Teddy

Vernon Edward Barber was born in a small drafty house in Nobleford, AB. He was brought into the world by my Aunt Theta acting as midwife. My Aunt and Uncle Oscar arranged to care for Mom during and after her pregnancy. Here's what Mom wrote about that event:

The weather was getting so cold that we moved my bed into the main room where the cook stove was, the only source of heat. On December 1, (1941), I woke up early in the morning and knew this was the day the baby would be born. I was very strong and had about four strong labour episodes, no pain, just the urge to push.

I had Theta take a look to see what was happening; she did and immediately started to gag. I don't think she had seen anything born before. I told her to quickly put Joyce's coat on and send her out to play, which she did. But then she ran and got Joyce's mitts from my room and on her way by my bed, she said, "Have I got time to put these mitts on her?" I said, "I don't think so." So she dropped the mitts on the floor, put out her hands and the baby plopped into them. She said, "It's a boy and he has the cutest little dink you ever saw." We didn't have the scales so I'm not sure of his weight but the first time we weighed him, a week later, he was 12 lbs. I'm guessing he was 9+ lbs. The baby was Vernon Edward and we called him Teddy until he went to school.

He was very well dressed. I had knit him sweaters and bonnets from wool I had unravelled from old sweaters and sock tops. His diapers were made of flour sacks, as were my maternity smocks. I sincerely hope I didn't steal any of them because I was a real scrounger. While working in Lanfine, I found a big box of rags in the attic among which was an old homemade quilt completely useless and falling apart. The inside of it was padded with old Stanfields underwear, men's size long johns. I took the woollen underwear out and washed it and made all the baby's little shirts out of it. It was beautiful stuff, pure wool and well-worn and as soft as silk. I had to cut around the holes but I had plenty of it. A newborn baby's undershirt doesn't need much material. If that was stealing, I'm really sorry because I didn't ask to use it. But today I do not have a bad conscience about it. I just marvel that I was able to put together a baby's wardrobe without spending a cent.

When Theta died, Mom wrote about their life together and this episode is from that writing.

Vernon was always a happy baby: he slept all night right from the beginning; he was good humoured and mild-mannered. He remained a well-adjusted child.

As he grew older, it was evident that he had inherited some of the traits of his father (manic depression) but he always remained the kindest person I ever knew.

(Back to Teddy)

Mom's Marriage and My Birth

There is a 20-year gap (from 1918 to 1938) in the pictures of my ancestors. That was the time when the Curtiss family was so poor that it could barely provide food and shelter let alone take photographs. Photos would have been such a luxury! During that time, Lizzie married Tom Moss and they began another family of four.

My mother was little more than a child when she began to sew in order to make her clothes and her surroundings beautiful. She embroidered small flowers on her homemade underwear so it would look nice! That was the beginning of her sewing career at which she excelled all her life. She made her own wedding dress and those of her sisters and her niece and probably others that I do not know about. She could create her own patterns and design and make anything.

My mother left home when she was fifteen and worked as a farm hand and/or house maid for other people. She and her brothers and sister sent money home for the younger children and their mother. They weren't always sure the money was used for sustaining the home.

So my mother was married on her 19th birthday in 1938. Her husband was Vernon Oliver Barber and he was about 9 years older than she was. He was the first man she ever kissed. Of course, it was important to her mother that Esther be a virgin on her wedding night. But the marriage came about mostly because my grandmother thought it was a good idea. I don't think my mother was "in love" with my father. The wedding night was a disaster and, as my Mom described it to me years later, it was a matter of "slam, bam, thank-you mam." Almost a year later, I was born and the top photo shows the three of us together.

My father was probably a manic-depressive or bi-polar as medical people refer to these things now. He was a ne-er-do-well: he couldn't hold down a permanent job; he had delusions of success which would make him expremely happy and then would have deep depression when his fanciful plans came to nothing. Physically, he was born with a club foot although I don't know whether or not he limped. He was enamoured of evangelical religion just as my grandmother was and I think that was the reason she pushed for the marriage. My father sometimes was an itinerant preacher, which must have really enamoured him to my grandmother who would seek such people out.

The marriage was attended by 19 people including Mom's sisters, Theta (a witness) and Ruth, their oldest brother, Daniel, and my grandmother, Helen Boyce Barber, and her husband, Jack J. Barber.

My Grandmother, Helen Barber, was a wonderful friend to my mother even after my mom divorced her son sometime after the birth of my brother in 1941.

(Back to Mom's Marriage)

Albert Boothe Curtiss (18??-1919)

So the Curtiss family that had just begun its collective life had to adapt to a hardscrabble existence without a father. They rapidly became "dirt poor" and must have had to leave their farm after trying to make a go of it with at least one hired man. I asked my mother if Lizzy had ever had any other relationships before she married for a second time and she said that she thought she had an affair with a hired man. That sounds plausible to me and makes her seem more human because she had a very strict moral code that she expected all her children to live by.

My mother was born on December 14, 1919. The death of my mother's father had profound effects on the immediate family and was carried down through the generations. I can imagaine how desperate it was to live during that first cold winter without a provider and with a newborn baby. Lizzy seemed lost for many years although she remarried later and had four more children, the first one being born in 1928 and the last one in 1933.

There are a few parallels in my mother's and my life: one of these is that we both grew up without a father. I have no idea how being fatherless affected our lives and relationships with others, but I'm sure it did.


(Back to Albert Boothe Curtiss)

Lizzie and Albert

Sometime before 1915, Elizabeth Orilla Graham met Albert Boothe Curtiss (whose father and mother came from Michigan to Alberta). They were probably married in 1915. They had a farm in Claresholm where their first children were all born at home with the help of a midwife. The first child, Daniel, was born in 1916; their second son, Ward, in 1917; the third child, Theta, was born in 1918. My grandmother was pregnant with her fourth child in 1919 and that girl was eventually to grow up and become my mother, Esther Mary. My grandmother looks quite contented in the photo and I think she was happily married.

It's hard to imagine that Albert never grew much older than what you see in the photo. Such a charming young man he must have been!

In October 1919 around Halloween, Albert climbed up the windmill to fix it and something hit him on the head and mortally wounded him. Elizabeth, seven and a half months pregnant, ran across fields to get help, but Albert died. So she was left with three children under four years of age and pregnant with another child. She must have been devastated to now have no one to support her financially or emotionally. I imagine that from that moment on she became more and more unstable and peculiar. She also sought out religion and depended on her beliefs to carry her through, often to the detriment of looking after her children.

(Back to Lizzie and Albert)

Viola Gladys

Viola Gladys Graham (1897-1989), the youngest daughter in the photograph was known as Auntie Gladys for years. She married Daniel Gallup and had two daughters. Daniel Gallup was an abusive spouse, emotionally and physically, a very malevolent person, and she put up with it for years. In those days, one just managed with what one had. He had to have one of his legs amputated but remained abusive nevertheless.

Auntie Gladys, however, was very kindly and greeted everyone with friendliness and appreciation. Her last years were her happiest and everyone missed her terribly when she died. You can see from the photograph her humour and joy.

(Back to Ancestors II)

Mary Letitia Smith Graham (1867-1950, m 1892), Acrylic Collage, 10 x 10

Here is the photograph that I love so much of my mother (Esther Mary Curtiss) and my Great Grandmother (Mary Letitia Smith Graham). Obviously, the painting is my reference except that I did not paint in the busy flowers on the dresses and I picked some nice pink for the background and blue for the dresses (my favourite colours). The city is probably Calgary (or Edmonton) and I like the way these women are obviously enjoying each other's company. My mother looks to be in her twenties and her grandmother lived until 1949 or 1950 so I put the date at approximately 1945. It is too bad we couldn't blow up the license plate on one of the cars so we could see the date!

Grandmother Graham told my mother, in regards to her daughter Elizabeth ("Dizzy Lizzy"), that she didn't know what was wrong with that girl: "The day she was born she hauled off and gave me a dirty look!" So my mother's mother was a bit different from a very early age.

I may have met my Great Grandmother, but I was too young to remember it. I wish I had known her well.

(Back to My Mom and Great Grandmother)

As I get older, I think more and more about where I came from. My memories going backwards stop with information about my maternal grandmother's family and to that end I have an old photograph which I obtained from my mother and which may have been given to her by an uncle or great uncle. I've dated it 1904 as my grandmother, who appears in the background, looks to be about 10 years old. My grandmother's name was Elizabeth Orilla and I was named after her and my paternal grandmother, Helen. However, I do not use either name although they both appear on my grave marker.

It's a funny thing, but the look on my grandmother's face is really the kind of person she was and remained throughout her life: sour, dissatisfied, mean and egotistical. The rest of the Graham family were more kindly. One of the brothers remained a bachelor all his life and I remember him coming to a family reunion while he was staying with my mother in Edmonton. He was undergoing radiation treatments for cancer and he didn't live long after that (the reunion was in 1964). As a child, I remember seeing his bachelor pad and thinking how sad it was that he slept on what appeared to be a round bench without a mattress or sheet. But memories sometimes play tricks on me although I know the emotion the memory elicits is genuine.

My great grandmother had at least 5 children, one of whom died in infancy. She was a very happy person, according to my mother. I have a picture of her and my mother walking down the street in Calgary wearing similarly flowered dresses. I love that picture.

My maternal great grandfather did not live to be an old man and I think he may have been difficult to live with. (Mom once told me the story of one of the grandmothers, either hers or mine, getting very angry at her husband for drinking and coming home drunk. He fell onto a rug by the doorway and grandmother rolled him up in the rug and beat the rug in anger at his drinking. I think William Anson may have been that grandfather, but the story is apocryphal.)

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