Amazingly, six of my great-grandparents were alive when I was born. Most of them died when I was very young, but I remember "Mums," our family name for Maude Stephens Weaver, who was born in 1878, in La Porte, Iowa. Her husband James Baird Weaver (known as "Jay") was also born in Iowa. My only memories of Mums are of visiting her when she was confined to her bed. Going to the nursing home wasn't especially pleasant, but I feel fortunate to have pictures of my sisters and I standing next to her bed.
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| About 1966 |
What I've learned since is that Maude was the tenth child in a family of eleven. After her mother died when she was eight, Maude and her sister Eva were raised mainly by their older sister, Edith. About 1902, Maude and Edith and their families moved to Los Angeles. Later, sister Eva and her family also moved to Los Angeles.
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| Maude Stephens Weaver, born in 1878, died in 1967. |
Over the years, Maude and Jay's home seemed to become the family gathering place. Maude had a piano store for a time, and on Friday nights, everyone gathered to listen to Your Hit Parade while Maude took notes to order sheet music for the store. Then they listened to the National Barn Dance. Maude and Jay also subscribed to the Saturday Evening Post, which was read from cover to cover and passed around the extended family. Eva's grandson Bruce Campbell remembered Maude having the moxie to try new things like going to a real Italian restaurant. She also introduced the family to such novel foods as grapefruit with a cherry in the middle, salmon loaf, lemon fluff and shrimp cocktail. In her later life, Maude would be remembered as very proper and naive, but she passed down a sense of occasion and a love of old-fashioned family fun that remains to this day.
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| Mums at the Piano Exchange at 345 S. Western, Los Angeles |
My great-grandmother was Clarissa "Addie" Stephens Remington was an older sister of Maude Stephens Weaver. She moved with her family from LaPorte, Iowa to St. Hilaire, Minnesota in 1902.Her brother Ellis Stephens and his family were with them. Cleron Remington and Ellis Stephens had livery stable in LaPorte that burned down, Both families also lost babies that year. It must have been a very sad move for the young families. Sue St. John
ReplyDeleteIt's interesting to me that seven of the nine siblings left Iowa -- some to Minnesota, some to L.A., and one to Oregon. And they all seemed to move between 1900 and 1910. Thanks for adding this story of your great-grandmother, Sue!
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