ways, in most cases their families were in much healthier shape. Many of his friends who survived those years “unscathed” went on to college, traveled and then took steady jobs. They loved my father because he was one of them, and they grew up in Kearny together. At the same time he was developing a remarkable talent, attracting beautiful girls, using harder drugs, and soon traveling along a different path altogether.

The photo above was taken in 1971, Kenny was 20 years old, and a father of two. He had met my mother in high school. She was descended from one of the original settlers of New Jersey, Captain William Sandford, an Englishman and a slave holder, who came to New Jersey from his home in Barbados. In July of 1668 almost two hundred years earlier, he acquired the land on which most of Hudson & Bergen county sits in an Indian Deed made with “Hanyaham, Kenarenawack, Gosque, Anaren, Tamack and Tantaqua” of the Leni Lenape. ⁴ My parents were a young couple in love, but they were spit upon when they walked down the street together. They were married just 6 days before I was born, and my sister was born prematurely just 10 months later. Dad worked at a few low paying jobs but never for long. For the most part he earned money playing gigs for many years in a series of bands.  My mother finally divorced him after years of waiting for him to “grow up” and take responsibility for our family.

For me the photo above tells more of a story when seen in contrast with another. I imagine the photo below captures the last time Dad put on a suit and combed his hair to please his mother. It could have been taken only months earlier - maybe even just the length of time it took to grow his hair.

He reminds me of Buddy Holly - and the innocence of the early days of rock and roll. In my mind, his pose already shows a hint of defiance. Of course, even today the changes in a person in their teen years can be startling. Still I have come to understand so much of how and why my father “let his freak flag fly.” For that I am eternally grateful to the friends and family who shared that history with me, but also to my parents for the most valuable things I believe I inherited from both of them. My curiosity, openness, and willingness to question: authority, history, family, and friends - and the intelligence to make some sense of the answers.

Sasha Mitchell

1. Crosby, David. “Almost Cut my Hair. Deja Vu Crosby, Stills Nash & Young, 1967

2. Herman, Max A. “Events” Newark Riots - 1967 2001. 22 Aug 2008

3. “1967 Newark riots.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. 9 Aug 2008, 17:12 UTC. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 15 Aug 2008 .

4. Nelson, William, and Berthold Fernow. Calendar of Records in the Office of the Secretary of State. 1614-1703. Documents relating to the colonial history of the state of New Jersey, vol. 21. Paterson, N.J.: Press Print. and Pub. Co, 1899.

footnoteMaven, who keeps a lovely blog of pictures and the stories that belong to them at Shades of the Departed asked us to choose our favorite photograph for the 4th edition of her blog carnival Smile for the Camera. This is my first time participating in this carnival and when thinking about my many favorites, my mind immediately went to this picture. This photo was kind of an orphan among those in a collection shared with our family by my cousin Leonard.  He inherited these photos from his mother Sarah Gwyn Wooling, who was the keeper of such things (as I am today!  And I’ll take this opportunity to thank Leonard again, along with all those cousins who think to scan and share the huge box of photos from the attic!)

The photo was labeled Gladys King, and a similar one with a slightly different pose was labeled Georgia King, so I am not positive about the name.  This branch of my Gwyn family lived in Pittsburgh, PA - having left the North Carolina for greater opportunity in the north.  It doesn’t appear Gladys is part of our family, but I believe I have located her family in the 1920 census.  Joseph & Ellen King from Virginia, with Gladys “Lotis”, born 1909, Aragather, Harry & Nellie, living in Snowden, Allegheny County, Pennsylvania.  I do not know the occasion of this photograph, though it looks like a graduation portrait.

I love this picture! And even though it is not a particularly “important” one in our family history, it speaks to me.  Such certainty, self assuredness - dare I say RIGHTEOUSNESS! If it  could talk -I believe she would say “Take Heed!”  (and I’m not advocating for any kind of religious teachings here -  but I came up with some fitting scripture):

According to the grace of God which is given unto me, as a wise masterbuilder, I have laid the foundation, and another buildeth thereon. But let every man take heed how he buildeth thereupon.  1 Cor 3:9-15

I do not know what became of Gladys - but I hope this photo shows proof of a firm foundation.  She inspires me to work with conviction.  Not to be trite, but You Go Girl!

When I read about the topic for this month’s Carnival of Genealogy, I came up blank.  I know many families share stories and lore about the family car.  I seem to have come from a family that barely drove! My mother’s mother “Grammie” lived her whole life (1922 - 1993) having never had a license or driven a car. She took the train and the bus to get around, and of course, had friends who took her places.

My father (1951-1996) also never had a license.  I don’t really know why, although he was a bit of a drifter and after he died, I was able to fit most of his worldy accumulation into my husband’s Chevy Nova Hatchback. (All but a Hammond Organ I had to leave behind). He probably really could have used his own automobile, as he was a musician, and regularly had gigs that took him from state to state, and always with gear - amps, guitars, drums, etc. But someone else always drove him where he needed to be. I remember many times waiting for someone to come pick us up - always the friends - chipping in for gas, loading the equipment.

Here is a rare photo of my dad, with me in the back of my Grandpa’s station wagon after a day at the beach.

My mother, who was our steady parent while my father was off here and there (in other people’s cars!) used to have an old Vega - and my only memory of this car is from a day when she was attempting to pull out of a supermarket that had a parking lot at the bottom of a rather steep driveway.  Apparently it was a stick shift, and something was wrong with it, and we kept rolling back and stalling as she got more and more flustered. Then she bought a Chevette, which may have even been a new car, a cute burgundy hatchback, and that was our car for many years.

I seemed about to carry on the car-less tradition. Age 17 came along, with driver’s ed classes, and one brief driving lesson with my stepfather in his Corolla.  He pointed me down a street - I dutifully turned, and was immediately pulled over (How do you pull over!?!?) by a police officer who told us we were driving the wrong way down the street.  Great lesson!  I had been taking the bus since age 13, quickly graduated to train travel for trips to New York City and down to the shore, and then I rode my bike whereever I needed to go. For a long time, I felt almost un-American by the response of new acquaintances who learned I didn’t drive.  I continued that way until I was 26 years old!  By then I was newly married, and we lived for a short while with my in-laws.   I was stuck in the house and far from public transportation for the first time, and I felt so trapped. Of course, once I got my license I couldn’t believe I waited so long.  I imagine for many people who grew up in urban areas in New Jersey like I did, there wasn’t a “family car”, rather we had the neighborhood bus line. It’s a different way of life, and one that puts you in close contact with people from all walks of life.  As for now, I drive a mini-van with my three sons, and I hope they have a lot of happy memories of family time and nice vacation drives in our rather clean, boring beige, Toyota Sienna mini-van (complete with movies for long trips!)

Oh, how to explain - I have been so busy researching and talking family history (and getting photos, scanning, etc.) that I haven’t been blogging!

However, I finally converted some more of my Woodstock era footage and have posted it on YouTube

I guess I might attempt to write up several small posts about my most recent finds.  It’s continually amazing to me how one thing leads to another, and my circle of friends and family is growing in such beautiful ways.

Well, I’ve been gone, but hopefully not forgotten. I don’t know what it is that keeps me from just taking a few minutes to sit and write, but hopefully this post will usher in a new period of faithful and regular blogging. I have not been researching much recently, despite several weeks of intense research just before Christmas. I was rushing to hopefully complete an article about my distant relative, Father Norman DuKette in time for publication in American Legacy magazine. His home church will be celebrating its 150th anniversary this year, and I hoped that I could draw some interest to them with the article. Unfortunately I have been unable to obtain any research materials thorugh interlibrary loan, and the one scholar I hoped might be able to share some of her work with me would not return my calls. The materials I gathered on my own will have to serve. But then I got sick just before Christmas. Then Christmas and all of its events came, and then a second bout of illness in the family. We are only now recovered. Some good news I have to share is that I have a new computer. My old one was very slow, and unable to make DVD’s, so I’m very much looking forward to many creative projects on my new computer. I will post later about my new computer and some new software I’ve been trying out. I really wanted to just “break the ice” so to speak, after so long since I’ve written. I’m hoping to start fresh with this new year and make progress on several different fronts. I have a few projects to share: I created my first Ancestry Press book as a gift for my Uncle Andy & Aunt Bernadette, featuring their combined family history. I was grateful for the cooperation of Bernadette’s family, who shared lots of history and photos. The finished product was wonderful and a great introductory price of only $29.99! I hope to make many more of these books, as long as the price is right. Also, I completed my own 2007 family scrapbook, although like my others, it is lacking in journaling. Now that my new computer is here, I hope to catch up with that. Another family history related gift was for my sister-in-law Jennifer. I bought a nice looking “fill-in-the-blank” family history book for her with a matching photo scrapbook. I gathered family photos and information for her and filled it in her book. Jen’s mom was very happy with the finished results and plans to hire me to do more work on her lines. Certainly that’s exactly the kind of work I hope to pursue in my business, so I’m eager to do that with her. That’s all for now, but I’ll be back again soon with more news and posts.

I have been away on Summer Vacation I guess. I have several things to share, and will split them into separate entries. Hopefully I’ll catch up on my summer activities quickly, and then on to big news!!

This post is about my visit to my friend Karl’s late Grandmother’s home.

From her obituary: ELZA KATARINA BERZINS, 98, of NEPTUNE, passed away Saturday, July 28. She was born in Riga, Latvia and immigrated to the United States in 1960. She worked as a sewing machine operator, and was a member of the Lakewood New Brunswick Latvian Lutheran Church.

Karl is a good friend of my husband Trip from grammar school days, and he invited me to come to her home with him while he and his sister looked through her home for personal mementos to keep before they gave away her belongings and sold her home. My first thoughts of that day are of her very tidy home and beautiful garden. I hope that when I die my loved ones find such order in my home. In a way it’s a gift to those you leave behind, not to have the burden of a mess of unfinished business and a house full of things to be dealt with. Plus, I like to think that with so many affairs in order, Elza was at peace in her last days, to leave such a peaceful home behind.

Karl thought his grandma might have some machines or other sewing stuff I could use. As it was, I had no need of most of her sewing things, having been the beneficiary of some other friends’ grandmother’s sewing stashes. The items I asked to take were: the photo below, several old house dresses, and a bandana.

I was very impressed with Elza’s strong connection to her Latvian heritage. The newspaper on her coffee table, nearly all of the books on her shelves were in Latvian, even her caregiver spoke Latvian. She had several of her own handmade needleworks, which I’m sure represented Latvian folk designs, although the colors probably showed probably their vintage age as much as their Latvian connection.

I was also glad to see she had carefully preserved many letters, family photos, and other ephemera. The sad part is that all of these appeared to be in Latvian only, and Karl does not speak the language. I can’t say that he shares my love of (obsession with) family history. But all of the history that may be recorded in those documents is lost to him until he can find a translator. So I’m taking this opportunity to say, if you have an elderly relation who speaks a foreign language, please make sure that you spend some time with them to hear their stories in your language, and make sure you gather those gems of knowledge while you can. (Of course, the same is true of any one who may hold family history, young or old, talk while you can AND WRITE IT ALL DOWN! because those are the records that last.)

I had assumed (never assume!) that Karl was German for some reason - I think it was because he called his Grandmother “Oma” and I knew that as a German name for Grandma. When he first mentioned his Latvian heritage, I had to tell him about my experience as a 5th grader with what I just learned was the Latvian Church Camp “Nometne” in Elka Park, NY. As a birthday gift, my Grammie Ruth gave me a ski jacket and pants, and 3 trips to Hunter Mountain with my mom and Grammie’s company’s ski club. It was all very special to me, but I especially remember this Latvian Lodge where we stayed on our trips. The ladies there fixed us breakfasts the likes of which I’ve never seen. A huge bounty of food, eggs, potatoes, sausages, onions, ham. The food was piled high, and they STRONGLY encouraged me to “Eat, Eat! Take some more!” Then they wanted us to fix sandwiches for lunch on the mountain. We’d return with sore muscles to an equally wonderful spread for dinner! The ladies were all warm and kind, but looked like they had seen very hard times. I remember saying something about it to my mom, and I think she told me a quick 5th grader version of what she knew about Latvia and its oppression by Russia.

While preparing to write this post, I came across this website of Latvian Genealogy, and thought I’d include it here. It’s full of information, and I find myself wishing I could share Karl’s ancestry there… I believe Karl and his sister were entrusting Elza’s caregiver to pass along a good deal of her things to the Latvian society, where I hope they will be preserved and shared. (I can’t imagine a lot of those Latvian books are easy to come by at this point.) I’ll close for now with a reminder to call your grandma!

I have been a bad blogger - but a busy and productive scrapper, card maker, sewist (so much more appealing than the other name sewing enthusiasts have “sewer”), and mom. I never did make a post about this, but I meant to! For Mother’s Day, when I was planning to visit my mother-in-law briefly before joining my paternal grandmother and all of my aunts for a Mother’s Day dinner hosted at my dear cousin Duane’s house, I made cards for all the moms (Grandma, Mom, Mother-in-law Jean, Aunts Doreen & Marilyn, Cousins Pam, Leslie & Camille) with all of the available photos of their maternal ancestors! They were a huge hit! I had a ball making them. Being able to spend a great deal of time Saturday and a little time Sunday making them was part of the way I celebrated Mother’s Day. If I had nothing else to do, I would love to spend my time sewing, scrapbooking or card making. I am endeavoring to do more of all of those things consistently every day! (For example, today I invited a friend over for the specific purpose of “babysitting” me so that I could focus on a few sewing projects - rather than puttering around the house or anything else.) We decided that we will do it again. She will bring a portable photo sorting/scrapping project, and I will sew in her company. Today I finished hemming three curtains for my mother-in-law, and made a seat cushion for my kids’ desk chair. (still have to finish by hand, so no pic yet!) Here are my lovely Mother’s Day Cards:

I used a few different coordinating scrapbook papers for these cards: Fiskar’s Heidi Grace Papers: one sheet of striped designs, and one solid, along with two or three of K & Company’s Photo Matting Papers.
Here is the one I made for my mom:

I embellished with glitter and pearly white buttons. Inside looks like this:

I used Adobe Photoshop to resize the pictures so that the faces would fit into the 1 1/4 inch circles I wanted to use. (Of course, it wasn’t until tediously cutting out all of these circles that I decided a correctly sized circle punch was a good investment!). Hope all you moms out there had a lovely Mother’s Day!

I haven’t even begun to fully digest all of the findings my “cousin” Raymond has been sharing with me. I think we have become a team of sorts. First, he sent me money to contribute to my work! Something I always appreciate, but which even my close family has not done much of. Second, using a list I prepared for him as I digested his findings and my own, he paid an excellent Wythe County researcher, Mary Kegley, to search for the records that pertain to both of our slave ancestors. Mary went to Montgomery County, VA and searched the records there, and also has sent many records from Wythe County that are helping both of us to piece our history back together. Remarkably, while reading a will looking for Raymond’s slave ancestor, I believe I came across another two of my own! I was actually a little overcome when I saw them listed there, my GGG Grandfather Wesley Johnson and his son Hampton Johnson, valued at $650, and $475, respectively. The date of the document conflicts with the date I have for Hampton’s birth, but I have not examined anything in fine detail yet. Raymond’s ancestor Hannah is listed there, and several more documents about her daughter Harriet, along with the name of Harriet’s husband and children (with married names!). I immediately went on Ancestry.com and found as many descendants as I could, and although I haven’t yet found a living descendant of this new branch of the family, I know that Raymond and his cousin Jimmy know of them. It’s been very exciting getting to see how far our family tree branches out, once again.

Despite being absent from blog world, I have been VERY busy and happily productive at home, with a few things to share in the realm of family history.

Three different distant relatives of my Johnson - Sayles - Sanders branch of the family from Wythe County Virginia have contacted me in the last few weeks, All of them found my website while searching for their family history and were unaware of each other before writing to me. They were all very excited to find all of the research posted on my website and we have exchanged a lot of emails. On my end, I spent many hours on Ancestry following the names they gave me, and I was rewarded by making many new finds for them (in turn, my new cousin Raymond (not really my cousin, but we are claiming each other as family nonetheless) sent me $50 towards “the cause”!) I also sent a fabulous package of family history to my newly met eleven year old cousin Duane (who is my 5th cousin on one line and my 1st Cousin three times removed on another!). He asked me a lot of questions, as they were led to search for Duane’s history for a school assignment. This branch of the family is very light skinned - many of his great grandparents obviously have caucasian ancestry - and he was very curious about exactly how to define his ancestry. I think simply saying African American was vague and left out a large part of his background. I tried to be as frank as I could while respecting his age and explained that without DNA evidence, although we know he has SOME caucasian ancestry, we can’t know exactly WHICH country is represented. Still, he got a several generation Pedigree Chart, a 36 page scroll of his known relatives and ancestors, copies of some family Census Records & several photos along with images and descriptions of the Pan African flag and the African American flag - which I told him he could certainly claim since he really wanted to include a flag of his ancestry (as his teacher seemed to require).

That same week, I cam across Wired magazine’s RAVE awards for innovators, instigators and inventors honoring Henry Louis Gates, Jr. for his work in developing a history and science curriculum that “lets students study the science behind their own DNA and reconstruct their own genealogy”. Of course I think this is fantastic! I am planning to write to Mr. Gates, but I am not quite sure what to say yet. I really wish I could get in on a “free grant” for DNA testing, but that may just be a fantasy. I have thought for a long time that history should be taught with an emphasis on family history - and with the added bonus of recording precious family history, inspiring a new generation of genealogists and teaching proper research methods, interview skills, etc. The DNA part must be kind of expensive, but still a very cool subject!

My family called her “Nanny”. She was my grandmother’s paternal grandmother, but a far more central figure, because she raised my grandmother from birth, following the tragic death of my great grandmother Addie Johnson Stewart during childbirth. Her remarkable life inspires me even today.

Mary Mason was born January 1, 1871 in Murfreesboro, TN the second daughter of 10 children born to Samuel Mason and Mary Jane Jamison Mason, former slaves. Our family’s oral history is that Mary Eliza Mason was Choctaw, but I have not uncovered evidence of that. Her father Samuel was likely a former slave, listed as black on all of his records. Her mother, Mary Jane Jamison was the oldest of nine children of Monroe and Jemima Jamison, both likely former slaves from Tennessee, several of whom went on to become leaders in the work of improving lives in the black community. I imagine that some of the Nanny’s drive in life came from the example of her mother’s family.

Samuel & Mary Jane Mason, along with their four children at that time were part of the Exoduster movement. This mass migration was an effort by many poor black families to get away from the violence and poor opportunities in the south. It was encouraged by businesses like the Santa Fe Railroad, with it’s glowing advertisements, and several organizations like the Tennessee Real Estate and Homestead Association founded in Nashville, TN in part by Benjamin “Pap” Singleton. In 1879 and 1880, when Sam’s family moved, over 25,000 people came to Kansas.

Once in Topeka, the family may have struggled to find their footing among the thousands who came with little or nothing. But Topeka had a black population familiar with protest, the political process, and invested in social and race progress. Among Mary’s mothers siblings were several professionals. One of her uncles, Dr. J. M. Jamison was employed by the Santa Fe railroad as a company physician. His wife was prominent in the social life of black Topeka, and active in the Topeka affiliate of National Federation of Colored Women’s Clubs. The Plaindealer newspaper called that group, “a band of earnest, intelligent colored women who have given and are giving much of their lives to lift the race to a higher plane.” Mary’s Uncle Wesley I. Jamison was a lawyer and justice of the peace. He later served as a Judge. Her aunt, Mrs. Sally Malone ran the Florence Crittendon Home for Unwed Mothers, in addition to raising her own seven children. I believe that their example, along with a deeply held Christian faith played a strong role in shaping Mary’s destiny.

I have few facts about Mary’s childhood, and have not located any records for her young adulthood. Her obituary states that she left Topeka at age 17 to marry Reginald W. Stewart in Denver, CO. Their son Samuel Sylvester Stewart was born in Cripple Creek, CO in about 1893. My grandmother has told me that Nanny once had a job as a laundress in the “Red Light district” in Denver. But I know nothing about their lives during Samuel’s growing up, beyond two photos of Mary & Samuel, one taken in Topeka, Kansas when Samuel was still an infant, and a later photo from about 1910.

By 1903, her husband Reginald was enrolled as a student at Lincoln University, listed as single. He went on to meet and marry another woman Jane Johnson, and fathered a son with her, Rex Stewart - who went on to fame as a coronet player with Duke Ellington’s band. In 1910, Eliza and Samuel are missing from census records, although Reginald was living with his new family in Washington, DC. In 1917, Samuel signed a World War I draft registration card in Syracuse, NY, saying he had spent 4 years in a military school in Kansas. Although I have not located a record of this, in about 1918 Samuel was married to Addie Jane Johnson of Wytheville, Virginia, a graduate of Morgan College in Maryland. Then he enlisted and served in Europe in World War I.

Mary’s life for this period is missing from the records I have searched. But in 1918 her life changed dramatically. Her daughter-in-law Addie Jane died of “childbed fever” in a Newark hospital shortly after giving birth to her only daughter, Mary Elizabeth Addie Stewart. Nanny made a promise to Addie before she died to care for the baby who grew up to be my grandmother. In the 1920 Census, Mary was reunited with her husband Reginald. He worked as an insurance broker, she is listed as having no occupation, and her son, granddaughter, and a boarder are listed. My grandmother remembered the border, Florence Randolph, as her wet nurse. They lived on Hartford Street, in a home they owned, one of several properties Nanny purchased. Although Nanny is listed as having no occupation she actually had several.
Above is a card showing Mary’s membership in the Poro System, a school of black hair dressing founded by Annie Malone in St. Louis, MO that eventually spread to schools in many major cities. Grandma remembers Nanny doing hair, taking in laundry, cleaning houses for white families, and collecting rents on her properties as she continued to invest in real estate. In 1937, Nanny also had a business running a Tea Room.

As she raised her granddaughter, she instilled the values of faith, education, hard work and family. She took trips to Topeka regularly, somtimes bringing along my grandmother to visit with her family there, and also traveled several times to Wytheville, Virginia, so that my grandmother would know her mother’s people. The picture below is of my Grandmother Mary, Nanny, and Elizabeth Sayles Johnson, my grandmother’s maternal grandmother on one of their trips to visit the Johnson family.

She died before my lifetime, but her presence in our family was larger than life. She is talked of often, and with reverence, at my grandmother’s house when I spend time there. Her granddaughter Doreen Washington Abernathy remembers Nanny as hardworking and generous. She paid for piano lessons for Doreen and her sisters from a Mrs. Williams who came to the house for $3 an hour to teach. She read her Bible and The Upper Room, and on Sunday evenings would listen to radio programs by Reverend Fuller and Norman Vincent Peale. Her granddaughter Marilyn Washington remembers being given Juniper Tar syrup on sugar by Nanny for health. They described her thriftiness in re-fashioning clothing for the family, and the fact that she sewed aprons and sold them as well.

In addition to work, she was very active in her church. She was a member of 13th Avenue Presbyterian Church, and her obituary lists her involvement in the Inspirational Chorus, the Missionary Society and the Violet Club. Her obituary concludes with this paragraph:

In conclusion we can say that Mother Stewart fulfilled the description of a good woman as described in Proverbs 31st Chapter where it says: “Who can find a virtuous woman? For her price is far above rubies.” “She riseth also while it is yet night and giveth meat to her house-hold.” “She considereth a field and buyeth it: with the fruit of her hands she planteth a vinyard.” “She girdeth her loins with strength, and strengtheneth her arms.” “Strength and honor are her clothing, ans she shall rejoice in time to come.” “She openeth her mouth with wisdome; and in her tongue is the law of kindness.” “She looketh well to the ways of her household and eateth not the bread of idleness.” “Her children arise up, and call her blessed.” “Therefore give her of the fruit of her hands; and let her own works praise her in the gates.” Ma was all of these, and we are quite sure that her own works has praised her in the gates and she is now reaping the reward of her labor.

When I thought about One Woman to write about, she was my first thought. There are many remarkable women in my family, but Nanny stands out as one whose life might have appeared to hold little opportunity. Just the way one woman might thrown out an old outgrown dress, and another might fashion it into a ballgown, Nanny seemed to have a talent for taking what she was given and making it flourish.