Archive for August 2014
remembering place – Grade Two
After a mix-up resulted in my attendance at the wrong school in Grade One (see https://nichepoetryandprose.wordpress.com/2014/06/27/remembering-place-grade-one/ ), I finally found the right school in Grade Two, Crescent Heights Elementary School. This school was only two blocks from home and easy to walk to. I also was in the same class as my best friend, Laureen.
~
Crescent Heights Elementary School (image from Street View)
~
Miss McCallum was our teacher, a happy, brisk lady. These were the days of the Baby Boomers and she had almost 40 students in her class. I can remember only two of their names in the photo below.
~
Miss McCallum’s Grade Two Class, Crescent Heights Elementary School (I am Row 2, fifth from right)
~
I have no specific memories of being in school in Grade Two. My world consisted of my Mom and Dad, my younger brothers and sister. Life was simple and happy, though I’m sure my parents would not have agreed.
~
Copyright 2014 Jane Tims
Great Grand Uncle Ed – silver miner
My great-grandmother Ella’s brother was Edwin W. Hawk. He was born in 1864, the sixth of eight children.
~
‘Uncle Ed’ was an adventurer and went west when he was only 16, to live in southern Wyoming. The US Census of 1880 lists Ed as a laborer at Crow Creek, Wyoming (not far from Laramie, Wyoming). By 1886, my great-grandmother Ella was living in Laramie. No doubt she had come west to live near her younger brother.
~
By 1910, Ed was living in Humbolt, Nevada. In 1920, he is listed as a lodger at Broadway Ave. in Lovelock, Nevada. He is 56 years old, single, and a miner in a quartz mine. Nevada is known as the ‘Silver State’ because of its silver mines.
~
Ed continued to work as a miner. At the time of his death in Lovelock in 1940, probate documents show he had a cabin in Vernon, Nevada and six mining claims in the Seven Troughs Mining District. He had an estate of $3200, a watch and chain, and $80 in cash.
~
Vernon was established in 1905 as a base for those working in the Seven Troughs Mining District. The landscape around Vernon is hilly, dominated by yellow sand, dotted with sagebrush. The town dwindled in population as the silver depleted and was abandoned by 1918. Today, it is a ghost town.
~
Ed Hawk, Ella’s brother
~
I notice that the same photographer (J. Collier in Denver) took both Ed’s photo and a photo of my grandfather Leo as a baby (Ella’s son). Ella lived in Denver until 1910 and perhaps Ed visited her there, and had his picture taken on a visit to see her baby. For more information on Leo, see https://nichepoetryandprose.wordpress.com/2012/07/20/chicory-cichorium-intybus-l/
~
Leo Norman as a baby (son of Ella and Frank Norman), my grandfather and Ed’s nephew
~
Copyright 2014 Jane Tims
nichepoetryandprose 