Helen Fisher’s Album, Part 3

Part 3 of Helen Fisher’s family scrapbook. Part 1 is here. Part 2 is here.

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The pages in this post focus on Helen’s grandparents and parents, then Helen and her children. This first page starts with Helen’s grandmother, Mary Ermina (Kellogg) Allen, also known as Minnie.

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We begin with a special card and poem, “Baby”. It is written by Mary Ermina (Kellogg) Allen (Helen’s grandmother) to “dear baby Winnifred” (Helen’s mother) on February 13, 1895. Since Winifred was born in 1871, I figure this is written to Winifred’s new baby, Helen.

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Baby
Dainty, dimpled, baby dear
How I wonder came you here.
Did you come from the world afar,
By the light of a beautiful shining star.

Art thou a dear little messenger dove,
Send down here by angel of love,
Have you little white wing to bear you away,
From this weary earth if you don’t wish to stay.

As I gaze on you darling, so fresh, so fair
I can but wonder, for what, and from where
You have a mission, I know it well,
Else you never came to this earth to dwell

What is your message my love, my sweet
You with such soft little hands & feet
Was it to be my comfort – my pride
That you left heaven, to lie at my side

I come from out – the world above
With Each little hand, kissed o’er with His love
To lie in your arms, and touch your face
Hoping to leave there His loving trace

With eyes so full of His heavens own blue
That He knew if I come & looked at you
You would open your doors & take me in
And it would help to keep your hearts from sin

My rosy mouth and smiling lips
I am sure, were touched by the fingertips
Of an angel, & cunning (?) dimples on cheek & chin
Were pressed there by kiss of the cherubim

My tiny feet, still so free from care
And bright little curls of golden hair
All these he gave me to win your love dear
Do you still ask why I came down here
Charlotte 13 Feb. 1895

Written by M.E. Allen to dear baby Winifred
From her Loving Grandma

Next we have a postcard of a home on the corner of Ann Arbor and McKay Streets, Saline, Michigan. It’s noted as “where I was born” by Minnie Kellogg (Mary Ermina Kellogg Allen). The card is addressed to Mrs. Minnie Allen care of Dr. G B Allen, Charlotte, Michigan, postmarked in Saline, June 28, 1909. The card is from “WEP” who I’m pretty sure is Wealthy Ellis Pope whom we met on a previous page. She would have been 81 at the time of writing this postcard and lived another 13 years. I think Wealthy was Mary Ermina’s aunt, so Helen’s great, great aunt.

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I am so sorry to know you have been so ill. I had been thinking of you as feeling much better after your visit to Augusta. I wish I could go to you but could not be of much service to you I fear. Altho I am as well as when you were here. We have had much company, Frances sisters Belle, Emily & Wealthy have come here, all well I could not go to A.A. to the [??]. With love to Dr. and [Frances?] WEP

The photos on this page are captioned by Helen. Grandma Allen is Mary Ermina (Minnie Kellogg) Allen. Lola, will we see in two pages, was Mary Ermina’s youngest daughter.

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Here is a letter written to Helen by Grandma Allen in 1919 from Charlotte, N.C. (presumably from the home of Jessie Mae North, Minnie’s daughter and Helen’s aunt). The letter is addressed to Helen at the U.S. Army Hospital in Fort Des Moines, Iowa. We learn a bit later in the album that she was there stationed as a nurse, I believe, as part of the war effort for World War I (the letter was written two months after the Armistice ending the war). The details in this letter are cryptic, at best.

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Dear Helen a letter a few days from your mother said she had not heard from you for near two weeks she feared you were sick. are you I hope not. I should be awful sorry if you were. The best place is home then unless you are so sick you need a good nurse & cant have one at the home. When I read your last letter something was out tune with you my dear. What was it. Sounded like you used to write to me when you lived up on the hill in your first little home. When things went wrong in general, when the mud was so deep and the walk so long and no side walk, you would come in with out any regulation smile abut it, none at all, and go set down that helpless little old piano and bang the live out of it till you felt better, then you would eat a few mouthfulls and back to school again, do you want to forget it all.

I wonder if you can laugh over it now, when I had read your last through I just laughed and said to Mae, I feel like asking her as the little girld did the dead kitty, “Did dey pound you wif sticks and wid big nasty bricks did dey pisen you tommick inside,” who stole your peace of minds and the pleasant times you had been having. Was it some big nasty MAN, with two legs or four. If he had four legs he is a beast, and there are some two legged ones quite beastly. Oh well my dear there no saints down here yet we come here to try to learn to be, you could really like some of the sinner better than some of the saints the would be so good they would make you ache all over, sure were all humans and weve got to forgive and forget. Write wont if only a little with a heap of love from Grandma

The page includes a collection of eight poems by Minnie Kellogg Allen (Helen’s grandmother) published in various newspapers. Minnie was clearly proud of her poetry. Click on each to read in full. I don’t find any real details to advance our narrative or understanding other than her dog was named “Nep”.

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The next page includes Minnie’s obituary and photos of her two eldest daughters, Mae (born July 26, 1868, suspiciously close to Minnie and Giles’ wedding in November of 1867) and Winifred (born April 24, 1871, who became Helen’s mother).

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Mrs. Minnie (Mary Ermina Kellogg) Allen died in 1919 at the age of 72. Helen notes she was still in camp at Fort Des Moines. She passed away in the home of her daughter, Mae (Allen) North, in Charlotte, NC and was transported to Charlotte, Michigan for burial.

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Here is a January 10, 1910 letter to Aunt Minnie from nephew A. Howell Taylor of Boston (I have no further details on him at this point) regarding his interest in the family history.

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There are three photos on this page of Minnie’s two oldest children, Mae and Winifred (Helen’s mother). The photos of them as young girls would be from around 1875. The photo of them as young ladies with a friend would likely be from the late 1880s.

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Helen’s aunt, Jessie Mae Allen, married Samuel J. North on September 3, 1891 in Charlotte, Michigan when she was 23. They initially set up their home in Detroit before later moving to Augusta, GA and then to Charlotte, NC in 1909.

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The next page focuses on Helen’s Aunt Mae North and her husband, Samuel.

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Here is a rather odd (undated but after 1909) article about the various parties thrown in Detroit for the visiting Mr. and Mrs. North, who by then had moved to North Carolina. Who places such an article? What newspaper runs it?

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There are a couple of photos with little explanation. I’m guessing the photo of Laurie (or Larrie) is the North’s maid or housekeeper. I doubt we’ll know more.

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Next is the obituary for Samuel North in 1934 in Charlotte, NC. It tells us that Samuel was a vice president of the Scott Drug Company until his retirement in 1931. He was born in 1864 in Lansing, Michigan, lived in Charlotte NC since 1909 and in Augusta, Georgia before that. He was a Mason but the article does not mention his affinity for dinner parties.

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There are photos of two houses in Charlotte, NC. I’m guessing the Elizabeth Avenue house is where Mae and Samuel first lived after moving from Augusta. The Beverly Drive house is where Samuel died and later became the home of Claude and Winifred DeLamater and their daughter Helen (and Mae at that point?).

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This page focuses on Minnie and Dr. Giles’ other two children, Max (born December 1, 1883, 12 years after Winifred) and Lola (born July 24, 1885).

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Max Allen married Bessie Lowery on June 24 of an unknown year, presumably in the early 1900s. A fine time was had.

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Here we encounter the sad story of Lola Mae Allen who died at age 16 in 1901. Lola was the youngest of Minnie and Dr. Giles Allen’s children and looked to be a lovely young lady. It’s not clear to me what illness took her.

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As a note, according to the 1901 obituary, Claude and Winifred were married and living in Buffalo, NY, while Mae and James were married and living in Augusta. The obituary also mis-identifies James W. Allen as Giles’ “venerable father”; James was his older brother. But perhaps after a lifetime that’s how the family identified him.

Now we turn to Helen’s mother, Winifred.

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We start with two photos.

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According to Helen’s caption, here is “the impromtu wedding invitation composed for my father and mother” for January 10, 1894. Why it was impromptu or in Newcomb, Tennessee are mysteries at the moment. Winifred was 23 and Claud(e) was 25. Helen was born more than a year later on Feb. 13, 1895.

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With no further information about Helen’s mother, here is her obituary from 1944. I’m not even sure if her name had one “n” or two.

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Which brings us to Helen Marie DeLamater and her brother, William H.

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There are four photos on this page. Three include Helen. The other is of her namesake, Helen Brackert (Bracket? Brackett?), “Mother’s dearest friend”. The photo of William H. at age one is the only mention we have of him.

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The last full page of the album brings us to Helen’s marriage with Robert Richards Fisher.

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The couple were married on July 3, 1924 in Detroit when Helen was 29 (I don’t have Robert’s birth date).

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This is where Helen’s scrapbook ends, other than a collection of other photos and some articles tucked in the back pages. The album offers no information about Helen and Robert’s lives together.

We have a few unmarked photos that may be from Robert’s youth before meeting Helen. I think the first two are of Robert. I’m not sure about the third one.

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We know Helen and Robert started living in Detroit, Robert’s home, and I suppose may have lived out their lives there (until very late in life for Helen). They had two boys, Frederic (Barb and Betsy’s dad) and Thomas. I don’t have birth dates for either. The Christmas photo below is noted on the back as November 25, 1949 in Chicago (did they live in Chicago at some point?). But that date is much too late for it to have been Fred and Tom. I suspect both these pictures are of Fred and Tom, but I think they’re from closer to 1930.

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Fred told me few stories of his childhood in Detroit. The main one revolved around the Soap Box Derby. This non-powered downhill car race was created in 1933 with a national championship in Akron, Ohio. Fred became captivated with the race as a teenager and built a regional-champion racer in 1939. The next year, he was ineligible to compete again but helped build a racer and coached his brother to become World Champion in 1940. It was a very big deal for both of them. Fred later said it may have been the highlight of Tom’s life but Tom let it gnaw at him that it was really Fred’s victory.

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Fred was a child actor on the radio. He evidently had a radio voice from an early age. His roles were on local Detroit productions of shows like “The Lone Ranger” where he would say lines like “Who was that masked man?” I think he wanted to pursue acting but the Army and World War II had other ideas.

Fred fought in World War II, if only briefly. I’m not sure if he was drafted or volunteered when he became eligible in the latter part of the war, probably 1944. He was not involved in D-Day but was sent to Europe shortly thereafter. I may not have the details right, but I think he was assigned to Patton’s infantry in late 1944 as Allied troops became bogged down in the Battle of the Bulge. He was on the ground in Belgium for less than six weeks before getting wounded in the leg and getting frostbite in both feet. He was sent back to an Army hospital in Chicago where he met a divorced nurse by the name of Louise Sosh.

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Louise grew up as Louise Bogdanski in [Connellsville?] Pennsylvania. She and Leona were the only children of her parents. Louise’s father died relatively early but Louise’s mother, nicknamed Nanny, was around for Barb’s youth in Italy. Barb and Betsy loved having her around; she taught them to love crispy spaghetti, among other things. She had passed away by the time I showed up.

Louise had a busy life before she met Fred. She had been married to [Maxwell?] Sosh, had a boy named Douglas and was divorced by 1946. Somewhere in there she also became a nurse in the Army. Ironically, [??] later became a professional voiceover artist (Louise would claim to recognize his voice on various TV commercials), fulfilling Fred’s dream. But Fred got the girl.

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Fred and Louise were married by 1950 or so. I haven’t seen any wedding announcement or anything. Here is a Christmas card from 1950 but I can’t tell if it’s to or from Louise or if they were already married.

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We have two random photos from around this time. I’m not sure who any of these folks are. Please enlighten me if you can.

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Douglas lived mostly with his Dad, as far as I know. Tragically, he died in a motorcycle accident as a teenager in the early 1960s.

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Meanwhile, Fred joined the Foreign Service in the early 1950s and he and Louise had tours in Singapore and Penang, Malaya before being sent to Chinese language school in Taichung, Taiwan for several years. While in Taiwan they adopted Betsy in 1957, then were assigned to Hong Kong where they adopted Barb in late 1958.

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Fred’s brother, Tom, lived all his life in and around Detroit, bouncing among jobs with various auto companies. He had various troubles with relationships and alcohol, as best I understand. Here’s the one scrapbook item Helen kept from Tom. Go figure.

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Helen and Robert were both near the end of their lives by the time I began to infiltrate the Fisher family. I met the pair of them a few times when they visited from Detroit.

Robert died in the 1980s in Detroit. Helen and Tom lived together for a while, and eventually Helen moved into an assisted living facility in McLean, Virginia. I remember visiting her there a couple of times. I guess it came out in conversation that we had cats and she expressed a wish to see one sometime. We came back with Hugo (I think) and it was the nicest Barb or I had ever seen Helen. I don’t think we had a second opportunity. She declined quickly and passed away in the late 1980s or early 1990s.

I recall Fred having to go back to Detroit and clear out his parents house. He did it on his own, I think, and I guess we’re lucky that Helen’s scrapbook survived the purge. Tom lived on in Detroit for several years on his own, I believe, then very sadly decided to end it all with a gunshot. I remember Fred having to go back to clean up that house as well.

Sorry to not have a better ending to these stories…

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A set of photos and newspapers in the back of the scrapbook are from Helen’s time in at Fort Des Moines in 1918-1919. She was 23 years old and appears to have been a nurse in the Army Hospital. Here are various photos that seem to be from that time, though they are neither captioned nor dated.

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Helen saved three newspapers from Fort Des Moines. The first newspaper was from September 26, 1918. Perhaps this is when she arrived? There is a front page article about the fourth contingent of nurses sent from the fort to “take care of the boys over there”, presumably in France or England for the war.

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The second newspaper is from the following week, October 4, 1918. It happens to highlight the first appearance of the 1918 Spanish flu epidemic at the post and advice on how to avoid the illness (which rings mighty familiar as I write this during the coronavirus pandemic of 2020). It also highlights Fort Des Moines becoming a U.S. General Hospital which is, I suspect, why Helen was there.

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The final paper was from November 14, 1918, announcing the end of World War I.

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The letter earlier in this post from Grandma Allen to Helen at Fort Des Moines was from January of 1919, so we know she stayed at least that long. We also know from letters in the beginning of the scrapbook that Helen lived in Chicago in 1921. That’s as much as I can figure of her whereabouts until her wedding in 1924.

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Helen Fisher’s Album, Part 1

Helen Fisher’s Album, Part 2