An Aerial Photo Solves a Family Mystery

 
by Cassie Arnold

My mother recounted a funny and puzzling story from my grandmother that just never added up until I found an old aerial photo of Hayward posted in the Oakland History group on Facebook. It’s amazing sometimes what we uncover when we investigate our family’s stories.

Setting the Scene 

My grandmother spent much of her childhood in an orphanage run by an order of French nuns in Lowell, MA. When her family was reunited in Berkeley, she was a very attractive young woman happy to be free of supervision of the sisters. At Berkeley High School she immediately set her sights on the best looking boy in school. They were married in May 1931 when she was 18 and three months pregnant. 

My grandmother's maiden name was Mildred Frazier.
Her married name was Mildred Murphy. She eventually
 married again and died with the name Mildred Klefsky.
However, she always went by the first name “Marie”.
Photo labelled, "Dec 1930, 18 years old".

While my grandmother was still pregnant with my mother, she and one of her sister-in-laws were staying with their mother-in-law. My grandmother was there because my grandfather was off at college; I don’t know why the sister-in-law was there, but probably because her husband was away for work. 

Regardless, they were staying at a house my great great grandfather owned on Lewelling Boulevard in Hayward. Apparently the two girls were bristling under the supervision of their mother-in-law, so one day they over-powered her, tied her to a kitchen chair, took her pin money and rode the streetcar up East 14th Street to 150th. 

They did what?  

My brother-in-law is a pretty good amateur genealogist and history detective. He was intrigued by this story too, so he tracked down some historical maps for us. We couldn’t find anything along the entire length of 150th Avenue that would be of interest to two young women. Well, at least nothing worth risking the wrath of your mother-in-law over. 

I quizzed my mother again, but she insisted it was on 150th Avenue. Hmm...

A Link Provides the Clue to Oakland’s Forgotten History

I was stumped. Then I got a link to these historic aerial photos. At the intersection of 150th and East 14th I found a raceway! The Oakland Speedway had opened in February of 1931 and hosted Indy cars and (I’m sure of more interest to my grandmother) their drivers until 1936. Now the property is the Bayfair Mall. 

Since the girls were spending the summer of 1931 at Lewelling, so the new raceway probably was a very compelling diversion. I’m not sure I would judge it compelling enough to commit felonious involuntary imprisonment, aka tying up my great grandmother, but my grandmother was always a bit wilder than me. 

All’s Well That Ends Well

And apparently there were no significant consequences from the episode. It was already established that my grandmother and great grandmother were never going to be the best of friends, which helped sow the seeds for future genealogy brick walls, but that’s for another day.

The untold story is that my great grandmother might have been happy to be free of the girls for the day! 

About the Author

Cassie Arnold is an Alameda-based business and financial writer as well as a second-generation Oakland native. She is working on a history of Oakland / Berkeley from 1919 to 1941 from the perspective of her maternal ancestors. 

Copyright © 2017 by California Genealogical Society

Genealogy Secrets of a Photo

by Cassie Arnold

My mother and maternal grandmother had chaotic childhoods. So not many artifacts from those years survive – either lost in frequent moves or discarded because of bad memories.

But my mother always held on to a portrait taken of her mother and herself as an infant. My mother takes pride in the fact that the photo ran in the Oakland Tribune announcing her birth. According to my mother her birth was newsworthy because her father was a football star at St. Mary’s College.

That story seemed suspect to me, but my mother had few good childhood memories, so I never challenged her on it.

Detective work begins
When my parents moved into a senior living community a year ago, I came into possession of the portrait – a color version and a black and white version that was used by the Tribune. It was in a file with some other glamour shots of my grandmother that were taken about the same time.

I thought it would be fun to find the complete news item in the Tribune. My mother said it was a photo and a caption. I went over to the Tribune archives at the Oakland Public Library one afternoon to find the original in context. My grandfather’s name was Aloysius, so he is easy to search.

Turns out the occasion for the story was the fact that my grandfather had successfully completed his parole and was now happily moving on with his young family. The arrest stemmed from a fight with one of his mother’s tenants who was trying to skip out on his rent. The article also noted that he was a former St. Mary’s football star. This was in June 1932.

My grandparents married because my grandmother was pregnant. She was attending Berkeley High School at the time and dropped out in the Spring of her senior year. She always said she dropped out when she was 16, but that was to accommodate the fact she always lied about her age. It seems my grandfather had already graduated.

I found reference in the Berkeley High yearbooks to my grandfather playing on the football team and leaving before the 1930 season, but he is not included in the Spring 1930 graduates.

This seemed like a strange timeline, so I thought it would be helpful to find out when they got married.

Since their marriage lasted just over five years, it wasn’t something anyone in the family celebrated or cared to remember. So I went to the Alameda County Clerk’s office to see what I could find. Since I didn’t have a date or even a year, I had to rely on my grandfather’s unusual name. Alameda County had no records, but the clerk recommended I try San Francisco (SF) because “a lot of people were going over there to get marriage licenses at that time.”

Clearing up the mystery
I few weeks later I went to the SF County Clerk’s office. No luck there either. My next thought was to try Contra Costa County since that’s where St. Mary’s College is, but a trek to Martinez was a major undertaking, and I put it aside.

One morning when I was cleaning up the office, I happened to turn over the color version of the portrait. It was inscribed! I’ve been looking at this picture for all of my life and never thought to turn it over.

It says, “To Daddy from your loving wife and daughter on our first anniversary May 4, 1932. Mother 19 yrs. Alice Jeanne 6 mos.”

So they were married on May 4, 1931. I don’t know where, but at least I know when.

About the Author

Cassie Arnold is an Alameda-based business and financial writer as well as a second-generation Oakland native. She is working on a history of Oakland/Berkeley from 1919 to 1941 from the perspective of her maternal ancestors.

Photos courtesy of Cassie Arnold

Copyright © 2017 by California Genealogical Society