Nuts From the Family Tree: Joseph Williams 1895

Monday, December 9, 2013

I Just Love This Photo!

I'm busy working on a long blog post with the story of the Whetstone family but miss posting here, so thought that this might be a good time to share some of my favorite family pictures. You've see a lot of them but my thought is to select just one and then write everything I know about it and make some observations too. Might just make a game of it and play, What Do You See?

So here goes and the first one is a picture of my great grandfather's house. He was Daniel Williams and a recent blog post was the story of that family.

The Williams home, built about 1899, in Ocean Allegany, Maryland.

Pictured are:

Back row, left to right: William Williams (1884-1964 ), his wife Lillian "Lillie" (Merbaugh) (1884-1964 ), Tom Williams (1890-1951 ), and Jane (Price) Williams (1862-1939),

Front row, left to right: Cambria "Camey" Williams (1897-1960) my Grandfather, Joseph "Joe" Williams (1895-1948), Charles Williams (1899-1979) and Aunt Betty's father, a neighbor, and "Blackie" the dog on the fence post.

So there it is, and I dearly love this picture. Aunt Betty and Mom both have copies, and now I have this electronic copy. Aunty Betty says that the house was built by Daniel and Jane (James) Williams about 1899. Charles, Aunt Betty's father was the only child of Daniel and Jane born here, but many of the family lived there from time to time and so the next generation was also born there.

I see here a two story frame house with balanced and even architecture, painted to emphasize the trim and make the overall impression more decorative and appealing. There is pride even today when Mom and Aunt Betty talk about this old home place. And notice the contrasting painted brick-a-brack on the top of the porch posts. Someone took care with how this home presented itself.

I also like the front fence and the rambling garden with trees and perhaps climbing roses festooning the porch. If you click on the picture to enlarge it you'll see what might be some type of crisscross wire making a structure for the climbers growing up the front porch. And is that a fruit tree on the right side? It looks tidy and well kept. Aunt Betty's note on the file says that a street car ran right in front of the house. How proud the family must have been to ride it and see their house as it was undoubtedly admired by riders.

Aunt Betty tells an interesting story of life in this house. You see in these parts the mineral rights were not sold with the land so the mining company could dig a mine right under your home. Even today this practice continues. Some days, Aunt Betty said, you could hear the miners right below the house, talking, and digging away. At one point the activity was so energetic that it moved the house right off the foundation! Imagine!

Mom says that there was an outhouse down and the end of the yard but by the time she was a very little girl, about 1920, there was a regular bathroom in the house on the first floor. Her Grandfather Williams was very ill near the end of his life right about then and we speculated that perhaps the bathroom was added on the first floor to make it easier for him.

There was a natural cold spring that came out of the ground in the back yard. There were a lot of them then, Mom says. The water was cold the year round so the family kept butter and milk in the indentation in the earth where the spring came out. In the house between the dining room and kitchen was what we might call a pantry, a short hallway with shelves, That was where Mom went to check to see if there were any pies available.

Every time I go see Mom it's my intention to drive the short distance from Frostburg to what's left of the once prosperous coal mining community that was Ocean. Next time, for sure. I wonder where it got that name, because believe me, it's no where near any Ocean!

The URL for this post is: http://nutsfromthefamilytree.blogspot.com/2013/12/i-just-love-this-photo.html

Tuesday, January 29, 2013

Talented Tuesday: Musicians on Mom's Side

Here goes with a try at a different (for me) blogging prompt from the wonderful folks at GeneaBloggers, and this one is Talented Tuesday! As a new-to-me prompt, it gets me thinking along a different track and that's good.

I am drawn to the visual arts and often forget about the substantial musical talent in the family on both sides. I recently blogged about the Zeller Ensemble on Dad's side which you can see here. But Mom has some musicians on her side so let me tell you about them. She played the organ for many years and both of us confess to a liking for the Hammond b: her liking leans to standards and liturgical and mine to Booker T and the MGs.

The first professional musician is Mom's Uncle Joe Williams (1895 - 1948). Uncle Joe, and I've come to think about him this way even though he's my grand uncle, was a musical guy. He studied at the Peabody Institute in Baltimore. I can not imaging the hoops a miner and his son would have had to jump to get him situated in such a prestigious place in the very early 1900s.

Upon graduation he performed professionally in Cumberland and Frostburg, Maryland. At some point he married Bessie Carwell (1895 - 1918). They were both born and raised in the same community, Ocean Mines, Allegany, Maryland. They had one daughter, Hilda, born 1915. Little Hilda was only 3 years of age when her mother Bessie died. Uncle Joe and Hilda were living with his parents at that point and so Hilda was pretty much raised by her Grandma Williams.

Mom remembers that Hilda had a piano in the home and Mom was a tad jealous at the extravagance and easy access to such an instrument because Mom always wanted to play. Eventually, in the mid 1960s Mom got an organ and studied. She became quite good. Not too long ago that old organ was donated to a local small church and refurbished by them. (A 50 inch TV now occupies the space where the old organ sat in Mom's house.)

Mom also remembers that all of Uncle Joe's brothers went to work in the coal mine where their father, Daniel, was a supervisor. My grand father, Cambria Williams, hated being underground and he especially disliked the cramped quarters and admitted to being a tad claustrophobic. He always loved the great outdoors. Uncle Joe didn't work in the mines because his pursuit was music. The boys always kidded him, "Joe can't do real work because he has to save his hands." In a house with all boys, one can only imagine the ways the boys "tortured" Uncle Joe:)

Uncle Joe played the organ in movie theatres of the day showing silent films. Try a sample here on Amazon. Saw a documentary about the large and complex organs made just for movie theatres and they looked hard to play. Here's a photo of the console of one from Wikimedia Commons, below. I imagine Uncle Joe was respected and admired in a small town environment, and being the man behind the music in the darkness of romance and adventure at the "movin' pitures", a bit envied! After all he got to see every movie for free!

When talkies came out, as Mom says, Uncle Joe taught music where he could and took any work available. He married again to Helen Gillette (1900 - 1989) and had two children, Marshal and Josephine.

Unfortunately, Uncle Joe Williams died in a car crash in 1948, in Mt. Savage, Maryland, coming home from a music lesson.

Mom's Uncle Joe Williams (1895 - 1948)

OK, here's a photo I had to include when talking about the musical people in the family: Buford Alley (1854 - ?). Buford married Ellen Nellie Price Alley (1864 - ?), the daughter of my 2nd great grandfather, William Price (1829 - 1872) and 2nd great grandmother, Diane Thomas Price (1832 - 1871). Have to confess that we don't know too much about this couple and the only reason the photos are here is that they're kinda cool:)