This Week Is for Mother--Day Four: Bernice Evangeline Grenfell (1902 - 1980)

A year later the new house had acquired a coat of paint and Harold's shop had been built. He's not visible in this photo, but their son Harold Delbert Currey, Junior, was born on February 9, 1923.

[Bernice's younger brother Richard is the man in the bottom right photo, from my personal collection]

Here's a photo from the north side of their property showing their vegetable garden. (Look at all the bare hills around Encanto!)

[From my personal collection]

Over the years more additions were made to the house--a lath house with rock garden, garage, separate bedroom, dining room, and a living room (on the back so it would be more convenient for the Currey tribe who eventually included not only Harold's parents but also his two sisters' families). And both ornamental and fruit trees were planted, and walls, driveways and walks were created.

A year or two after Junior's birth, Bernice suffered a ruptured appendix and lost the child she was carrying. She wasn't expected to survive but the doctors tried the new sulfa drugs on her with great success.* However, she was never able to have another child, so Junior was their all.

The next twenty years were probably the happiest time of her life. This period is well documented and I want to cover it but I'm too tired tonight to do it justice.** Come back tomorrow and I can promise you camping trips, boats, trailers, rental property (a bungalow court on Irving Street), even a barn with a cow!

[From my personal collection]

(To be continued)

*My paternal grandfather, James Chappell Warren, Junior, died shortly after the birth of his only child in 1923 in Johnson County, Texas. From his death certificate we learn what caused his death: "Appendicitis (Ruptured) Operation; Contributing: Peritinitis, general."
**Today my daughter Christine (whose recent absence from posting here you may have noted) underwent laparoscopic surgery to implant a port so that she can begin dialysis soon so I spent the day at the hospital. All went well and she was able to go home five hours after the surgery.

© 2015 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

This Week Is for Mother--Day Three: Bernice Evangeline Grenfell (1902 - 1980)

As we've seen, by 1921 Bernice had survived the rigors of the Seventh Day Adventist boarding school several years before and was attending San Diego High. But an event had occurred in January of that year which changed the course of her life forever when her 72-year-old grandmother married Joseph H. Stanton, an 82-year-old retired butcher and Civil War veteran who had lost his wife a year earlier.*

[Grace Thomas Grenfell and 2nd husband Joseph H. Stanton, undated photo, from my personal collection]

The most immediate change happened when the family moved to Encanto, buying a bungalow at 879 69th Street.** Bernice now took the train downtown to school, via the San Diego and Arizona Railway which ran eight passenger-carrying trains a day. And more importantly, the move brought her into contact with "the Encanto crowd" which included a young electrician, Harold Delbert Currey, who lived just down the street.

[The house on 69th Street before the Stantons moved there, undated photo from the Currey family album in my personal collection.]

[The Curreys' house at 817, 69th Street, undated photo from my personal collection. Note the vacant land across the street.]

[Harold,wearing a dark shirt and with his arms around two girls, is on the right in the middle row. Bernice isn't in this photo from my personal collection.]

But Bernice had a problem--and his name was Joseph H. Stanton. She didn't like her new step-grandfather and he didn't like her either. Each resented the attention Grace gave to the other one.

[Bernice with her grandmother and step-grandfather, undated photo from my personal collection.]

Although her grandmother tried to persuade Bernice to accept the proposal of an "older man"*** she made her own choice, marrying Harold on May 1, 1922.****

[Photo from my private collection--note that Harold's mother was the person who took the photo, having accompanied them. Because part of the writing on the back was trimmed off when the picture was put in the photo album, it's not clear whether his father and one of his sisters went too.]

Although the newlyweds had considered property in other San Diego neighborhoods, I suppose it was inevitable that the lot they bought for their home together was at 6870 Brooklyn Avenue, just across the street from the Currey home place.

[Note that the house, although its address was on Brooklyn, faced east toward 69th Street and the Currey home place, photo from my personal collection.]

Bernice found that she had truly married a family, which will be proved in my next post.

(To be continued)

*There's no reason to believe that this union was other than a marriage of convenience. We have to remember that this was long before Meals on Wheels or grocery stores stocking pre-made meals. By joining their financial resources the couple would both benefit (and he wouldn't have to cook his own dinner).
**The house is still there.
***Mother never told me his name, but said that he was in his 30s.
****Her grandmother's comment on her decision was to say that although she liked Harold very much and had nothing against him (indeed she came to love him), "just look at his family." As an Englishwoman who had never owned property until she and her first husband immigrated to the United States and bought the farm in South Dakota that she still owned, she was very class conscious and considered marrying into the Currey family a step down.

© 2015 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

This Week Is for Mother--Day Two: Bernice Evangeline Grenfell (1902 - 1980)

The only detail I know about the 1912 train trip Bernice and her father took from South Dakota to San Diego was her memory of the first time she saw the Pacific Ocean. They were seated on the wrong side of the train and in her excitement she jumped out of her seat, rushed across the aisle and clambered over the laps of the couple sitting there to look out the window, only to be bitterly disappointed--because she couldn't see the other side!

[Twentieth century transportation, artist E.S. Yates, published by the Delmont Company c1910.

Source: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.]

Bernice's paternal grandparents Richard and Grace (Thomas) Grenfell had already left their farm in South Dakota by the date of the 1900 U.S. Census, probably around the time of their only surviving son's marriage. Richard had been a coal miner in England in his early years and the couple apparently decided to retire to a place with a gentler climate. The first record of them in California is in Coronado in 1905, but by 1908 they were living in La Playa on San Antonio Avenue which is where they were located in the 1910 U.S. Census.*

[Richard and Grace Grenfell, date unknown, from my personal collection.]

William apparently hadn't informed his mother that he and Bernice were coming and that he intended to leave his daughter with her. Grace expressed some reluctance to take on the task of raising her granddaughter because she was living on a very small income. Her son's response was to tell her one day that he was going to run an errand downtown and instead he caught the train back home without any good-byes.

[California Southern (Santa Fe Depot), Save Our Heritage Organization: Lost San Diego Photo: Coons Collection]

Whenever Mother talked about her grandmother, it was like she was talking about an angel. Grace was the first person in her life to love her.**

[Bernice Grenfell still looking serious, undated photo, from my personal collection]

After her arrival she attended the local elementary school*** and recalled that during the Mexican Revolution some of her classmates were from refugee families who had fled the unrest south of the border--she said some of them were embarrassed because of their comparatively dark skins and put flour on their faces to look lighter.

Bernice was listed as a member of the Sophomore Class in the 1921 San Diego High School album. While there she took part in a student production of Othello.

[From the 1921 yearbook "The Russ" San Diego High School Source Information Ancestry.com. U.S. School Yearbooks database on-line. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2010.]

[Bernice, kneeling front row on the right. The tower in the background is the 1915 Indian Arts Building (aka House of Charm) that now houses the Mingei International Museum and the San Diego Art Institute]

Except for a year spent in a Seventh Day Adventist boarding school in South Dakota in 1919, Bernice spent the rest of her life in Southern California.**** This portrait of her with her brothers was taken that year.

[From my personal collection]

So after a rocky start in life, Bernice was settled in San Diego with her Grandmother. But alas, every ointment has a fly looking to land in it.

(To be continued)

*Richard died sometime before 1912 and is buried in Alpine. By 1916 Grace and Bernice had moved to 470 Rosecrans. Around this time her grandmother noted that Rosecrans was getting to be such a busy street that five minutes didn't go by without some traffic.
**Indicative of how frightened she must have been as a child was her story of coming home from school when she was about 16 and finding an old woman (actually a neighbor) using their bathtub. Certain that it was her maternal grandmother Mary Jane (Neill) Grant, the teenager ran to her room and hid under the bed, staying there until her grandmother came looking for her later. All the explanation Mother ever gave me was, "Grandma Grant was the meanest woman I ever knew."
***I think it was on Cañon Street because she was reminded of that story several times as we were driving up that street.
****From 1912 until her mother's death in 1948, Bernice received on letter from her, which does not survive.

© 2015 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

This Week Is for Mother--Day One: Bernice Evangeline Grenfell (1902 - 1980)

This Wednesday, June 17th, will mark the 113th birthday of the woman who raised me and is my emotional mother, Bernice Evangeline Grenfell, so I've decided to dedicate my posts over the next several days to her.*

[From my personal collection]

Bernice was born on a farm near Whitewood in Lawrence County, in the Black Hills of South Dakota, that her English paternal grandfather had bought a year after his arrival in the United States in 1881, and was the second child** and only daughter of William R. and Mary A. (Grant)*** Grenfell. In June 1902 when the midwife was summoned to assist Mary with the birth she broke a smallpox quarantine to do so and the mother and baby caught the disease. Although both survived, that probably contributed to Mary's lifelong antipathy toward her only daughter.****

[Map Of The Black Hills Of South Dakota And Wyoming With Full Descriptions Of Mineral Resources, Etc. By Samuel Scott, M.E. Custer City, S.D. 1897 ... (on verso) Copyrighted 1896 By Samuel Scott, M.E. E.P. Noll & Co. Map Publishers No. 9 N. Sixth St., Philadelphia, Pa.

Source: David Rumsey Historical Map Collection.]

Along with the other children on nearby farms, Bernice, Gilbert and Richard attended the tiny one-room schoolhouse down the road. In none of the surviving photos does she look happy.

[Bernice in dark dress in front row]

[Gilbert, Bernice and Richard at schoolhouse]

[Color slide of old schoolhouse taken during out trip to South Dakota in 1953]

   Nor did she appear to enjoy family picnics.

[Grenfell family, undated photo from my collection]

This situation didn't go unnoticed in the community and in 1912, when Bernice was 10, the local doctor took her father aside and told him that if he wanted his daughter to live to be an adult, he had to get her away from her mother. His solution was to take her to his recently widowed mother living in La Playa on Point Loma in San Diego and he bought train tickets for their journey.

A very unhappy little girl's life was about to change for the better.

(To be continued)

*Most of the information about her life before I arrived in it comes directly from her.
**Her older brother Gilbert was born the preceding year and the baby (and favorite) Richard came along two years later.
***Mary Grant was an obviously unstable woman who probably came from a family with a history of abuse.
****Mother recalled hiding as a child and overhearing her mother confide to a neighbor that it sickened her to even touch her daughter. She also said that when in a rage her mother tried to kill her more than once but that her brothers would pick her up and run with her to keep her away from her mother.

© 2015 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Sunday Drive: Slater

Here's my grand aunt Opal Slater, in a fetching pose, with a Model T, probably taken in Colorado.

[Courtesy of Olive Kennedy]

© 2015 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

San Diego Views: La Playa

This photo (probably taken about 1920*) proves that Coronado wasn't the only place in San Diego where you could pitch a tent to be near the water.

[From the Currey family photo album in my personal collection]

*But certainly no earlier than 1912 because the flag has 48 stars. Someone who knows more about the history of the development of Ft. Rosecrans on Point Loma could date this more precisely.

© 2015 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Family Friday: Worden

The couple in this family photo taken in Cedar City, Iowa, are my great great granduncle John Henry Worden (1847-1924) and his wife Lucinda Ellen "Sindy" Hodges (1845-1926) together with their daughters Mariah Jane "Jennie" Worden Bissell (1870-1900) and Lillian "Lillie" Worden Seitsinger (1877-1972). 

[Courtesy of Olive Kennedy]

John was the second son and fourth child of Porter and Hannah Leonard Worden. He and his older brother Willet Orlando "Dick" Worden* served together during the Civil War as privates in Company G of the 24th Iowa Infantry Regiment.

*My great great grandfather.

© 2015 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.