Johnny Jump Ups

My grandmother, Miriam Brown Harbaugh, first went to school at the one-room school in Pleasant Valley, Maryland. At that time in 1908, the village consisted of a few houses, a white frame church, and the school. She later went to the graded school at Smithsburg. She recalled that at Pleasant Valley School the “drinking fountain” consisted of a pail of water with a dipper in it. She remembered being intrigued by the Smithsburg School’s hallway fountains with running water.

Another of my Grandmother’s stories about her school years at Smithsburg —

“I see as though it were yesterday, school being let out at 4 P.M., to find Eva standing by the wide open front door of the schoolhouse, with her books tucked under her arm, waiting for me to come down the stair and join her. There were four rooms upstairs, and four rooms down; the lower grades, of course occupied the lower floor and were dismissed a few minutes before upstairs so as to be out of the way when the older and larger groups came trooping down.

Then, came the long walk to the crossroads and up the mountain home. Our home was a distance, just one and one half miles from Smithsburg. We usually reached home about five o-clock. In warm weather, spring and fall, we were inclined to loiter on the way, generally stopping to gather wild flowers that grew by the roadside. This was true especially in the springtime. I’ve mentioned before the bed of Johnny-jump-ups (violets) that grew on the bank between the two “Cold Turns.” Here we stopped each pretty evening on the way home and gathered our mother bunches of the lovely blossoms. Sometimes until we got them home they were wilted and bedraggled, but our mother, nevertheless, was always very appreciative of our thoughtfulness.”

Johnny Jump Up (Violet)

Aunt Beth’s Birthday

Aunt Beth is my great aunt, my grandmother’s older sister. She lived next door to us and helped raise me til I was 14. That little white house next to my mom and dad’s on Lincoln Avenue, Halfway, that was her retirement plan. I learned that later.

Today is her birthday. She was born the 27th of August, 1886 in Foxville, Frederick County, Maryland, and died on 8 April, 1965 at home in Halfway, Maryland.

Aunt Beth taught me to knit and to play the piano. She taught be how to behave. She was big on manners, could be strict, loved music, and had a loving nature. She and Mom taught me to sew. Aunt Beth was a seamstress, a master. She could type really fast and take shorthand. I don’t know if she loved sewing or typing. They were skills that got her through. Gardening I know she loved.

She also loved to read. In retirement she subscribed to the Doubleday Mail Order Book Club, receiving a hardback book in the mail every month or so. I was visiting with her sometimes when the postman delivered the book wrapped in heavy brown cardboard. I read a lot of those books she received from Doubleday. Those hardcovers got passed all around to her sisters and nieces I remember this because Aunt Alice’s daughter Esther used to write “Esther read this” on the corner of a book’s cover page. My great aunt Alice sometimes wrote “Alice” on the corner of a page too, at the back of the book. So when the sisters were looking for a book to read on Aunt Beth’s bookshelf, they’d see that note and remember.

Aunt Beth had a fireplace in her living room, like we did at home. A rocking chair sat off to the right if you were facing the fireplace. Her drop leaf dining room table she’d brought from St. Louis was right in front of her picture window looking out on East Lincoln Avenue. He cat Betsy liked to lay on the table in the sunshine. At the end of the table with the drop leafs down, sat the “secretary,” where Aunt Beth sat to write letters and postcards and pay her bills.

I’d go next door to visit Aunt Beth every day after school to visit. She kept a pack of Hershey’s chocolate bars in her kitchen cupboard, six to a pack and wrapped in cellophane. She’d put the kettle on and make us hot black tea with sugar. When I got old enough she let me put my own sugar in. That’s where I learned to drink hot tea and eat a chocolate bar at the same time. The hot tea made the chocolate melt in my mouth. Pair that with reading a really good book, while Aunt Beth’s in her chair at the other end of the picture window in her living room, doing the same (chocolate, hot tea, good book). We read novels. Things like Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maughm and lighter books too. She kept books from her younger years on that bookshelf too - Harvester, Girl of the Limberlost, and so on. This was a big deal to me cause I loved to read by the time I was in the 3rd grade. Then I was reading Trixie Belden mysteries. Some liked Nancy Drew better. But for me, it was Trixie. So this was later, maybe around 11 and 12 that I’d be reading books of Aunt Beth’s. I wish I had a picture of her bookshelf filled with books. It now sits in my living room, still filled with books.

Aunt Beth and my grandma came from a huge family. Beth was the 5th girl , and Gram was the next to last girl. All together their parents had 11 girls and 4 boys. Aunt Bessie was the oldest, born in 1882, then twins Mary and Sarah, born in 1884. Sarah died when she was just 5 months old and is buried at Mount Bethel Cemetery in Garfield, Frederick County, Maryland where many of my ancestors are buried. Fannie was born in 1888, Jennie in 1890, Marjorie in 1891, Alice in 1893, Orville in 1895, Reuben in 1896, Stanley in 1899, Paul in 1901. Paul died when he was 4 years old. Gram was born in 1903, and Eva in 1905. My great-granddad, David died in 1907 from tuberculosis, just 50 years old, a few months before his wife’s 48th birthday. She never re-married.

Elizabeth Gazella Brown Sisler, my great Aunt Beth

My Grandmother - Bertha Ellen Wolfinger Boward

My Grandmother Boward was Bertha "Bert" Ellen Wolfinger Boward, born in 1891 on a farm on the Leitersburg Road near Reid, north of Hagerstown, Maryland in Washington County. Her father was David Lawson Wolfinger and her mother was Martha Stine Wolfinger. Grandma had 17 brothers and sisters, as her father re-married after his first wife died.

Bertha’s father, David Lawson Wolfinger married Elizabeth W. Wolfersberger in 1861. Their children were David Grant, Susannah Mead, Daniel Riley, Joseph Walter, Harry Burtner, Edwin, Charles Irvin (Gusty), Grace May, Lily Matthews, Maudie J., Della, and Viola Flossie. Three of the children – Lily, Maudie, and Della, died as infants.

Elizabeth died in 1883; in 1885 David married my great grandmother Martha Stine. Their children were Mary Ada, Emma Lee, Caroline Alameia (Carrie), Bertha Ellen (Bert), Martha Mahala, Elsie Nora, and Eva Catherine, who died when she was 11 months old.

Grandma Boward’s diaries are filled with names that are familiar to me, and some I’ve never heard before. She writes about her family and her work, the people she visits, and happenings with her friends and neighbors.

Drawn to The Lost, Abandoned, and Forgotten

What is it about abandoned places that attracts us?

Years ago I had a recurring dream about walking with friends in the woods. Sometimes it's freezing cold with snow on the ground. Other times it's the height of summer, yet cool in the forest.

We come upon an old, falling down abandoned house. Approaching carefully, we walk up rotting steps on the wooden front porch and peer in the windows. The dream always ended before we could enter the mysterious old home.

Every time I had that dream I woke up thinking I've got to find that house. There's something in that house that I need to find or know about.

Last year my sister and I visited the farm where my paternal grandmother grew up. We parked between two old barns. It was pouring rain but the cows in the barnyard didn't seem to mind. Cousins now owned the farm but no one was about.

I had the distinct feeling that I'd been there before. The setting reminded me of the dream, minus the woods surrounding the abandoned house. Not truly abandoned, the old farmhouse is being used to store lumber. Cornfields are planted within 10 feet of the front door. If there was a porch, it's long gone. A small dilapidated summer kitchen sits just feet from the main house. Cows watch us as we wander around in the rain. I take a few photographs, wondering, have I been here before? 

Wolfinger Farmhouse Two Doors and Window 1.jpg

 

 

©BARBARA BOWARD PHOTOGRAPHY

Family Stories

In the 1970s, my sister and I asked our maternal grandmother, Miriam Kathleen Brown Harbaugh, to write her life story - which she did! She wrote by hand on lined notebook paper with a blue ink pen. I am certain that my love of reading, stories, and the telling of stories via photography, came from my early years hearing Gram's stories, as well as my mother's stories as we poured over family photographs constructing her scrapbooks.

Here is how Gram begins her autobiography:

“Diane and Barbara have asked me on numerous occasions to write for them some of the interesting events that occurred in my life...both have seemed so earnest about this that today I thought, ‘Why not? I shall try.’ ”

"I am next to the youngest in a family of twelve, in fact there were fifteen all told, but two died in infancy and one, my brother Paul, at the age of four. My parents were David Columbus and Sarah Alice (Lumm) Brown. They lived on a small farm nestled in the mountain at Foxville, Frederick County, and close by the Mountain Methodist Church called Bethel. My parents, the two babies who died in infancy, Paul, and my older sister, Jenny, who died at the age of fifty, are buried there..."

Brown Family1.jpg

"A few years before I was born my father sold our little home in the mountain and moved to this side of the mountain to a village called Pondsville. This small settlement boasted a one room school, a grocery store and a church. I've forgotten of what denomination. There he rented a farm. There were at that time seven girls in the family: Bessie, Mary, Elizabeth, Fannie, Jenny, Marjorie and Alice. No boys! My father and mother, and the seven girls, worked hard to make this farm pay, and directly there was born, yes, a boy, who was named Orville. Then came two more boys, Reuben and Stanley, and lastly, myself and one more a girl who the older children named Margaret Evangeline, but who soon became Eva to everyone. I captured Miriam Kathleen, although I was told often by my sisters that there was quite a disturbance over whether I was to be Miriam Kathleen or Miriam Blanch."

 

©BARBARA BOWARD PHOTOGRAPHY

My Love for Photography and Stories

My interest in photography started when I was a child. But not in the way it started with some kids who were given a camera at a young age and encouraged to shoot. I loved looking at the old photographs my grandmother and mother had accumulated, hearing them tell about their lives, and about the relatives and ancestors in the photographs. Photographs taken in the 1930s seemed sincerely aged to me, and the ones from the late 1800s positively ancient.

My mom was the family photographer. Gram (Mom's mother) was the family historian and storyteller. My love of photography and personal histories comes from them. Both of them told me so much about my great-grandmother (Grandma Brown) that I felt like I knew her!

I loved it when Mom brought out her albums she'd made as a teenager and young adult. When I was around 9 years old, she showed me how to add to her current photo album: choose the best photographs, put them in chronological order, plan the placement on the page, wet the little black photo corners, place carefully, and use white ink to write a funny caption and the date. I loved it! I studied the photographs as she shared her memories with me and I had more questions about the ancestors than there were answers.

Most of my gram's storytelling revolved around events and memories of her own childhood, or Bible stories. I wanted to hear both. As I got older and moved away from home, I'd talk with Gram about writing. She and I both were great letter writers. Some weeks I'd get 2 or 3 letters from her! My sister and I wanted her to write her autobiography, including all the stories we loved, and maybe some new ones. Eventually, we pestered Gram often enough that she started writing her story. 

My grandmother, Miriam Kathleen Brown Harbaugh. Portrait  from her 1920 Smithsburg Maryland High School Yearbook, when she was a Junior.

My grandmother, Miriam Kathleen Brown Harbaugh. Portrait  from her 1920 Smithsburg Maryland High School Yearbook, when she was a Junior.

Mom (Marian Elizabeth Harbaugh) and Dad (Roscoe Wolfinger Boward). This photograph contains many things  I  love about photography - blur, light, dust, sepia, old cars, joy, and so many questions. Who was the photographer? Where …

Mom (Marian Elizabeth Harbaugh) and Dad (Roscoe Wolfinger Boward). This photograph contains many things  I  love about photography - blur, light, dust, sepia, old cars, joy, and so many questions. Who was the photographer? Where was it taken? Did they just hop out the car for the photo? It looks like winter - no coats? 

©BARBARA BOWARD PHOTOGRAPHY