Volume 39, number 3
November 2017
Grand River Times The Newsletter of the Grand Rapids Historical Society Inside this issue: Cover Story: November program Letter from our President page 2 The Caskey-Jones Adoption page 4 Women Go To War Exhibit page 5 Happening in History page 6 Photo Sleuth page 7 Search: Grand Rapids Historical Society
Next program: After the
November program, the Grand Rapids Historical Society’s next program will be on January 18, 2018 at the Grand Rapids Public Library. Chris Reader will be speaking about: Charles Garfield: A Fascinating Citizen.
The Second Line of Defense: Grand Rapids Women and the Great War PRESENTED BY: Melissa Fox Thursday, November 9, 2017, 7:00 p.m. Her title honoring a new book examining World War I’s “surprising impact on women and, in turn, women’s impact on the war,” Melissa Fox’s presentation will introduce the second line of defense in Grand Rapids a hundred years ago. Local and academic historians are only beginning to tell the stories of American women as citizens during the largest wartime mobilization of a young country, dispelling myths that women led lives only in their homes. When invited in because of military needs, diverse groups of women made contributions to the nation that ranged far beyond the war and their traditional gender roles. In the same way that a century ago Grand Rapids women tailored their knowledge and talents to suit the war effort, local women’s historians are currently learning how their own work on the reform movements of community foremothers needs to be extended and reinvested in the larger context. When American women were granted a federal mandate by the Council of National Defense, when the government established the CND’s Woman’s Committee in Washington, woman’s committees were also formed on state and local levels all over the nation. That this history has been so long neglected remains astonishing. Continued on page 3
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GRAND RAPIDS HISTORICAL SOCIETY Dear GRHS Members,
The Grand River Times is the newsletter of the Grand Rapids Historical Society, published six times annually. Established in 1894, the Grand Rapids Historical Society is dedicated to exploring the history of West Michigan; to discover its romance and tragedy, its heroes and scoundrels, its leaders and its ordinary citizens. The Society collects and preserves our heritage, passing it on to new generations through books, lectures, and education projects. Executive Committee: Gina Bivins, president Matthew Daley, vice-president John Gelderloos, treasurer Nan Schichtel, secretary Board members: Alan Bennett Charles Bocskey Thomas Dilley Marilyn Hamill Chris Kaupa Gordon Olson, emeritus Wilhelm Seeger, emeritus Jeff Sytsma Jim Winslow Tony Wright Kurt Yost Jessica Riley, editor Grand Rapids Historical Society c/o Grand Rapids Public Library 111 Library St. NE Grand Rapids, MI 49503 Website: www.grhistory.org Grand River Times
The Grand Rapids community is fortunate to have so many individuals and organizations dedicated to the study and presentation of history. Every year the Grand Rapids Historical Society collaborates with the Greater Grand Rapids Women’s History Council in offering a program highlighting contributions by women. Our November program features Melissa Fox, who will enlighten us about the role women played locally and nationally during World War I. This is also the month we celebrate Veterans Day, honoring those who have served in the armed forces, which is why this topic is so appropriate for November. While on the subject of veterans I am reminded of the book “Grand Rapids Goes to War”, which was published by the Society in 1993. Dick Harms, a recipient of the Albert Baxter award, and Robert Viol are coauthors. Many of the images are from the Robinson Collection housed at the Grand Rapids Public Library. Women are represented in the book in eight different areas, referring mainly their contributions during World War II. The presentation November 9th will fill in their story during the Great War. We will have copies of the book available for purchase. I have been watching the progress on the redesign of Veterans Park. I am seeing pavement curing and grass growing. It should be quite a celebration when it is rededicated. Please make a note now that our January program, “Charles Garfield: A Fascinating Citizen”, has been moved to the third Thursday, January 18, 2018. I also suggest you mark Saturday January 20 on your calendar for the annual History Detective Day at the Grand Rapids Public Library. Six programs are on the schedule and will soon be up on our website. This award winning event is a collaboration between seven local history groups.
About the Grand Rapids Historical Society. The Grand Rapids Historical Society sponsors eight programs each year, beginning in September and running through May, including lectures, audio/video presentations, demonstrations, collections, or special tours.
Membership. Membership is open to all interested persons with annual dues
of $30 per family, $20 for seniors and students, or $400 for a lifetime membership. The membership year runs from May to the following May. Members of the Grand Rapids Historical Society receive eight newsletters each year and a subscription to our annual magazine, Grand River Valley History. Members also receive a 20% discount on books published by the society as well as books published by the Grand Rapids Historical Commission.
Change of Address. If you will be permanently or temporarily moving to a
new address, please notify GRHS before your change occurs. Let us know your new address and the date you plan to leave and plan to return. Email to grhs.local@gmail.com, or mail to Grand Rapids Historical Society, c/o Grand Rapids Public Library, 111 Library Street NE, Grand Rapids, MI 49503 2
GRAND RAPIDS HISTORICAL SOCIETY Continued from front page On November 9, Melissa Fox, the new president of the Greater Grand Rapids Women’s History Council, will provide an overview of recent work bringing this period to life. Leading with the local, she will illustrate how hundreds of American women's groups transformed their organizational structures upon U.S. entry into World War I. They addressed the nation’s failure to assess serious health problems that suddenly compromised national security when huge percentages of American men failed their military physicals. Long-time efforts to establish exercise on playgrounds for children, to get fresh food into the city through farmers markets and school gardens, and to find employment for women in factories and business took off.
Highlighting examples of Grand Rapids women serving on state-and city-level woman’s committees, Fox will share some familiar names of women activists in new positions. On the state level, educator Josephine Ahnefeldt Goss was the chair of “propaganda,” in charge of convincing recent immigrants that they, too, should participate in food programs benefitting their children as well as the war effort. As contemporary local researchers are hailing the historical efforts of women, they are also studying public pressures levied by Hoover’s Food Administration to force them to sign food pledges and register for war work. Still, as a result of the registration campaign, during one week of May 1918 over half the female adult population of Grand Rapids completed what we celebrate today as the most comprehensive census of women’s life at the time. You will be hearing more about this over the next year!
The wartime efforts of pioneering Grand Rapids, midwestern, and national women’s leaders have been too long neglected. Even professional women’s historians have not until recently understood the scale of accomplishment. Join us on November 9 for a look at history-making in process--to see how in a new century nineteenth-century women’s efforts were newly understood, energized, and reframed ago by an invitation from the federal government. And see where it led—for starters, to universal suffrage, the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920. ** *** ** *** ** *** ** The Grand Rapids local history community first met Melissa Fox when she worked in the Local History and Special Collections Department of the Grand Rapids Public Library and served as coordinator of History Detectives programming. Currently, she bridges life as a freelance writer, researcher and homemaker with life in her new role as president of the Greater Grand Rapids Women’s History Council. Women activists and volunteers from a hundred years ago would recognize her juggling act! During 2018 the GGRWHC will celebrate thirty years of existence and register afresh how past women’s experiences relate to present and to future goals. Among the Council's first projects were research workshops and a conference, which showed off how much had been uncovered in the early years. Soon city-wide celebrations called Legacy involved dozens of local organizations, representing the arts, education, health care, business, labor, and religion, to help uncover data and highlight what had already been found. For nearly thirty years the Council has recruited and trained researchers, encouraged donations to local archives, distributed bibliographies on area women’s history, digitized materials for broader dissemination, and developed creative programming to spread information about the early accomplishments of female scientists, attorneys, journalists, even reformed courtesans. Five years ago at a quarter century, it took stock and published a brief summary history, which you can find on its website: http://www.ggrwhc.org./ Grand River Times
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GRAND RAPIDS HISTORICAL SOCIETY
The Caskey-Jones Adoption By: Marilyn G. Hamill, GRHS Trustee Recently the Ortonville Historical Society sent the GRHS an envelope with a document and some newspaper clippings in it which had been found in a house being renovated in Ortonville. Since the people referred to in the article lived in Grand Rapids, they obligingly sent us the material, as it had no relevance to Ortonville that they knew of. The document was an adoption in the Probate Court of Kent County, Michigan in 1875, making the infant, Frank Sherman Caskey, the son of William Hoyle Jones and his wife, Albertine G. White Jones, and changing his name to Frank Eddie Jones. It seemed that Frank was the son of John C. Caskey and a deceased mother, and Mr. Caskey had left the infant in their care and had left the state and not been seen since. The clippings were about the two sons of Frank Eddie Jones, and their service in WWI. There was also a letter from one of the sons, from France, and a poem written about his death, there. I immediately was interested in possibly returning these items to a descendant, as I recognized their importance, so I offered to research them. My first goal was to establish where both of these families were in 1870, to determine where young Frank was born, and who his parents were. William and Albertine Jones were easily located in Walker, Kent County, Michigan, living next door to William's parents. They were 26 and 25 years old with no children, and had been married for 6 years. Albertine was from Oakland County and William was from Wisconsin. They had been married in Ingham County, Michigan. Albertine’s parents had moved to Kent County from New York, and her father had died here in 1869. I turned my search to John C. Caskey. I needed to find a man old enough to have a child in 1870, so he would need to be between 20 and 40 years old. I kept running into a man born in 1839 in Ohio who was in a lot of Michigan records, so I concentrated on him. He had been in the Civil War and died in a Soldier’s Home in Ohio. I found his birth place in Harrison Twp. Darke County, Ohio an tried to place him in each census. Grand River Times
I was not able to find him in 1850, 1860, 1870, or 1880, but I did find him in between those censuses in military documents and marriage records and city directories. I found that he had not left Michigan, but went to St. Joseph County and gotten married again. He married 3 more times, but didn’t have any more children that I could find, and I never did find out the name of the mother of his son, Frank. When I was researching Frank Jones, His marriage record said he was born in Union City, Ohio, which is in Darke Country — I was on the right track! It is not known if John Caskey ever got to know his son, Frank, even thought he was in the counties of St. Joseph, Ingham, and Allegan at different times. Frank Eddie Jones married and had two sons: Harry Ralph and Leo Hoyle. Both went to France to fight in WWI, but only Leo came home. Harry’s death was the subject of two of the newspaper clippings. I located Harry’s grave in France through Find-A-Grave.com and updated it with what I knew. He had gotten married and had a daughter was born while he was in France. His daughter, Elizabeth Anne married twice, but had no children. Leo Hoyle Jones came home the way injured by mustard gas and developed a morphine addiction. He married four times and died of an overdose at age 36. As I was not able to find any living descendants of Frank Eddie Jones, these documents will be donated to the Grand Rapids Public Library. (both photos copied from findagrave.com) 4
GRAND RAPIDS HISTORICAL SOCIETY
NEW EXHIBIT Women Go To War: Furniture Factory Work During World War I Drop by the Grand Rapids Public Library Main Branch to see this beautifully designed and informative exhibit. Featuring the women who worked in the furniture industry during World War I, this new display is on the fourth floor in the Grand Rapids History & Special Collections department. "Women Go To War" highlights the wartime furniture factory life of local women during the Great War. The multi-panel exhibit is replete with historical photographs, newspaper articles, labor statistics, and profiles of individual women. Stop in to see how the Woman's Committee of the Council of National Defense harnessed the working power, as well as the social and civic relief aims, of more than 20,000 women through voluntary registration. Learn what working life was like for the women who worked at the Sligh Furniture Company and Berkey & Gay--two of the most prominent furniture makers employing women during the war--as they moved into roles traditionally held by their male counterparts. This exhibit illustrates the contributions of women, including the city's immigrant populations, and the power of community during a tumultuous time. It can be viewed whenever the library is open.
This exhibit was made possible with the support of the Grand Rapids Public Library Foundation through a grant from the Furniture Manufacturers' Heritage Fund, a Donor Advised Fund of the Grand Rapids Community Foundation.
http://www.ggrwhc.org/our-history
Grand Rapids Historical Society Programs 2017—2018 GRANT’S CANAL: THE UNION’S ATTEMPT TO BYPASS VICKSBURG March 8, 2018, 7:00 p.m. Presented by: David Bastian
CHARLES GARFIELD: A FASCINATING CITIZEN January 18, 2018, 7:00 p.m. Presented by: Chris Reader
WAGOOSH: THE FOX: LOUIS CAMPAU
GRAND RAPIDS – GATEWAY TO THE PLAYGROUND OF THE NATION: A LOOK BACK AT PROMOTING THE CITY AND WEST MICHIGAN April 12, 2018, 7:00 p.m. Presented by: Christine Byron and Tom Wilson
HERITAGE HILL IN GRAND RAPIDS HISTORY May 10, 2018, 7:00 p.m. Presented by: Thomas Logan
February 8, 2018, 7:00 p.m. Presented by: Maureen Shirey
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GRAND RAPIDS HISTORICAL SOCIETY
HAPPENING IN HISTORY: NOVEMBER 2017 Western Michigan Genealogical Society Mini-Class Saturday, November 4, 2017, 12:00 p.m. Main Library-Ryerson Auditorium 111 Library St. NE
West Michigan Post Card Club Monday, November 13, 2017, 7:00 p.m. Faith United Methodist Church 2600 7th Street NW
Topic: Headstones: Types and Meanings
Topic: A History of Rock and Roll Postcards
Presenter: Linda Guth
Originally, a tombstone was the stone lid of a stone coffin, or the coffin itself, and a gravestone was the stone slab that was laid over a grave. Now all three terms are also used for markers placed at the head of the grave. Learn about the different headstones and the meanings behind the decorations/carvings. Western Michigan Genealogical Society Saturday, November 4, 2017, 1:30 p.m. Main Library-Ryerson Auditorium 111 Library St. NE
Presenter: Wally Jung Wally Jung will present a history of popular music from the 1940's thru the present, as illustrated in picture postcards. The program follows how radio and television shaped music into a major cultural force in the 1950's & 60's.
Topic: Civil War Historical Novel Wally Jung, a postcard collector for over 25 years, is also a postcard dealer and show promoter. His The Turner Daughter Series details the lives of a family that interest in pop culture led to a degree in American was torn by the Civil War. Each novel revolves around one Studies from Michigan State University, and individual family. It also features one actual historic figure another degree in photography from Lansing Community College. as a main character. Though War Shall Rise Against Me takes place in Gettysburg and focuses on Charlotte Turner, who is left to run the family farm in Pennsylvania. Grand Rapids Civil War Round Table We also meet her friends, Wednesday, November 15, 2017, 7:30 p.m. Alexandra Sadler, Augusta Lewis NOTE CHANGE: Doors open at 6:30 p.m. and actual Gettysburg civilian De Witt Student Center Kuyper College Ginny Wade. West Dining Room Erica Marie LaPres Emelander is a 3333 East Beltline NE middle school social studies/ Be sure to check out the Round Table at: religion teacher who lives in Grand www.grcwrt.com Rapids. Erica has always enjoyed reading and writing. Along with New Members: her love of history and God, she Thomas Appel has been able to incorporate all four of these loves into her writing. Thomas Hein Erica is currently working on a Historical Fiction Civil-War Donald Joyce Era book series, the Turner Daughters. Her novels revolve around the civilians who lived during the Civil War. Erica Erin Maze does as much research as needed to make sure her novels are as historically accurate as possible. Chuck Schilstra Presenter: Erica Marie LaPres Emelander
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GRAND RAPIDS HISTORICAL SOCIETY JOIN THE GRAND RAPIDS HISTORICAL SOCIETY OR GIVE A MEMBERSHIP AS A GIFT The Grand Rapids Historical Society sponsors eight lectures each year. Members of the society enjoy these benefits:
The Grand River Times is the newsletter of the Grand Rapids Historical Society. Published and mailed to members eight times a year, it includes current items of historical interest, details of upcoming lectures, historically relevant activities, and short articles.
The Grand River Valley History is the society’s annual magazine. Featured are illustrated articles by local history researchers and contributions from the Grand Rapids Public Museum, the City Archivist, the Grand Rapids Public Library, and the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum.
20% Discount on all books and other items published by the society.
Please enroll me as a member of the Grand Rapids Historical Society: ____ New ___Renewal ____Gift _____Lifetime:
$400.00 one-time fee
_____Individual/Family Membership
$30.00 per year
_____Senior Citizen or Student
$20.00 per year
Name: Address: City/State/Zip:
Please make check payable to the Grand Rapids Historical Society and mail it with this form to: Grand Rapids Historical Society, c/o Grand Rapids Public Library, 111 Library Street NE, Grand Rapids, MI 49503
GRAND RAPIDS PUBLIC LIBRARY PHOTO SLEUTH November's Photo Sleuth presents a large-group sales meeting from the Robinson Photographic Studio Collection. This undated photo contains many unidentified members of an Electrolux (?) sales force, and the banner on the back wall announcing the chance to win a complete Thanksgiving dinner sets the time of year for us. If you know any of these young folks, please email the Grand Rapids Public Library's Local History Department at localhis@grpl.org
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Non-Profit Org. U.S. postage PAID Grand Rapids, MI Permit No. 234
Grand Rapids Historical Society, Inc. c/o Grand Rapids Public Library 111 Library St. NE Grand Rapids, MI 49503
GRAND RAPIDS HISTORICAL SOCIETY
The Second Line of Defense: Grand Rapids Women and the Great War PRESENTED BY: Melissa Fox
INSIDE THIS ISSUE Cover Story: November program Letter from our President page 2 The Caskey-Jones Adoption page 4
Thursday, November 9, 2017, 7:00 p.m. Women Go To War Exhibit page 5 Happening in History page 6 Photo Sleuth page 7
For more information on Historical Society programs, please visit www.grhistory.org Grand River Times
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