Last week, I shared new tidbits of information about my mother’s life via handwritten notes she created while completing Milton Kamen’s A Grandparent Book, although some of this bits and pieces Never made it onto a page of the book.

Today’s we’ll look at the next portion of the miscellaneous phrases found on the paper:

We’ll be looking at the portion of the page below the crease line.

“Calais – 2-3” Mom is talking about herself here – her tongue never stopped, so I guess she was a talker! She’s describing a drive from Maine to Boston with Grandmother and great grandmother Annie. Aunt Barbara stayed with Nammie, aka Nellie (Tarbox) Adams. Grandfather (Vernon Adams) did the driving.

They apparently traveled in a Lincoln automobile with a “wealthy” woman whose name Mom doesn’t remember.

It was late fall. The road from Calais to Bangor was a logging highway and it was called the Airline because of the ups and downs. she described the storm as “horrendous” with trees across the road.

Mom mentions Newport, which was not Newport, Rhode Island, but a small town in Penobscot County, Maine. I guess because of the storm, they stayed there overnight and the owner greeted them. Mom, in turn, introduced Mommy, Daddy and Nana.

The weather must have put Grandfather in a bad mood, as his response to Mom’s constant babbling was “Will you shut up?” Her reply, said 2 or 3 times, was “I wuv you daddy!”

The left side of the paper has an additional note, written with a different pen. It’s about later life in Ridgewood and mentions a Tea Shop 7./wk and Drug Store 14./wk.

I believe these are perhaps referring to Mom’s first jobs, where she was paid $7 and $14 per week.

Under it, we find: YWCA food prep [nutrition?] NY, acct, Tea Room mgmt.

This portion makes me wonder if Mom wasn’t remembering Aunt Barbara’s jobs, as Aunt Barbara completed a course in Tea Room training in 1941, soon after she graduated from Ridgewood High School in New Jersey:

There is one more section that pertains more to my grandmother’s early married life.

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.

My mother, Doris Priscilla Adams (1923-2008), told me that, as a child, she moved constantly because was grandfather, Vernon Tarbox Adams, worked for western Union and was frequently transferred because of his job.

Four years ago, I created a timeline and tried to document that addresses at which the Adams clan lived.

Recently, I reread A Grandparents’ Book, by Milton Kamen, which my mother filled in during the January 1996 Eastern seaboard blizzard and found a handwritten doubled-sided page of notes that Mom compiled as she recorded her memories. Here is one half of one side.

This list wouldn’t mean much to many people, but Mom was born in 1923 and, knowing some of the places where she lived, I recognized this as a list of all the towns she could remember and the years in which she lived there.

Because of this list, I can update some of my previous entries.

1921 – My grandparents lived at 30 Mead Street, Everett, Middlesex, Massachusetts when my Aunt Barbara was born.

1922 – Living at 30 Meade Street, Everett, Middlesex, Massachusetts

1923 – Mom was born in Calais, Maine on 7 June 1923. However, the family was visiting relatives when she was born and I believe my grandparents were living in Massachusetts at the time. [Now, I’m not sure if they were visiting or had already moved to Milltown.] My aunt was born in 1921 in Malden, Massachusetts. I don’t know if they were still there in 1923.

1924 – Milltown, Washington, Maine – Milltown is part of the city of Calais. However, there are no surviving city directories for 1924 or 1925 so I have no way of verifying a street address.

1925 – Living in Calais, Washington, Maine

2. Bangor Daily News reports that Vernon Adams and family are moving to Boston, 13 October 1925.

3. In December 1926, they were living somewhere in Bangor, Maine as the Bangor Daily News reported that Vernon’s grandmother, Nellie Adams, had visited the family over the holidays. No street address was given.

1927 – Living at 74 Wing Street, Bangor, Penobscot, Maine

4. By 1928, the Adamses were still in Bangor, Maine, where they lived at 31 Wing Street, as found in the Bangor City Directory.

1929 – Living in Bangor, Penobscot, Maine

1930 – Lived for a very short time in Jamaica, Queens, New York

5. They weren’t there for very long because the 1930 census shows them enumerated at 90 Mellen Street, Portland, Maine. It was a multi-family dwelling with Mary Torrey, owner, and one other family besides Mom’s living there.

6. However, they lived on Mellen Street for a very short time because the 1931 Portland City Directory gives their home address as 318 Stevens Avenue. They were still there in 1932.

1932 – Living at 318 Stevens Avenue, Portland, Cumberland, Maine

7. The 1933 Portland City Directory gives the new family address as 145 Brentwood Street. Later that year, they lived at 164 Falmouth Street, Portland, Cumberland, Maine.

1934 – My aunt was born in Portland in November.

1935 – The 1940 census of Ridgewood, Bergen, New Jersey shows the family living in Portland, Maine five years previously.

1936 – Living at 28 Rosemont Avenue, Portland, Maine and then possibly living in Floral Park, Nassau, New York later that year.

1936 – June – My aunt was promoted from Lynbrook Grammar School to the high school in June.

8. The 1937 Portland City Directory notes “move to New York City.” However, their exact address isn’t mentioned.

9. Mom mentioned that before the family lived in Ridgewood, New Jersey, they lived for a short time in nearby Tenafly, New Jersey, but she didn’t remember the address.

1936 – Living in Tenafly, Bergen, New Jersey

1937 – Living in Tenafly, Bergen, New Jersey. My Aunt Barbara received her “Certificate of Admission” to the Tenafly Senior High School on 17 June 1937.

1938 – Living in Tenafly, Bergen, New Jersey

[A telephone call to the Tenafly Public Library confirmed that they don’t have any city directories or phone books for these years. The Englewood, NJ directories sometimes included Tenafly, but I had no success finding directories there, either.]

1939 – The family moved to 630 Wyndemere Avenue, Ridgewood, Bergen, New Jersey.

1940 – My grandparents last lived in New Jersey at 630 Wyndemere Avenue in Ridgewood.

Ridgewood is where the family lived at least from 1940 (as shown in the census that year) until Grandmother, Grandfather and my two aunts made the final family move to Massachusetts in 1947. My parents married in 1947, so Mom didn’t go with them.

Mom really did move a LOT and since they rented and the Depression meant many fewer city directories printed, I probably won’t ever be able to identify all the houses in which she lived. She said every time she and my aunt made some friends and got settled in school, they had to move some place else. She hated it.