Twyla Baker, my mother, passed away on Jun 27th, 2019 in Grand Rapids, Michigan. She was 85 years old.
Mom was born in December 1933, and was the second daughter of Melvin and Gail (Joachim) Patterson. Her parents and her siblings, Dolores, Layton and Lyndon, have already passed on. As her father was a Presbyterian minister and her mother was a church organist and choir director, she grew up in the church, and loved to attend services.
Sometimes a picture tells a story. Sometimes it does it better than words, other times a picture can help the words along. Sometimes a picture only lets you know that a story exists that you will probably never know. Take this photo of my great-uncle Earl Joachim. Since that is not the traditional dress of 1927, which is about when this photo was taken, there is probably an interesting story here that I will never know.
My great-aunt Betty Joachim passed away on February 1st, in Mexico where she had been living with her son, Bruce. She was married to Starling Joachim for many years until he passed away in 2005. Uncle Star was the brother of my grandfather, Melvin Joachim. Aunt Betty’s maiden name was Ray. I don’t know much about the Ray family, but according to the 1930 U.S. Census in Ohio, her parents were Walter Ray from Georgia and Maude West from Texas, and she was the youngest of four children at the time.
Someone in 1912 Ohio is having a bad day.
I can’t identify anyone in this photo; I just thought it was interesting. It was in the collection of photos that came to me through my mother and my grandmother. I don’t know whether this actually involved the Patterson family somehow, or if my great grandfather just came across this scene and took a picture. Judging by the sheer number of photos I have from that era, he must have been an avid photographer!
My great grandfather, James Layton Patterson was a builder and inventor. This photo shows an installation of an air conditioner that he built. It was installed in the Charles Restaurant in Fremont, Ohio.
I don’t think his air conditioner ever made it big. Instead, he was known as a builder in the Tiffin, Ohio area. He built a number of commercial buildings and homes, at least two of which were his own homes.
Researching family history is enjoyable and interesting, but it is also a bit sad because, well, most of your relatives are dead and you never got to meet them. Many of them lived full, and presumably reasonably happy lives, but often there are those who died at a young age. The death of William Hillery is particularly sad.
William Sanford Hillery was my 2nd great grandfather. He was born in Monongalia County, Virginia (now West Virginia) in 1846, and he married Margaret Ann McKee in 1872.
Those of you with long memories may remember my first family website, which was taken down some years ago. I have finally loaded all the pictures from that website onto this one! This took some time, since I wanted them to be larger and had to regenerate each one from the original scans. Many of them were in bad shape and required quite a bit of work to make presentable.