Dance!

The 92nd edition of the Carnival of Genealogy is Dance!

My mother, Colleen, started dancing in the 1930's when she was in third grade. She had problems with her feet so her doctor recommended to her parents that she take dancing lessons, particularly ballet, to help strengthen them.

Initially, she took lessons in the basement of a lady's home and eventually started taking ballet, tap, acrobatics and baton at Ruth Doherty's School of Dance located at the corner of Broadway and East Pine in Seattle. Ruth Doherty's was in the Odd Fellows Temple.

They were a one car family so there was no toting and fetching to and from activities like there is today.  When the family lived in Ballard and later Victory Heights, Colleen's mother would take Colleen and her brother to the studio for lessons on a trolley car (from Ballard) or take the bus. Afterward, they might ride the bus to downtown Seattle and go to the Bon or Frederick and Nelson's. Other days they would go to the Security Market (a farmer's market) and buy groceries and maybe some lunch. Then they would walk to the Yellow Cab Company where Colleen's dad worked as a mechanic and he would take them home.

At Christmas, the dance studio would put on a program for the Shriners at their Shrine Temple. In later years, the Christmas program was held in the Civic Auditorium at what is now the Seattle Center (later the auditorium was remodeled and named the Seattle Opera House and after a more recent renovation Marion Oliver McCaw Hall). The first year their dance program was in their new location, at Civic Auditorium, ended up being a bit of a slippery slope! The dance floor having just been waxed was like ice. The girls had to dance the Can Can and perform cartwheels and flips. They were slipping and sliding all over!

Ruth Doherty's studio also did a program for the Moose Lodge every year. One year they had a horse in the program of which Colleen was the front. She and her partner wore tap shoes and danced a sort of comedy routine.

During World War II, Ruth Doherty would get requests to do programs for service men. Ruth would always give the girls a talk, in front of their parents, that they were not to dance and socialize with the servicemen.  The men loved the programs, especially the little kids, as many had children of their own and were missing them.
 
Colleen danced and assisted with Ruth's classes until her second year in college. Working for Ruth Doherty's School of Dance was Colleen's first job and was how she earned her dance lessons. She would help keep the little girls in their lines, work one on one with some of them in learning their steps and work the front desk.

All those years of dancing while growing up had a significant impact on Colleen. After she enrolled at the University of Washington, Colleen was accepted into Orchesis (a dance honorary) where she did Interpretive Dance. She chose Physical Education as her major and went on to teach PE at West Seattle High School and other schools.

I don't recall my parents going out to dance on Friday or Saturday nights but ever since I can remember, they had season tickets to the Seattle Repertory Theatre. It was always a big deal because they would get all dressed up and we kids got to have a babysitter and sometimes even TV Dinners. Mom and Dad would have seen many fabulous performances by top artists at Seattle Rep over the years.

As a child, I had no interest in dancing and took no dance lessons. However, once disco dancing became popular all that changed. I took my first dance class with a high school friend where we learned The Hustle. Once I was in college, I signed up for Ballroom Dancing. Mom was really happy about that. I can remember her telling me that you never know when it will come in handy. She was right, of course, and the class was so much fun that the next semester I signed up for another dance class. I don't remember what it was called but we learned all the really popular disco type dances of the time.

So in the end, somehow, either Mom passed on her love of dancing to me or I came down with Disco Fever.

Source:
[Mom]. Interviews by Michelle Goodrum. 19 July 1997 and March 2010. Notes. Privately held by Goodrum, [address for private use].

© 2010, copyright Michelle Goodrum

Madness Monday - A photograph Helps Solve the Question of When Nancy Died

Nancy Ballenger Robinson is my gg grandmother and one of the oldest children of William and Lucinda Ballenger, who I wrote about last week for Madness Monday. She married one of Boulder, Colorado's early pioneers and later in their lives they moved to Montana probably either with their children or to be near them. After Nancy's husband Daniel died, she stayed on in Montana, living off and on with her various children.

My goal was to obtain Nancy's date of death and place of burial. The latest record I had for her was a 1925 homestead file in Stillwater County, Montana. She was not listed in the 1930 Federal Census. It seemed logical that she might have died in Montana, so I sent off to the Montana State Vital Records Office for her death certificate (this was before the index was available online). They were able to search well before 1925 and well after 1930 but she was not in their index. Frustrated, I set her file aside.

At a later point, while looking through some of the family snapshots taken at Alki Beach in Seattle, I notice a woman who looked suspiciously similar to a photo I had of Nancy. Was she visiting her children who had moved on to Seattle? Or had she possibly moved there herself? I was able to check the Washington Death Index and there was a Nancy Robinson with a death date of 7 September 1927. I obtained her death certificate and discovered Nancy had followed 3 of her children when they moved to Seattle and had been living with her daughter Georgie Williams.

I was able to visit the cemetery where she, my great grandparents and my grandparents are buried in Seattle. Sadly, she is buried in an unmarked grave.

So now I have an end to that story and as a result of the research I did trying to find Nancy's death date, I now have names for several more faces that keep showing up in some of the family snapshots.

Copyright 2010, Michelle Goodrum

Treasure Chest Thursday-Grandma's personal address book

How can an old beat up address book that had been sitting in a garage for over 30 years possibly be of any value to anyone? Let's find out.

Earlier last year I was contacted by a distant cousin who was trying to identify and locate every descendant of our gg grandparents, Ernest and Elizabeth Haun, who immigrated to the US from Germany, settling in Sheboygan, Wisconsin. Mine was the last branch he was working on. He had been working for several years and had located the descendants of all of their children but one.

We exchanged quite a bit of information and shared photos. He sent me a picture of our mutual gg grandmother Elizabeth Haun. What a thrill to actually see a photo of yet another person whose genes are part of me!

During our exchange of information, it became apparent that there was one more twig on the family tree that might have some as yet unidentified descendants. We both did some research and one day Rob dropped me an email asking if by chance I had any old address books of my grandmothers. He was thinking that maybe it would contain the name and address of the son of my grandmother's youngest brother. The son's name was Donald W. Mitchell. I didn't know if Donald had ever had any children. If he did they would be the last descendants waiting to be found.

I asked Mom if she knew where Grandma's address book might be. All I could remember was that it was blue. Her answer: in one of those boxes in the garage. The garage isn't quite as scary and dangerous a place as it was a few years ago but there were still several dozen boxes that could contain one little blue address book. After much digging, shuffling and restacking, I found it in the last box! Under the Ms was listed Donald W. Mitchell in Seattle! Even better, Grandma had written in his wife's name - Pat and their daughter's name's Dawn Ann and Gennie Lynn. We are still looking for the daughters of Donald Mitchell but at least now there is something concrete to go on.

The little blue address book is now safe and sound in an archival box at my house waiting for the next time it can be of use. I have already noticed several familiar names from my previous research so who knows how it might prove to be of value in the future.

Copyright 2010, Michelle Goodrum