The Trip - Part 4

Moving on through the 100 degree heat of the San Joaquin Valley the family travels south to Los Angeles and San Diego.  John, May and Granny leave the girls at a motel in the charge of Dode who is twelve and cross the border to Tijuana.

Then up through the midwest to home....pictures and notes peter out as they get closer to home....

How fortunate that they took the trip when they did.  Just month's later the bottom fell out of the stock market and in a sense the world.  John was fortunate to have a job with the Postal Service, but extra money and long vacations were not to be for quite some time.....













The Trip - The photo album
The Trip -  The notebook
The Trip - The transcription
The Trip - Photo folder

The Trip - Part 3

The trip continues as the family travels south from Seattle.

The Trip - The photo album
The Trip -  The notebook
The Trip - The transcription
The Trip - Photo folder

The Trip - Pt 2

The trip continues as the family travels through Washington and on to Seattle, where John's mother Anna has moved to be near her younger children.  There is also a quick trip to Victoria.










The Trip - The photo album
The Trip -  The notebook
The Trip - The transcription
The Trip - Photo folder

The Trip - pt 1

The photo album from that long ago trip began to fall apart some years ago.  Unfortunately, pictures were pasted on both sides of pages and removing them would also mean eliminating my grandmother's handwritten captions...white ink on the black pages.

So, a project ensued.  Taking archival pages we cut holes and carefully nestled the old pages in, adding archival photocopies from the small tablet that held "the story" of the journey.  The next few posts on this blog will present the images of those pages. Links at the bottom will lead to a transcription, a pdf of the entire album, a pdf of the tablet and a folder of pictures.










The Trip - The photo album
The Trip -  The notebook
The Trip - The transcription
The Trip - Photo folder

Memories of a Four Year Old Traveler

In 1929 John and May English packed themselves, May's mother and their three children into their car and took off on the adventure of a lifetime, traveling from St. Paul to Seattle, down the coast to Mexico and through the midwest home.

This is the preamble to the book we put together from my grandmother's notes and my grandfather's pictures of that journey.  

My Mother's Scrapbooks

Cover of 1944-1945 Scrapbook

I remember as a child spending many a rainy afternoon poring through my mother's photo albums and scrapbooks.  There were two scrapbooks dating to her last two years at College of  St. Catherine in St. Paul, MN

First page 1945-1946 Scrapbook

It was war time...the fall of 1944. Letters and telegrams from other places, Europe, the Pacific, the East Coast, join report cards, dance cards, playbills, corsage ribbons and more throughout the pages.

Those report cards, although better than those of my father from Notre Dame, were not quite up to the standard we often felt were expected of us growing up.  Why was that so, there was never any punishment or reward for grades, just the expectation we would do our best and our best should probably be all "A"s.







Suitors abound.  One filled his letters with comical drawings... others sent small gifts such as hankies.  And then, in the fall of 1945 the lay of the land changed .....

Mom's "little sister" congratulated her on being among the 2% of librarians that married...noting that of course she was not yet a librarian or married!   From then on the letters from others dwindled, but did not disappear.  There were still letters from the suitor that eventually married a good friend, the brother of her "little sister" and her soon to be brother-in-law as well as all those from my father who was on the East Coast.

The war in Europe ended, then the war in the Pacific theatre.  In early winter of 1946, Mom was named St. Catherine's Winter Carnival Queen.  In June she graduated with a Bachelor degree in Library Sciences.  She spent the next year teaching library science to the nun's at Hill House.

Scrapbook 1944-1945
Scrapbook 1945-1946
The Ariston - Pride and Prejudice

Haverhill Township - Olmsted MN

Wikimedia

When Jeremiah Lawler settled in the area now known as Haverhill Township is unknown.  He emigrated from Ireland about 1850 and settled first in New York.  He is not listed among the first settlers but was resident by 1860 when he is found in the agricultural census with $1000 of real estate and $100 in personal property.  The population census misnames him as John Taylor.

The area was first settled in 1855 and a town Zumbro was organized in 1859.  The name was changed for a short time to Grant and then to Sherman before finally becoming Haverhill in April of 1867.  By 1883 when the History of Olmsted and Winona Counties was written, our families were firmly entrenched.  John Jeremiah Lawler the son of Jeremiah was an Associate Supervisor.

Baier Farm

What has always fascinated me was the number of families that came from Gullane, Kerry, Ireland and settled in Olmsted County.  Not only did most of the children of Thomas Lawler (3rd GG) end up there, we also find representatives of most other Lawler families found in Gullane, the English family and a lot of the families that had married into those families in Ireland.  Many settled elsewhere in the US, including New York, Wisconsin, Ohio, Pennsylvania, etc and gradually found their way to Haverhill, Orion, Rochester and High Stewart as well as many townships in neighboring Winona County.

The Baier family moved to Haverhill from Juneau County WS about 1871. The Delmores soon followed,  joining their daughter, Mary, the wife of John Baier.

In 1880 Edmund English emigrated and stayed with his Uncle John English in Haverhill and his Lawler cousins before leaving to work for the Railroad. During his time in Haverhill he met Anna Baier.  They eventually settled in St. Paul.





History of Winona and Olmsted Counties, 1883