Gpa Bond's voice

When I mentioned in an earlier post about the reaction I had when I had heard Gpa Bond's voice on a recording, some of you expressed an interest in hearing that too. It is a long recording, with my mom singing several songs, making the file too big to upload, so I edited it. I also had to record it onto a video, as I haven't been able to figure out how to attach an audio recording to this blog. When I figure it out, I will upgrade the recording.

The recording was made on 17 July 1973, on the day that my mom, Kathryn, Jordan (2), Jeremy (6mos) and I (4) were leaving to return to Alaska after a visit to Fresno, CA. Richard and Lu Bond recorded a conversation that we had before we left, talking about all the things that we had done while we were there visiting.



Lora (4), Jordan (2) and Jeremy (6mos) with Lu and Richard Bond in Fresno, CA - summer 1973

I have one distinct memory of my Gpa Bond, and it happened during this trip. We were at a company picnic, and it had gotten dark. All the kids were playing motorcycles and we were running around with our arms outstretched as though we were holding the handlebars. Our hands were in fists, and one kid swung around and clocked me in the eye. I remember sitting on Gpa Bond's lap in the den of their house, and he was consoling me because my eye hurt. That is the only memory I have of him. You can hear me mention my black eye on the recording.



To hear the audio recording click on the photo above.

Landing of the Pilgrims

One of the really great things for me about writing this blog is that as I prepare posts, I do more research and find out even more about the people I am writing about. That is exciting!


Isaac Allerton and his family came to America on the Mayflower. Much has been written about Isaac Allerton and his family, so I am not going to try to give a full account here, but I wanted to share what I learned about him recently. There is a famous painting by Henry Sargent called the Landing of the Pilgrims which hangs in the Pilgrim Hall Museum in Plymouth, Massachusetts.


I just recently learned that the painter actually identified each person in the painting. Isaac Allerton is to the direct left and Mary, his wife can be seen below him, having just gotten out of the boat. She is represented as having a fine face, rather beautiful, and as being of a "meek and quiet spirit."



There is also a lovely book about the children of Isaac and Mary Allerton called "Three Young Pilgrims", written by Cheryl Harness.



Direct line ancestry: Isaac Allerton --> Mary Allerton --> Thomas Cushman --> Samuel Cushman --> Jacob Cushman --> Mary Cushman --> Lindemina Avery --> Avery John Bond --> Frank Bond --> Rolf Wallace Bond --> Richard Griffiths Bond --> Kathryn Bond --> Lora Marshall Nehring

Henry Innis

Henry Innis was born in May 1st, 1792 in Pennsylvania. Most of my information about Henry Innis, is from a book called, The McKendree Story: 125 Years of History of the McKendree Methodist Church. published in 1957.


"[Henry's] parents were devout Quakers of Pennsylvania but Henry was converted to the Methodist faith at a protracted meeting when a young boy. This fact led to unpleasant repercussions in the home as the staid and dignified Quaker parents were obliged to hear their son pray in the Methodist way as he went about his farm work.

"It is said that as he plowed he formed the habit of kneeling at the end of each row to pray. The longer he prayed the louder he became until he could be heard a great distance, much to the chagrin of his father, who felt disgraced before his neighbors. He was punished severely by his father but to no avail for Henry had become a true Methodist and could be nothing else. So his mother, in order to avoid an open, violent rupture between these two loved ones, advised Henry to leave the parental home even going so far as to say she had heard that there were some good Methodists!

"His home life thus dissolved, Henry, young and more or less unsettled, did as many young men have done, joined the army (War of 1812). Wounded and discharged, he started back home. His Christian faith still strong and his Methodist belief unshaken, he inquired for, and found, as he passed through Jefferson County, Ohio, others of like faith. He was directed to the home of Mr. Elias Pegg, asked for a night's lodging as he was weary and ill. Here he was kindly received, nursed back to health and later married the daughter, Isabelle Pegg."

Henry and Isabelle were married June 10th, 1813. They had eight children.



Continuing from the book: "Henry and Isabelle Innis finally established their home in Clinton Township [Ohio] in 1820, the home that was opened to their friends and neighbors for religious services; so long ago Henry Innis was the mainstay of the small group who felt the need of a church and his earthly remains lie in the small cemetery to the rear of the church which he founded."


from the book called, The McKendree Story: 125 Years of History of the McKendree Methodist Church.

Henry died May 20th, 1865, and is buried in the McKendree Methodist Church Cemetery in Columbus, Franklin, Ohio.




(photos by Jeremy Meadows)


A current photo of the McKendree Methodist Church in Columbus, Ohio


1850 United States Federal Census, Henry Innis listed on line 33, Louisa listed on line 36


1860 United States Federal Census, Henry Innis listed on line 1

Direct line ancestry: Henry Innis --> Louisa Annie Innis --> Anna White Durrett --> Florence Faye Alkire --> Wilburta June Love --> Donald William Marshall --> Lora Marshall Nehring

When I knew better than my mother. . .

This is another story from Lu Penrose Bond that she told to Marji in a recorded interview in 1982.

"When I was around seventeen and knew much more than my mother could ever learn, two of my friends and I thought it would be fun to go from Salt Lake to Ogden and have lunch and go to a show and then go back to Salt Lake. And I asked my mother for permission to go, and she said, 'If you want to go to lunch and a show in Salt Lake that's fine, but I would prefer that you didn't go to Ogden.'

"Well, because I knew so much, I thought, 'Well, we won't leave until after my mother's gone to work, and we'll be back before she gets home from work, and nobody will ever know the difference.' So I went.

"We were in a car that belonged to my friend Marion Nesbitt's boyfriend and there was another girl with us, Merle Taylor. So, we set off to go to Ogden for lunch and a movie, but we never got to Ogden, because, after we left Farmington, we were going along and we came close to a place that everybody used to call Dead Man's curve. It was a big curve in a two-lane highway, and as we rounded the curve a tire blew out, and it flipped the car, and we rolled three times, came to rest with one of the car doors open on the ground and the other car door up in the air. And we were all piled on top of each other a the bottom. And we had an awful time getting out of the car because the only door we could get out of was up above us and it was hard to push open. But when we got out we saw a farmer that we had noticed riding his plow in his field - we had noticed him just before the car flipped - was still on his tractor, with his arms folded and looking down at this wreck of a car with three teenage girls trying got get out. And he never moved off that tractor.

"I don't know who called the Highway Patrol or the ambulance, but they did come, took us to the hospital. I'd lost one of my shoes and I lost my hat, and I had an enormous bump on my head and a black eye, a concussion, and all the ligaments in my left arm, torn. From which I still suffer to this very day, because I knew more than my mother did.

"Anyway, we didn't get home until about 9:30 at night and it was in the car of the Highway Patrol and our mothers were all frantic, because they didn't know where we were all this time. The worst punishment I ever had in my entire life was walking in to that house. My mother didn't say one word to me, like, Where have you been? or What has happened? My arm was in a sling, I had one shoe on, my head was bandaged and I was a sight! Marion had a few little bruises and Merle got hysterical because she had a run in her new stockings. Marion and I both got really disgusted with her, she was screaming, 'Oh my stockings! I got a run in them!' Anyway, my mother didn't say a word to me, she just helped me in to the bedroom and helped me get undressed and put me to bed and covered me up and went out of the room. Ohhhh! Terrible!

"The next morning she took me to the hospital to have x-rays of my arm, my head, well, my head had a small concussion. I had to stay quiet for a long time, that cleared up, but out of that knock on my head I had two of the blackest eyes, and it came clear down under my cheekbone. First they went black, and then they turned kind of purple and then a sick yellow and for about six weeks it took my face to get back to normal, but I still have trouble with my arm.

"So, I think that was the only time when I asked my mother permission to do something and she said no, and I went ahead and did it anyway. It was a hard lesson to learn.

"I forgot to say that the reason we were brought home in Hoighway Patrol cars in that Al Gulen's car was demolished, from rolling over three times. There was nothing decent to salvage. I guess Al really loved Marion because they eventually got married and had four beautiful, intelligent children."

Happy 93rd Birthday Gpa Marshall!!

Today is Richard Allen Marshall's birthday, so in honor of his long, full life, here are a few photos:


Richard Marshall (center) - circa 1919


I believe this may be his High School photo - circa 1936


Richard Marshall - no date


no date - probably 1960s


no date - probably late 1950s


Gpa Marshall on his 90th birthday - June 2008


Gpa Marshall with his children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren on his 90th birthday - June 2008

Patricia Lu Bond

In 1992 I was living in Tucson, Arizona, but it would not be long before I was moving to Fresno, California. My mom, Kathryn Berkowitz, came to Tucson in June 1992 to visit me. (I recorded our visit in my journal and much of the following is excerpts from my writings.) We drove to Yuma, Arizona, where she was born, and one of the first things we did was got to the cemetery where her older sister is buried.

In 1942 Richard and Lu Bond were going to have their first baby. But Lu went into premature labor at seven months, and Patricia Lu lived for only seven hours. Two days later, she was laid to rest in the Desert Lawn Memorial Park.



The funeral program, for Patricia Lu Bond's burial

When my Mom and I got to the cemetery, we went to the office and found the location of Patricia's grave. We went to the location and searched for a while and could not find the headstone.



Site maps for Desert Lawn Memorial Park



We found a groundskeeper, Frank, who helped us to try to find the headstone. He stuck a stick into the ground to see if he could find a headstone that had perhaps had grass grow over the top of it. It hit something beneath the grass and we dug out the grass, but it was the wrong marker. We found where it should be, but there was no headstone to be found. Frank was wonderful and told us he would make a temporary marker for the grave site before we left Yuma that evening.

We went into the cemetery office to check to see if there had ever been a headstone placed on the grave. Mom couldn't believe that her dad, Richard Bond, would not have had a headstone made, but the cemetery confirmed that there had indeed never been one for Patricia.


When we came back to the cemetery that evening, there was the temporary cement marker on Patricia's grave. As far as either of us knew, we were the first ones to visit the grave since Patricia was buried fifty years earlier. It was neat, because suddenly Patricia Lu Bond became more than just a name on a pedigree chart, and I realized she would have been my aunt. I wondered if she would look more like my Mom or my aunt, or a combination of both.

We felt that Patricia deserved to be remembered again. At the time, I was working for a trophy manufacturing company, and I was able to order brass plaques wholesale, so Mom and I agreed that I would order a grave marker for Patricia.


Two months later, I was moving from Tucson, Arizona to Fresno, California, and I drove through Yuma. I drove to the Desert Lawn Memorial Park and there was the head plate! It looked wonderful!! I was so glad that we were able to do this for Patricia Lu and that I was able to do so much to bring it about. I placed four carnations at the headstone -- three red ones for Gma Lu, my Mom and my Aunt Marji, and a white one for me (it had been given to me as farewell gift from a friend as I left Tucson).


I knelt down at the grave and just began talking to Patricia. I explained that I had never done this before, but that I would do my best. I read the poem that was in the funeral program from her burial, "Crossing the Bar" by Alfred Tennyson. I also read the Hymn, "Be Still, My Soul" (no. 124), of which the third verse is the most significant:

Be still, my soul: The hour is hastening on
When we shall be forever with the Lord,
When disappointment, grief and fear are gone,
Sorrow forgot, love's purest joys restored.
Be still, my soul: When change and tears are past,
All safe and blessed we shall meet at last.

I had tears in my eyes and I said a prayer thanking Heavenly Father for my family and for the opportunity to have helped making this possible. It felt very nice and I felt very good! Peaceful and happy!

When I arrived in Fresno, California, I was living with my Gma Lu. I told her about the experience that I had and showed her the photos I had taken. She was so profoundly grateful for all that we had done for Patricia Lu.

For all photos and documents related to Patricia Lu Bond, click here.

William Harrison Caman

William Harrison Caman is an example of one of the quiet superstars of American life. He didn't do anything overly amazing, but he was instrumental in many people's lives. (No pun intended!)

William was born in Elmwood, Knox, Illinois in 1867, the son of Augustus and Charlotte Caman. Charlotte died when William was not quite three years.

William began his life with a love of music. Although there is no mention, as far as I have been able to find, of how early William began to learn to play instruments, at the age of 19 he was good enough to be hired in a band.

"I had played with my hometown band at La Cygne, Kansas, and one day in the spring of 1887 I was in Kansas City when the circus came to town. I took in the show,for a circus was always a thrill to me, and got a seat as near the band as possible.

"When it came time for the band to lead the procession around the ring, I heard the leader inquiring what had become of the cornetist. One of the bandsmen said the cornetist would be there soon but he failed to show up, and the director decided to play without him.

"I felt I could hold down such a job, so I volunteered my services to the director. He evidently decided that any kind of a trumpet player was better than none and accepted my offer. He asked me to remain after the show. I did, and soon found myself in a job at the sum of $10 a week with food and shelter furnished.

"The circus was S. H. Barrett's New United Railroad shows. The fact it traveled by rail put it ahead of the lesser shows which moved from town to town on wagon roads." (Day World-Herald, Omaha, Neb., December 22, 1940)

Following his summer with the circus, William settled in southern Kansas and was band leader in several towns there, including his own, "The Caman Band".

William got his start in his career accidentally. In an interview with Donald William Caman (William's grandson) on 18 October 1998, Don described what happened.

"When William was sitting watching trains, that was what you did before radio and television, the train pulled into town and two men got off. They told William that they were expecting a shipment of telephone equipment, like switchboards and telephones, and they asked him if he would watch for it. Later when it arrived, William called the men to let them know that it had gotten there. They told him to put it together and start up the telephone business there. So, that is how William started working for the Lincoln Nebraska Telephone Company. He ended up being their district manager." The Lincoln Telephone Company was a forerunner in the spread of telephone service, and increasingly improved quality of service, throughout the midwest. William retired in 1933.


William Harrison Caman - 1924

William and Nellie Michael were married in 1889 and they had two children, Hazel and Clarence. William continued to serve as director of many bands, including the Beatrice Community Band and the Shrine Band. He was a member of the Shriners and a Mason.


William Harrison Caman in his Shrine Band Leader Uniform - circa 1940

I recently contacted the Gage County Historical Society, who sent me several copies of newspaper articles and clippings from their archives about the Caman family, including a photo of the house in which the Caman family resided in at 425 North Fourth Street, Beatrice, Nebraska.



William died in 1944 and is buried with his wife and daughter in the Evergreen Home Cemetery in Beatrice, Nebraska. The caretaker at the cemetery was very kind to go out and take photos of the headstones and send them to me. I am always very grateful for the willingness of people every where to go out of their way to help with family history research!


The Caman family plot in the Evergreen Home Cemetery in Beatrice, Nebraska


William Harrisno Caman's headstone at the Evergreen Home Cemetery in Beatrice, Nebraska


Four generations of Camans: taken in Beatruce, Nebraska in 1920

Direct line ancestry: William Harrison Caman --> Clarence Chapman Caman --> Donald William Caman --> Donald William (Caman) Marshall --> Lora Marshall Nehring

The Fairbanks House

Way back in the Bond family line there is Jonathan Fairbanks and his wife, Grace. Jonathan was born in about 1594-8 in Sowerby, Halifax, York, England. The family included seven children, John, George, Mary, Johnathan, Jonas, George (?), and Susan. They came to America in 1633 and landed in Boston, Massachusetts. In 1636, they settled in Dedham, Massachusetts where they built a home. This home, The Fairbanks House, is still standing today, the oldest surviving timber frame house in North America.



Abbott Lowell Cummings, former Charles F. Montgomery Professor of American Decorative Arts at Yale University, says the following about the Fairbanks House:


"The Jonathan Fairbanks House in Dedham, Massachusetts, is one of the most important historic houses now standing in the northeastern part of the United States. Its value to the area and to the nation as a whole lies not so much in its claim to being the oldest house in New England but in its architectural significance... It may be said quite simply that no other house of the mid-17th century in New England has survived in such unbelievable unspoiled condition. It is extraordinary that so early a structure should preserve such a high percentage of original features. It is a veritable storehouse of information concerning the small handful of houses which survive from this early period."




All in all, eight generations of the Fairbanks family lived in the house. Over the years, the original portion of the house was extended and added on to as the family's needs changed.




Jonathan Fairbanks died in Dedham, December 5, 1668. He and many members of the extended family are buried in the Old Village Cemetery in Dedham, Massachusetts. Most of them have no gravestones, as they have disintegrated over time.

Interestingly enough, the city of Fairbanks, Alaska was named in honor of Charles Warren Fairbanks, an 8th generation descendant, who served as Vice-President in Theodore Roosevelt's first term in office.

The house is now a historical museum, open to the public. Tours are from May to October. Tours are available Tuesday - Saturday 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 .pm. and Sunday 1:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. The last tour of the day begins at 4:00 p.m.

One of these days I am going to go on a family history tour of America and get to see all these great places our family has been.






much more information on the Fairbanks House can bee seen at the following links:

http://www.fairbankshouse.org/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairbanks_House

(photos taken from Google images)

Direct line ancestry: Jonathan Fairbanks --> Mary Fairbanks --> Johathan Metcalf --> John Metcalf --> Bethiah Metcalf --> John Avery --> Lindamina Avery --> Avery John Bond --> Frank Bond --> Rolf Wallace Bond --> Richard Grifftihs Bond --> Kathryn Bond --> Lora Marshall Nehring

Little Miss Hoover

I have been lucky to have a few opportunities to record some interviews with some of my grandparents. While I was living with Gma Lu I picked up a pen and paper any time she would begin to say, "I remember when. . ." In other cases, I missed opportunities, such as with Gma Willie, who has lost much of her memory to Alzheimer's. In some cases, family members are gone long before I was old enough to even ask anything. Richard Bond died when I was four, and I only have one specific memory of him. Last year I was transferring cassette recordings to MP3 files on my computer when I realized that the voice I was hearing on the recording was Gpa Bond. I burst into tears, as I had never HEARD his voice before. It was amazing.

About twenty years ago, my Aunt Marji and one of my cousins recorded an interview with Lu Penrose Bond. Gma Lu also wrote down some recollections from her childhood in a pamphlet that she shared with family members. One of those stories is about her time as Little Miss Hoover. . .



Recollections of Lu Penrose Bond
(transcribed by Lora Nehring from a cassette tape recorded by Marji Castle 2 May 1982)

"Another thing in my early childhood was when I was about seven. I may have been eight. But I know I was going to Webster School at the time, there was a lot of starving people in Eastern Europe. Their country had been overrun by the Turks, the Turkish people. This was Armenia. The United States government was trying to raise a lot of money so that they could send food to those people. And none of us have any idea what starving really means, because we have never really been hungry. We say, "Oh! I'm starving!", but we're not really. Anyway, these Armenian people really were. There were thousands of deaths from starvation.

"So in all the cities across the United States they were having programs or campaigns or whatever to raise money for the starving Armenians. And in Salt Lake CIty, I was chosen to go around making a speech, pleading with people to give money. And no one except my family and a few other people knew who I was. They called me Little Miss Hoover, because Herbert Hoover, at the time, was chairman for this fundraising committee. I went to the Chamber of Commerce meetings, Rotary club, the mayor's office, the governor's office, the Senate, the State Legislature, and they would stand me up on a table or on a rostrum and I would say the speech that I had been taught to say. And we raised hundreds of thousands of dollars to send to these people. I have all the newspapers with my picture in, and articles about the fundraising.


Lu Penrose as Little Miss Hoover at the Hotel Utah - circa 1919

"And many, many years later, I went to Fresno, California, to live, where hundreds of Armenian people live. A lot of them who escaped from Armenia and came to America to live. They still celebrate and commemorate the time when their parents, grandparents,brothers, and sisters were starving in Armenia.

"I said that I went to Webster School, and I think I was about tin the second grade. On the days that I was to give talks to the organizations at their luncheon meetings, my mother would get me dressed in my very best clothes and I would go to school and then a chauffeured limousine would come to school and pick me up and take me where I had to be. And every luncheon and ever dinner that I spoke at served chicken croquettes and peas and mashed potatoes with chicken gravy and to this day I can not eat chicken croquette, but I felt very important, being picked up at school in that beautiful limousine with a chauffeur in full uniform or when he would take me back to school, I thought I was really something."

From "Merry Christmas 1980" by Lu Penrose Bond, which included some different details about the same story.

"Little Miss Hoover"

"My parents were both very achieve in politics and I believe that was strictly political that I was selected as Little miss hoover." Herbert Hoover was the Head of Armenian Relief in the United States just after the great massacre in Turkey. (Armenians celebrate each year to this date. "Remember the starving Armenians. They'd give anything to have that food" became a favorite household phrase of American parents to tell their children who wouldn't eat.)




Lu Penrose as Little Miss Hoover meets the Governor of Utah, Simon Bamberger - circa 1919

"Herbert Hoover was giving promotions all over America to raise money for the Armenians. There were Collections Stations, concerts, dances, etc., as promotions. On such successful promotions was "Little Miss Hoovers" all over America. I was selected and learned a speech and gave my plea. A chauffeured limousine would come to my school at the appointed hour and take me to give my plea to Kiwanis Club luncheons, the Governor's Office, Mayor's office, both Houses of Congress, etc. All pleas were complete with reporters and photographs. When each appearance was over, I was taken back in the limousine to school (where I was about in the second grade) to finish my day. At the present time I don't remember how much money was raised, but I know it was a great deal."


Lu Penrose as Little Miss Hoover, addressing the Utah Legislature - circa 1919

Direct line ancestry: Lu Penrose Bond --> Kathryn Bond --> Lora Marshall Nehring