Last month, I shared some of my mother’s handwritten notes used to answer the questions in Milton Kamen’s book, A Grandparent’s Book: Answers to a Grandchild’s Questions published in 1987.

From them, I was able to add more dates and places to the long list of the family moves due to Grandfather’s job with Western Union.

After finding this one sheet of notes, I think I inherited my mother’s note taking style. For example, when I find a vintage photo online and begin researching to find descendants, my notes are all over the page, too!

Some of these details are new to me. Others, I can understand because I know some of the back story.

Today, we’ll just look at the top half of the page.

Let’s start at the top with Ridgewood Ralph & wife Ruth/Wallace & Edith

Ralph Stuart is my grandfather’s cousin. He was a medical doctor who delivered my mother, who was born in Calais, Washington, Maine in 1923. Wallace was his older brother. Wallace married twice, but my mother got his wife’s name wrong – his first wife was Florence and the second, who my mother would remember, was Marion.

In 1940, Wallace and his family were living in Tenafly, Bergen, New Jersey. Ralph never lived in New Jersey as far as I can tell.

Under the Stuart info is “not a mark,” “high forceps” “11 1/2 #” and “wt 12#” is circled. “Milltown, furnished house” is scrawled to the side.

Mom isn’t here to question, but from her notes and knowing that Dr. Ralph delivered her, I’d say he used forceps that didn’t leave any mark and she was quite a large baby – 11 1/2 to 12 lbs. at birth. I know the family lived in Milltown by 1924, but were likely there by June of 1923 when Mom was born.

On the right side of the page, she wrote in “chicken pox & measles with Bangor “Spety?” “Nana present.” “moved to NY and then Calais, Boston commercial and Calais – Chas died car Bus[iness] 2 cars Perce Chad[wick] sold 7 & she bought.

Chicken pox and MMR vaccines weren’t even available when I was a kid, so it isn’t surprising that Mom had chicken pox and measles. There is a dot by “Calais” so I’m thinking she had those diseases when she was very young and living in Calais. That also wouldn’t be surprising since my Aunt Barbara was two years older and could have caught them and then shared with Mom.

The time period for Calais – Chas died. . . . is 1922-1925. “Chas” is Charles Edwin Adams, her paternal grandfather and my great grandfather who died of a strep infection on 24 January 1922 in Calais.

After he was gone, my grandfather’s cousin, Charles Chadwick, said Annie bought a Studebaker car dealership that his father, Perce Chadwick, and my grandfather, Vernon Tarbox Adams ran together in Calais.

Charles said they sold very few cars before they went out of business so I think “2 cars” means Grandfather sold 2 and Perce sold 7 cars.

Back on the left side of the notes, I have no idea what “Poem” mom was thinking about. However, when they moved to Bangor, which would have been some of Mom’s earliest memories when she was 5-6 years old, she noted “furnished house near town” Nickersons – perhaps neighbors?

[She?] was a very active child. Mom remembered a Welcome Wagon lady and participated in church groups. When she was about 4, she gave a “perfect performance” in a Christmas concert.

About 1930, they moved for a short time to jamaica, Queens, New York and apparently she and Aunt Barbara both had whooping cough while living there.

Finally, on the right side of the page, Mom listed “Portland, Bangor 4 yr.w lived with Nana[Leach?] Etta Jack 12, Nancy Lorna Austin.

I don’t recognize any of those names, but they might have been friends she and Aunt Barbara made while in Bangor .

There is one new fact for me in this – I had no idea that my great grandmother, Annie (Stuart) Adams lived with them in Bangor. After my great grandfather died in 1922, I always though Annie continued to live in Calais until 1940, when she moved in with the family in Ridgewood, Bergen, New Jersey shortly before she died that year.

However, from these notes, I can now place her in Bangor in the later 1920s.

The remainder of the towns written on the top half of the page – Jamaica, Portland (8-10) [years old], Floral Park, Lynbrook, Tenafly and Ridgewood are the places the family lived, listed mostly in order of residence.

What amazes me is that even though Mom wrote all this out to organize her thoughts, not all of these details were written into the book. I’m very thankful that Mom tucked her notes into the front cover and I have them today.