Back row: Theodora Preston (Lala’s youngest sister) never married, Elizabeth Preston Bryant (Lala), Herbert Sydney Bryant (Bert), Katherine Gertrude Bryant Kingsbury (Kitty), & Herbert Preston Bryant (Herb), Kitty’s younger brother by five years (served in the Army in WWII). Front row: Preston Deane Kingsbury and Bryant Kingsbury with an unknown pet
This house will be one of the stops on our Washington DC road trip this summer. It is either the house on Drummond Avenue in Chevy Chase that Joe, Kitty and the boys lived in for several years or the home of Kitty’s parents, Lala and Bert Bryant in the area now known as Manor Park – 304 Rittenhouse Street. Bert and Lala moved to that house when it was first built in 1919 and lived there until some time after Bert’s death in 1950. Shortly after that, Lala moved to New Brunswick, New Jersey where Herbert, her son was living and working on a newspaper.
For almost all of 1944, Kitty lived alone with the boys because Papa Joe was on assignment in Iran as Assistant to the Personnel Director of the US Financial Mission to Iran. My uncle Deane (younger than Bryant, my father by four years) has a great story about the FBI coming to the house to investigate reports of someone making a bomb. It was related to something my father was working on in the basement (probably not a bomb but knowing my father’s curiosity and scientific bent it might have been a bomb or maybe fireworks – it was definitely something explosive!)
Need Deane to fill in this story and others with more detail this summer.
Early in our current National Emergency that President Trump declared on Friday March 13, 2020 – I thought of the various hardships our ancestors endured. From the trying economic times of the Great Depression to rationing of basic food supplies during World War II, my grandparents dealt with difficulties that I’ve never experienced. We are in for interesting times ahead.
I’ve written before about letters that span more than 60 years that my paternal grandfather, Joseph Bush Kingsbury wrote. The round robin series of letters that circulated among members of the Kingsbury family was my inspiration for this blog’s name. More time at home means more time for me to review those letters, perhaps finding encouragement and hope.
One of the most trying episodes my grandfather experienced was on a trip to Germany in the summer of 1914 when World War I broke out. He was a student at George Washington University and travelled to Europe with two friends. I began transcribing his account of that time and putting it on this blog more than a year ago. Maybe I should get back to that because it not only provides a fascinating glimpse into world events, but also my grandfather’s response to a crisis.
Here is an excerpt from my grandfather’s letter of August 5, 1914, the day after England declared war on Germany. He and his friends had been arrested several times in the previous days on suspicion of being British spies. Whenever an officer arrested them, a crowd would gather and follow them through the streets. It sounds scary. The police would eventually release them when they understood from their papers that they were Americans, but that didn’t stop crowds from gathering and harassing them.
In this particular account my grandfather had been in a book store in Dresden when a crowd gathered outside but the owner and his son, who spoke English very well, protected him from the crowd. The shopkeeper also wrote a note in German for my grandfather to carry explaining that he was American and should not be bothered. At the end of the day, my grandfather captured his feelings about being stranded in Germany this way:
It is really funny how our hopes go from top to bottom several times a day. Sometimes we imagine we will be out of it in a week or so, perhaps there will be a special train for Americans to Scandinavia and the US will send ships to take us home. Next moment we can see no hope at all. Someone reports that the banks have stopped paying and we rush there to cash a check or two or three and find it is the same as ever. It is a world war, and we must take our chances just like everyone else. We shall try to learn German, keep well and healthy and make the best use possible of the time.
If you find your hopes going from “top to bottom” several times a day – maybe you can heed Joseph Kingsbury’s good advice.
Levi Jesse Bryant and his wife Ellen Sarah Salley had four children – three boys and one girl. In order they were Arthur Levi Bryant (1870-1933); Charles Fardon Bryant (1872-1923); Grace Bryant (1876-1943) and Herbert Sydney Bryant (1878-1950). The only one I have a picture of is Herbert Sydney Bryant, my great grandfather. He died before I was born but I have a feeling I would have enjoyed getting to know him.
Levi was a government clerk in the War Department for most of his career. When he died in 1920, he was identified as one of the oldest residents of the District of Columbia. He was a member of the Burnside Post No. 8 of the Grand Army of the Republic and the Independent Order of Odd Fellows. After the civil war, men from both the Union and Confederate armies formed social groups with fellow veterans, each named for a famous general. From what I could learn about Burnside Post No. 8, its members often marched in Memorial Day parades, participated in civic and patriotic activities, such as dedicating the Washington Monument and commemorating Abraham Lincoln’s birth. The organization also provided for its members in need.
Soon after the war, and when he was just starting his family, Levi attended law school, graduating in 1875 as a member of the 4th graduating class of National University. I don’t think he was in private practice for very long , since all census reports indicate his profession as a government clerk rather than a lawyer. I remember being surprised when I learned that I wasn’t the first in my family to attend law school. Levi was ahead of me by 110 years!
Sometime between 1870 and 1880, Levi built a sizeable home (or perhaps a row of homes) on Q Street, NW, just a little north of DuPont Circle. In the late 1800s this area was a far cry from the bustling commercial and residential center it is today but true to his pioneering spirit, Levi settled there and raised his family as the City grew in his direction. The addresses were 1817 and 1819 Q Street, NW.
Levi and Ellen Bryant’s Children
Arthur Levi Bryant was a patent attorney in Washington DC. He and his wife, Lizzie Habel, never had children. Arthur worked for the patent firm, Cushman, Bryant, Darby and Cushman and from his 1907 passport application we learn that he was 5’8″ with a high forehead, oval face, brown hair and blue eyes. He and Lizzie Habel married in 1897 and lived at 1819 Q Street (next door to his parents) for their entire married life. When Lizzie died in 1963 (outliving Arthur by 30 years) her estate was valued at $1 million. Most of her specific bequests were to her siblings and their children but a portion of her estate passed to the descendants of Arthur’s siblings, which included my father and his brother, who received their mother’s share.
Charles Fardon Bryant was a business man of some sort although he also worked as a government clerk. His most interesting mention in the DC papers was for his enlistment in Company H of the regiment of men from Washington DC who fought in the Spanish American War. This war only lasted from April to August of 1898 but in keeping with our family tradition, he gave a very detailed report of his expedition in a letter home. His mother shared it with the Evening Star and it appeared in the newspaper in August 1898. It just might appear in a later post here so stay tuned!
Charles married Isabella Byrn whose father was a patent lawyer and well-known member of the DC Bar. He was also active in real estate and built what sounds like a beautiful home near the Capitol in 1894. Charles and Isabella were married there in October 1899.
Sadly, the Byrn home on B Street is no longer standing.
Charles and Isabella had one son, Charles Byrn Bryant. From the address for him in Lizzie Bryant’s will written in 1955, he was living in Chicago. Charles died in 1923 and there was only a brief mention of his death in the Washington newspapers.
The only girl born to Levi and Ellen was Grace Bryant who was born in 1876. She married William John Eynon in September 1900 and they lived in Washington DC where William had a very successful career in the printing industry. He often appeared in the newspaper for his leadership role in that industry as well as other civic and philanthropic endeavors including the Board of Trade, which was the equivalent of what we know as the Chamber of Commerce.
Grace and John had three children, although their firstborn son, William John Eynon, Jr. died at ten months in July 1902. Their next son, Lee Edward Eynon was born in 1903 and died in 1965 and their daughter, Dorothy Bryant Eynon was born in 1905 and died in 1969. The children born to Grace and William Eynon, offer the best chance of finding relatives with pictures of our common ancestors. If any of you happen to be reading this, please get in touch.
I’ll close this post by listing the names of the descendants of Levi and Ellen Bryant’s children who are my third or fourth cousins. Charles Byrn Bryant, born in 19–; Lee Edward Eynon, whose children with Dorothy Von Bayer include William A. Eynon (1927-2001); Lee Ellen Eynon (1929-2011) who married Erik Gregory Nordholm; and Roberta C Eynon (1935 – 2005) who married David Walton Mayo. Sadly, Lee and his wife Dorothy divorced shortly after Roberta was born – some time between 1936 and 1940.
Our Bryant family in Washington DC begins with two transplants from the Midwest. After their marriage in Wisconsin on January 6, 1868, Levi and Ellen moved to DC. We find them in the Census for 1870, living in Ward 1 of in the City of Washington DC with Levi’s mother Betsy and his younger brother David. Their first son, Arthur Levi Bryant, born in January 1870, is an infant in the home. They appear together in every census from that one through 1910, though in their later years, they lived with their daughter Grace.
Levi captured my attention years ago because of his service
in the United States Army during the American Civil War. He enlisted in the
Wisconsin 3rd Infantry, Company C at the beginning of the war and
saw a lot of action before he was seriously wounded on May 3, 1863 in the
Battle of Chancellorsville. Levi holds the distinction of appearing in the most
unusual genealogy source I’ve used to date – “The Medical and Surgical History
of the Civil War.” His name appears in a Table on page 638 with details about
85 cases of recovery after amputation at the shoulder.
This source confirms the information in the family bible – that “Levi lost an arm at Chancellorsville” and provides more detail about that injury. He suffered a comminuted shot fracture of the left humerus involving the shoulder joint, which means that the shot damaged the shoulder and left the bones in his arm mere fragments, impossible to mend. Five days later, on May 8, 1863, at a hospital in Washington DC, his left arm was amputated at the shoulder. Levi was discharged on August 8, 1863 and received an invalid pension from the U.S. government for the rest of his life.
I imagine it would have been difficult to return to farming with only one arm, but it was not too hard for Levi to meet and marry a young bride. I don’t think Ellen and Levi knew each other before he left for the war because she would have only been 15 years old when he enlisted in 1861 and they lived in different parts of Wisconsin at the time. But the fact that they married in Janesville in 1868, suggests that Levi returned to Wisconsin with his mother after her time caring for him in DC after his amputation.
Ellen and Levi came from very different backgrounds. Levi was from a large pioneering family – nine brothers and sisters. Ellen only had one younger brother. Levi’s family moved around the Midwest before settling in Wisconsin but Ellen was born there, most likely in Janesville and had never been more than 35 miles from her birth place when she moved to Washington DC with her new husband. Levi’s family were farmers. Ellen’s father was a tailor and her mother was a laundress and seamstress. One thing Ellen and Levi have in common is that their fathers died when they were both in their teens; Ellen was probably younger than 14 when her father died and Levi was 16.
I haven’t taken Ellen’s family back any further than her parents. Her mother Cordelia Davis was born in New York in 1828 and moved to Wisconsin with her family when she was a girl. Ellen’s father was born in Ireland (probably Dublin around 1821) and immigrated to the US in the early 1840s.
I haven’t found a marriage record for Cordelia and Thomas but there’s an index to his naturalization record indicating he became a naturalized citizen in 1845 in Janesville, Wisconsin. The index card doesn’t provide much information but the fact that he is located in Janesville and that the Janesville Gazette has several ads like the one below suggest that this is the record for Ellen’s father. I suspect his name was originally spelled Salley but more often changed to Sally. In later census reports, Ellen lists Ireland as the place of birth of her father.
Several ads like this one place Thomas Sally in Janesville Wisconsin in the mid 1840s. Ellen was born there in 1846.
After a series of ads like the one above that appeared in the Janesville Gazette in the mid to late 1840s, the newspaper records end. The family next appears in the federal census for 1850 in Monroe, Wisconsin. Monroe is 35 miles west of Janesville. The family was still in Monroe in 1855 as shown on the Wisconsin State Census and Thomas was still a tailor. But something happened to Thomas by 1860 when we find Cordelia Salley living in Monroe with her children Ellen and John and no mention of Thomas. Although I haven’t found a death record, Cordelia identifies herself as a widow in later census reports so I suspect Thomas died sometime between 1855 and 1860.
Our Irish 3G grandfather remains a bit of a mystery but his presence in our family tree is one source for our Irish DNA. From the 1860 census report we learn that Cordelia did washing and sewing to support her family. She never remarried and spent the rest of her life living with her son John in Monroe until his death in 1901. I get the impression that Ellen wasn’t leaving much behind when she married and moved to Washington DC. Although from Cordelia’s probate records from 1906, we learn that she owned a house and that Ellen was her only heir.
Next post we’ll learn a bit more about Ellen and Levi’s life in DC, including his jobs, their children and their social activities.
I saw my cousin Peggy Kingsbury Rice last week on my annual visit to Charlottesville, VA for the Virginia Festival of the Book – a five day book festival with an amazing variety of authors and topics. It was our second visit in two years. Peggy’s father Deane is my father’s younger brother. Even though we didn’t grow up together and have almost a ten year age difference, when we get together the conversation flows easily and the family connections shine through.
Peggy and I have been talking about taking a family history road trip to Washington DC and have settled on the perfect time to do it. Peggy’s parents, Deane and Nancy will be visiting her the first week of June. They fly in and out of Washington DC so we’re planning a day trip around DC that will highlight places that are significant to our family history.
My father, Bryant Kingsbury (1932-2007) was four years older than his brother Preston Deane Bryant. Their parents were Joseph Bush Kingsbury (1890-1983) and Katherine Gertrude Bryant (1902-1959). Joe and Kitty met in Washington DC at a party in December 1926. From his letters to her in the year preceeding their marriage on 4 January 1928, it’s obvious he was smitten.
Although Joe Kingsbury often travelled for work and took an assignment out of the country near the end of World War II, Kitty and the boys stayed put in Washington DC until the family moved to Bloomington Indiana in 1948, when Joe joined the faculty of Indiana University. Kitty had grown up in Washington DC and there were strong connections to DC on both sides of her family.
Those are the people and places I’ll be blogging about over the next ten weeks in preparation for our visit in early June. When I refer to “our great great grandfather” I am including in the term “our” my two cousins Peggy Kingsbury Rice and Stacy Kingsbury Christiansen and me, so I’ll be citing the relationship to ancestors counting from “our” generation. Kitty is our grandmother, Papa Joe (aka Joseph Bush Kingsbury) is our grandfather. Kitty’s mother and father (Elizabeth Monica Preston and Herbert Sydney Bryant) are “our” great grandparents; their parents are our great great grandparents (sometimes listed as 2G grandparents) and so on.
We know a lot about our Kingsbury-Bush ancestry because of the “Blue Book” created by our great uncle Forrest Alva Kingsbury in 1958. In it, he captures the American ancestry of the Kingsbury and Bush families beginning with Joseph Kingsbury who came from England in 1637 and settled in Dedham, Massachusetts.
Forrest Kingsbury (1883-1972) was the oldest son of Wayland Kingsbury and Flora Jane Bush. He grew up in Osage, Iowa with three younger full brothers, Frank, Joe and Dean and one younger half brother, Clark. Flora Jane Bush Kingsbury died in 1900 and Wayland remarried Annie May Walker in 1902. All of the boys shared great love and affection for their new mother.
Forrest was a professor of psychology and taught for a number of years at the University of Chicago before moving to Redlands California where he taught at the University of Redlands from 1948 to 1952. Redlands is in San Bernadino County, east of Los Angeles. Forrest and his wife, Cornelia Hasselman (1887-1980) never had children but what a wonderful legacy he left for his nieces and nephews and their descendants.
We learned very little about our grandmother Katherine Gertrude Bryant growing up. Kitty died in 1959, when I was only four years old. Peggy and Stacy were not born until the 1960s. Contributing to the lack of information about her is that Kitty struggled for most of her adult life with alcohol addiction. This undoubtedly meant that many of the stories her sons might have remembered about her were too painful to share. I know this because I have a collection of my grandfather’s contemporaneous writings that provide a very detailed and sad account of how their lives were affected by her drinking.
So without dwelling on her illness and the effect it had on her family, I’ll start with what I know about Kitty’s side of the family, beginning with her paternal grandfather Levi Jesse Bryant (1839-1920). Fortunately there is a family genealogy, much like the one Forrest created for the Kingsbury Bush family about the Bryant family. It was published in 1938 and is entitled Charles Smith and Rachel Amy Bryant: Their Ancestors and Descendants. The author, Tenney Smith, was writing about the ancestors and descendants of his parents and by extension, at least on his mother’s side of the family, our Bryant ancestors as well. His mother Rachel Amy Bryant was the older sister of our great great grandfather Levi Jesse Bryant.
It can be dangerous to rely on previously published family histories without evaluating the data, but it offers a shortcut that I’m willing to take in this instance, to know a little more about our Bryant family. Several of our early Bryant ancestors were in Massachusetts as early as the Kingsbury family but living in Plymouth and Duxbury, which are south and a little east of Dedham.
Our first Bryant ancestor to arrive in America was Stephen Bryant who came to Plymouth, Massachusetts from Essex, England as a young man. The exact date of his arrival is uncertain but from the references to him in the records of Plymouth it seems he arrived sometime around 1632. He was on a list of Plymouth men able to bear arms in 1643, married Abigail Shaw in 1646 and became a freeman in 1651.
Fast forward a 150 years and we find Prince Bryant and his wife Rebecca Everett living in Springfield, Massachusetts. Rebecca came to Massachusetts from Northern Ireland with her parents when she was 13 years old. She is the source for some of our Irish DNA although we get another dose from the Preston side of Kitty’s family. Rebecca and Prince Bryant married in Springfield in 1798 and left for Monroe County, Illinois in 1800. Their second son, Jesse Bryant, our 3G grandfather, was born there on 8 Mar 1802.
Jesse Bryant married Betsey Williams on 18 Jun 1826 in Monroe County, Illinois. Betsey was the daughter of Zopher Williams and Ama Ludington who came to Illinois in 1815 from Tioga County, New York. Jesse bought land from his father’s estate and built a stone house near Waterloo, Illinois, where most of his children, including our great great grandfather Levi Jesse Bryant were born. The house was still occupied in 1935 when Tenney Smith researched his family genealogy.
In 1844, Jesse and Betsey loaded their eight children into covered wagons and moved to southern Missouri. There they encountered “malarial fever and insects beyond endurance” (p.46) and one of their younger daughters, Electa Elizabeth, died at the age of three in October 1845. The family loaded the wagons again, traversed the state of Illinois from south to north, and stopped briefly in Argyle, Wisconsin, where Betsey’s family was living at the time. They journeyed west to Jackson County, Iowa where they lived for a couple of years before returning to Moscow, Wisconsin, where their last child, a boy named David Zopher Bryant, was born in December 1847. Moscow is about 15 miles north of Argyle, Wisconsin, which means that Jesse’s and Betsey’s children grew up in close proximity to their maternal grandparents.
Jesse Bryant died on 21 Sep 1853. From this point on, the family stayed put (at least for a time) in Wisconsin. That’s how Levi Jesse Bryant, who was 14 when his father died, came to enlist in the Wisconsin 3rd Infantry at the outbreak of the Civil War, which is where we’ll pick up the story in my next post. His older brother John Prince Bryant also fought for Wisconsin (Company B of the 18th Infantry) during the civil war. He died in Corinth, Mississippi on 3 October 1862.
One of the reasons I enjoy genealogy is because I like to imagine what our ancestors were like. It is very difficult to find enough information in most sources to form a good picture of their personalities but Tenney Smith does a great job describing his grandmother Betsey Williams Bryant, who was born in Candor, New York in 1807 and left for Illinois, “an almost untracked wilderness,” (p.53) when she was just eight years old. She is our 3G grandmother. Of her, he writes:
“She was a worthy daughter of an honored mother. She is remembered as an old lady with full, round, pink cheeks and a halo of white hair. Her placid face beamed with loving kindness. It was a face that attracted children at sight. They liked to be with her. That face did not come from having led a sheltered carefree life. It came from having lived a life of unselfish devotion in the service of others and the care of children.” (p. 53)
Betsey’s final days were spent as a pioneer. She joined her youngest son, David Zopher Bryant when he travelled west to Clay County, Nebraska, where they each took up a homestead. “They had a house on the line between their homesteads and lived together in one house. There the end came to the long and eventful life that had been hers. She was found sitting in her rocking chair , with her knitting in her lap. Just fallen to sleep, without pain or suffering.” (p.54)
England actually declared war on Germany on August 4, 1914 but my grandfather didn’t learn of it until he saw the newspapers the next day. I’m always amazed when I realize that it was almost three years before the US joined her Allies – Britain, France and Russia – and sent troops to Europe under General Pershing. Here’s a link if you’re interested in learning more about why England declared war on Germany.
Went out before breakfast and read in an extra paper that England has declared war against Germany. That makes things much more serious for us. We must not say anymore that we speak English, must say only “Amerikaner”. People are tearing off signs “On parlais francais” and “English spoken here” which some stores advertise on their windows, and even chiseling them out of the walls. I went in to a book store to look for a book in English, some fellow went out and told a policeman and he walked in to catch the Englishman. I had to get all my papers out again, but the proprietor of the store and his son, who spoke English well, stood up for me and wouldn’t let the officer take me. They told me to stay inside until the crowd went away, and the old man wrote a card in German saying: “This gentleman, who has already been arrested by the police, is an American, and has applied for his passport at the American Consulate” so I could show that if I were arrested again before I got my passport. They were awfully good to me in that store, and I am going to write to them after the war is over. The young fellow even offered to go with me to the Consulate, but I got there alright by myself and even got my passport.
Met Basset just outside coming for his – we had decided to travel alone that day to escape attention. We went down to the Grand Hotel and introduced ourselves to Chris Heurich and his wife. They were as glad to see us as though we had been old friends and old Mr. Heurich, thinking we were worried or scared, tried his best to inspire us with confidence, and did. He offered to help us with money or anything else, and made us promise to come round once a day at least. I never met nicer people than Mr. & Mrs. Heurich and Mrs. Heruich’s sister, Miss Keyser, also from Washington. They have lots of money but are just plain, good people, the most respected of all the 128 Americans in the Grand Hotel. Mr. Heurich is about 60 and looks German and talks rather brokenly.
It is really funny how our hopes go from top to bottom several times a day. Sometimes we imagine we will be out of it in a week or so, perhaps there will be a special train for Americans to Scandinavia and the US will send ships to take us home. Next moment we can see no hope at all. Someone reports that the banks have stopped paying and we rush there to cash a check or two or three and find it is the same as ever. It is a world war, and we must take our chances just like everyone else. We shall try to learn German, keep as well and healthy and make the best use possible of the time.
This is a transcription of my grandfather’s account of his time in Germany at the outbreak of WWI. At this point, he has been in Germany for one week and has visited Berlin, Dresden and Nuremberg. His plans for travelling throughout Europe for three weeks were interrupted by the war and he and two travel companions (fellow students at George Washington University) are stranded in Nuremberg Germany because the trains were dedicated to the war effort and moving troops to the front.
What would you do if you were a college student in Europe for the summer and this happened to you? My first thought would be to return to America but that was not an option because the shipping lines were no longer running between the United States and Germany, even if he could have returned to a port city.
Interesting aside – my grandfather and his friends were probably on the last passenger trip of SS Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse. When the war began it was converted to an auxiliary cruiser and sank off the coast of Africa in the Battle of Rio de Oro on August 26, 1914.
We made our daily trip to the consulate. There was no war news of any interest, but the consulate was full of Americans, and we stopped to talk to some of them. Most of them are at the Grand Hotel, among them Alexander H. Revell of Chicago, Chris Heurich the Washington brewer, Mr. Huntington, related to the late Southern Pacific president, and president of the National Geographic Society. They all expect to stay awhile, and all were filling out applications for passports, which the consul has been authorized to issue. We sat in a park to talk things over and decided there was nothing to do but wait. The uncertainty of things is the worst experience – whatever we do is guess work; we don’t know whether to cash all the cheques we can before the banks stop paying (which we expect) or get just enough for present needs, so not to have a lot of worthless paper to change if we should leave Germany suddenly. We decided to get it only as we needed it and that proved to be the right thing to do.
Looks like the boys were stranded in good company. Later in the story, you will learn that meeting these other Americans was a fortuitous event. Christian Heurich was a German immigrant who started the Heurich Brewing company in Washington DC. It was originally located near Dupont Circle but later expanded to a larger facility in Foggy Bottom, which is now the site of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.
Christian Heurich’s mansion located on New Hampshire Avenue near Dupont Circle in DC has been converted to a museum and is open for tours – Thursday through Saturday. (Reservations are recommended). It is also used for beer tastings and other special events. I definitely want to plan my next trip to DC around an event there. Here’s a link.
In the afternoon we started out to look for a bath. The place we had seen advertised had closed down their pool, so we went around to the YMCA (Christliches Verein Junge Manner). They had no swimming pool, but the porter who spoke fine English, having lived in England a year, took us all over the building and told us a great deal about it. The building is a beauty, 5 years old, cost two million marks. The membership is only 50 pfennigs (12 cents) a month and it is for young men who need it, if they can’t afford the membership fee someone pays it for them.
The rooms in the YMCA were very nice and almost as cheap as where we were, but we didn’t think it would be of enough advantage to move. We talked with one of the secretaries who expected to go next day to fight the Russians, and many of the other secretaries had already gone. The assembly hall was quite a large room with a gallery and pipe organ, but instead of chairs or seats they had tables so people could eat and drink while they were at meeting.
We had a dandy shower bath with soap, towel and individual dressing room at one of the city baths right in the wall, for 10pf ( 2 ½ cents). They have several of these baths around town, another thing America could very well adopt. I think we would use them more than the average German does too. Bruce L’s friend Kramer says you can tell the day of the week in a crowd of Germans by the smell. This was the first real bath we had had since landing, and we felt like new. Started to walk around the wall, eating apples, came to a place where the farmers were bringing their horses to turn them over to the army. We stopped a second to watch and an officer came right up to us and we were arrested again. He took us in a laundry on the bank of the river to get away from the crowd and asked us the usual questions, then led us to another building, and through several more to shake off the crowd. But they saw us when we came out on the street and followed yelling “spion” It made the officer angry but he couldn’t make them back down. He told them we were Americans and not English, but they wouldn’t believe it. We crossed a little foot bridge across the river and a man at the other end blocked the way after us so the kids couldn’t follow, but another crowd collected on the other side. He took us to a different station this time and we had a harder time proving our identity. Finally we showed him on a little map where we had been taken before and he called them up. As soon as he had described us they told him we were alright and he begged our pardon, and let us go, but we couldn’t enjoy the sights much that afternoon, try as we would. We were not the only ones to go through such experiences; we heard of lots of Americans who were arrested almost every day, and they complained to the Consul, so he got the burgemeister to issue an order to arrest strangers only on the strongest suspicions, and made it a misdemeanor for anyone to follow an officer with a prisoner. After that we weren’t annoyed much.
Fine warm day. Chocolate, rolls, butter and honey in our hotel. (This much I might ditto fifteen times, until August 17th). We walked around town and finally found the American consulate. Mr. Winans, the consul, arrived only three weeks ago from Seville, Spain, so is new to the job. Very friendly and reassuring. He told us that Nuremberg is the safest and cheapest place in Germany to be, as the Bavarian Government has guaranteed the food supply for a month. In Switzerland prices are going up, and the Swiss are anxious to get rid of the tourists. He advised us to stay here and not to worry for the present, which we will do.
Nuremberg is the oldest city in Germany. It still looks like a medieval town. An old wall, built about 1350, with a ditch fifty feet wide and fifty deep still circles the old part of the city, cut through by several gates or “thors.” Almost all the houses are quaint, with high steep roofs and oriel windows. The streets are narrower and more crooked than Boston, and every turn brings you upon more picturesque sights. We did not enjoy it much today, though, — there was too much else on our minds. Once as we stood waiting for a car to go to the Tiergarten (Zoo) an officer came up and marched us to police headquarters. The Chief immediately recognized Jim, begged our pardon, and after talking with us a little and giving us some good advice, some of which we got, let us go. We didn’t attract much attention this time but it is uncomfortable to feel that you are watched all the time. The officer that arrested us was nice, every time we met him after that he smiled and acted a little embarrassed. We decided to raise moustaches so we will look more like the Germans. The Kaiser says a man isn’t a man if he can’t raise a moustache. We are going to prove that we are.
After the second arrest Jim decided he would stay in the room, so he did, while Basset and I went out to the Tiergarten and had a nice restful afternoon, watched the animals and heard a good concert. That was the last concert, as the musicians were all going to war. Nuremberg has a fine zoo, and the keepers are all regular animal trainers. They play with their animals so it is like going to a circus. Once when we went out there the polar bear keeper saw that we had a camera so he climbed to the top of the rocks behind the bear’s pool, held up a piece of bread, and the bears climbed out of the water, up the rocks, and sat up and begged for the bread, while we took their picture. The seal keeper made his seals climb up the rocks and dive off for us, and the lion keeper brought out a little lion cub and let one of us hold it while we took a picture. In the evening we went to see a moving picture show (there are only about 4 in Nuremberg, — can you see how a city of 300,000 can be so backward?) and got our minds off the war for a while. Between films they threw on the screen pictures of Emperor Franz Josef, the German generals, and finally, — the Kaiser – there wasn’t a sound. I guess they think it is a sin to applaud in a movie show. Afterward we went down to one of the bridges across the Pegnitz. It was a beautiful but strange sight. You could easily imagine that it was 500 years ago instead of the present, to see the moon shining on those queer old houses, hanging out over the river, the odd shaped roofs, towers, steeples standing out against the night sky.
Source: Transferred from de.wikipedia to Commons Author: The original uploader was Keichwa at German Wikipedia
August 6th is a pretty good day for a wedding if stability is what you have in mind. Today as my husband and I celebrate our 34th anniversary – we wish my uncle and his bride congratulations on their 57th anniversary!
It’s funny how wedding dates are selected – no doubt it depends on the availability of the church and reception venue and I know many brides today spend many months, if not years planning their weddings. For Rick and me – it was a much more practical consideration – there were only a few weeks between the end of my summer job and the beginning of my second year of law school. Why else would anyone choose early August in Washington DC?
We spent the early part of our time in Washington DC finding a church that we wanted to join. I remember many Sundays visiting different churches. I also remember visiting Chevy Chase Presbyterian Church and thinking I wouldn’t like it (it was in a wealthy DC suburb and I thought this very middle class girl would feel out of place with Washington’s upper crust). Of course, that was before I knew all of my Preston and Bryant family history, through which I learned that I am a descendant of Washington DC’s “upper crust!”
I still remember the sermon on our first visit to Chevy Chase Presbyterian Church int he spring of 1983 by the head minister – Tom Jones. It was entitled, “Sins of Omission.” It was a sermon about the civil rights movement and the terrible things that were going on during freedom marches in the south in the 1950s and 60s. He certainly got my attention when he said – “if you were not actively protesting the abuses by whites in the South, you were just as guilty as the people holding those fire hoses on the marchers.” Hmmm… maybe this wouldn’t be such a bad church to join after all. And of course, it was beautiful both inside and out.
We joined in short order and remained active participants in the life of that church for the next two years until we moved away from DC in 1985. But I digress – this post is supposed to be about wedding anniversaries!
Rick and I were married at Chevy Chase Presbyterian Church on August 6, 1983. It was hot – the Washington DC kind of hot, dripping with humidity. I remember Rick asking if he could pay extra to have the church leave the A/C on the night before. We were assured that someone would turn it on early enough for things to cool down in time for our 10 am ceremony. I don’t remember being too hot so it must have worked out.
As for Deane and Nancy who celebrate their 57th anniversary today – I have this picture that I found on Newspapers.com from page 6 of the Columbus, Indiana Republic on August 8, 1960.
Sorry to cut off the article but what an elaborate affair it seems to have been. I don’t see Deane and Nancy as often as I’d like, but it has always made me happy to share a wedding anniversary date with them.
Here’s an excerpt from my grandfather’s family letter dated November 25, 1958 in which he describes meeting Nancy’s parents for the first time.
“There are prospects of a wedding in our family. Deane is sure he has found the right girl, and they thought of getting married at the end of this school year, but the latest decision is to wait until Deane finds out whether the Army is going to take him, and for Nancy to finish her last year at the university. [Deane was a senior and Nancy a junior at Indiana University when this was written.] They met while they were both working on the Daily Student, and this fall it began to get serious. Nancy Myers lives in Columbus, Indiana, 40 miles east of Bloomington; she is majoring in journalism and literature. She is pretty, intelligent, and wise for her years, and we like her very much. We invited her father and mother for dinner about a month ago, with her sister and her boyfriend. It was her father’s birthday and we all had a good time. The four young people went to a dance and the four parents stayed home and had a good talk.
Mr. Myers studied for the ministry and preached for a while in a Christian church, then went into one of the plants in Columbus that makes radios and a number of other things as a personnel and labor relations officer. Her mother was born in Australia, and they are both lively, witty, and good people. They like Deane, and had no objections to the kids getting married, though it would please them if Nancy finished her last year in the university. This is an example of Mr. Myers’ kind of wisdom: he suggested that they think over carefully the pros and cons of getting married next June, then he would arrange a debate and he would argue in favor of it. Well, when Deane and Nancy thought of all the reasons against it, they called up her father and told him there would be no debate. They may still change their minds, but they are both thoughtful youngsters and, we will be satisfied with whatever they finally decide.
I just realized as I was typing this that the “we” in this letter means that Kitty also met Nancy’s parents. I rarely think of Kitty (my grandmother) as being involved in family events because she died in December 1959.
In the summer of 1914 my grandfather was a college student spending what he thought would be three weeks touring Europe. Unfortunately he arrived on the eve of WWI and spent most of his time stranded in Germany because the trains stopped running. Here is his account of his adventures that summer. He wrote these in a letter to his parents after he safely returned to the United States. I am so lucky to have the original of his letter.
I’m trying to post each of his letters on the day he wrote them but I’m still a little behind. The night before this was written he had planned to take a train to Switzerland. Instead it looks like our trio is headed for Nuremberg, Germany.
We had another dainty breakfast and came down stairs with our bags to pay our bill when we got our first jolt. The proprietor refused to take an American Express cheque in payment for the bill and after arguing until almost train time we paid him in cash (and we didn’t waste much in tips that time, either). We had just enough left to buy tickets to Nuremberg and a little to buy sausage sandwiches on the way, but we felt thankful enough to get seats in a little half-baggage, half-passenger car right behind the engine and to be on our way. It was a pretty ride, though dirty and tiresome, from 8 am to 5 pm. I bought an extra paper on the way and figured out with the aid of the dictionary that the trains would be taken over by the army at 6 o’clock that evening and no more passenger trains would run for a week, until the mobilization was over. So when we got to Nuremberg, Bassett and I left Jim with the baggage in the station and went out to look for a cheap hotel.
We stopped in the North German Lloyd office, (they had taken a ship from this line to reach Europe) which was open though it was Sunday. The agent spread a little more gloom over the situation by telling us that all North German Lloyd sailings had been cancelled indefinitely , and he had no idea how we were going to get out of Germany. But he very kindly directed us to a little hotel in a side street nearby, that we never would have found ourselves, and we got two rooms with breakfast for 3 marks a day each.
This is the nature of my grandfather – I challenge anyone today to respond to such a dire situation with this attitude. You’ve just been told that your trip home to America has been cancelled “indefinitely” because of the war but you appreciate the advice from the person who gave you this bad news because they tipped you off to a “cheap hotel.” I love my grandfather – always have – but even more now that I know his kind, gentle nature was his innate being – even as a 24 year old in dire straights. And in the midst of a war scare – he takes time to go on for several lines about the beds in Germany.
Afterward Herr Bindl came down to 2.50 a day, when we thought we would have to look for a still cheaper place. The rooms were good and clean and the food was always good and plenty of it. Our experience with beds was funny. The Berlin beds were the best, — the feather cover was light and soft; in Dresden it was a little thicker and heavier; in Nuremberg it was about a foot thick and not very soft or light. I don’t know what they would have been still further south. We laid them all on top of the wardrobe and they reached the ceiling, then we removed the bolster from under the head of our mattress, put one of the fat pillows under the bed, and could almost assume a horizontal position when we went to bed. After we had done that one or two nights, they took away the feather beds and the bolster and we got along very well. Another funny thing they do is fold back the quilt at the bottom so your feet have to stick out. The Germans must think that if they keep their stomachs warm, that is all that is necessary.
We walked around a little bit that evening, but Bassett and I came back to the room and were sitting there about 8:30 when a lot of people came scuffling up our alley followed by three officers. We had seen officers the past few days until we were tired of them, so we didn’t think anything of them, but presently someone knocked at our door, and one of the officers came in, out of breath and told us, in German, that we had been trying to send a telegram. We said we had not. Then he demanded who we were, where from, what doing, where going, and why. I wasn’t scared, and I was racking my brain for enough German words to tell him. They went out for an interpreter, but I think all he knew of English was “Do you speak English?” We were overjoyed at having someone to explain it to, told him our whole story, but he didn’t understand a word of it, and when he tried to talk English, it didn’t sound like any language that I ever heard before. We could understand the ones who spoke German a good deal better. Finally, after marching up and down outside our door they left us and then Jim came in with his hair almost on end, and said that he had started to copy a telegram posted in the window of the North German Lloyd office so we could read it, when an officer came up and grabbed him and led him to the police station, with the whole Sunday night street crowd right after. An American fellow who spoke German saw him and followed, and through him, Jim convinced them he was alright. They searched him all over, read all his letters, counted his money, and sent men to guard us, whom, I suppose they thought were also spies. We heard the next day they had caught a number of Russian spies just outside of town. It made Jim prejudiced against the Germans (he said he never had like them) but I don’t blame them at all for keeping such a close watch. Our names were in the hands of the police within an hour after we arrived. The crowd below (this is a wine and beer restaurant) talked and sang and drank beer all night, but we slept well.
I saw my cousin Peggy Kingsbury Rice last week on my annual visit to Charlottesville, VA for the Virginia Festival of the Book – a five day book festival with an amazing variety of authors and topics. It was our second visit in two years. Peggy’s father Deane is my father’s younger brother. Even though we didn’t grow up together and have almost a ten year age difference, when we get together the conversation flows easily and the family connections shine through.
