My Dad's Photo Album

My Dad made three or four photo albums of our family.  Think about that it was my Dad who made them not my Mom.  I have two of the albums.  I am not sure what happened to the others.  My brother who lived with my Dad until his death and lived in his home until the house sold did not have the albums when

I visited him in 2009. 

A few years back I had taken some of the pictures out of the book and placed them on black pages and wrote what my dad had written for each page.  I wanted my albums to all be 8.5 x 11.  I didn't feel good about this so I did not proceed with the project.  

Saturday morning while preparing to go scrapbooking with some friends, I hit upon a wonderful idea.  Why not cut the pages out of the books, leaving his pages intact and add them to my paper to fit my books.  I asked my fellow scrapers and they agreed. 

I am posting just some of the pages here.  Now that the pages are scanned I can also send copies to my brothers.

 

My Mom's & Dad's Wedding Day.   This is my second Mom that raised me, my Mother had died in February. 

 

 

Honeymoon in Niagara Falls both the NY and Canadian sides.  They swam in the Great Lakes.

 

And we came home

 

  Mary Puss  is home and - and fooling with Daddy

 

That was my nick name my Dad gave me and when

I was in a bad mood it became sour puss.

 

I did nine pages but I won't bore you with all of them.  I am happy with the results.  I may add some journaling notes and copy what my Dad wrote as his white ink is very faded on the black paper.  I even tried my white ink pen on the old porous paper and it soaks in and is very faded.  I want to save the information.

 

I did post more picture here.  

 

Here are the two album I have.

 

 

 

My Dad's Address Book

Back in March when I was visiting my brother he gave me my Dad's cigar box and inside the box was his address book.  Below is the inside cover of his address book with all his addresses he lived at in Florida, the top one is were I lived as a kid. 

Notice the little cross in the top center.  My Dad did that on every document, letter, budget page he wrote one. 

Inside of cover

Here is an inside page of the address book.  When I first saw his entries I was thrill to see how he label each person with their relationship to himself.  I am even listed as his daughter.  I won't show those pages tonight.  I plan to track them on Google Maps so I can see all the different areas I lived at in Miami, Florida.  This book doesn't any of my Fort Lauderdale addresses. 

Some other Hartmanns with relationship

This is definitely a treasure to have, thanks Don for giving it to me.

My First Find on the 1940 Census

See what happens when you can't sleep at night!

On Lines 18 is my Grandfather George Joseph Hartmann, line 19 is my Grandmother Mary Jirak Hartmann, who gave the information for the enumerator.
Line 20 is my Dad and he was working as a Fireman.  21 is my Aunt Em and 22 is my Uncle Richard.

I was a little surprised to see my Dad living at home at age 27.

This is the link I used to help find them.  It was really easy.  Direct Me NYC.  You look your family up in the New York City directory of 1940, I went to Ancestry and typed in the cross streets and after scanning a few pages to get to the right street I found them.  How easy is that!!! If you have New York ancestors go try it you will like it!

One small step for me and my ancestors!

Almost Wordless Wednesday

Grandma & Grandpa Hartmann

Last week when I found those pictures my brother's mother in law returned to me. This was one of the pictures. These are my paternal grandparents. When I look at this photo of my Grandpa, I thought, "Boy my Dad looks like Grandpa". I guess the apple doesn't fall too far from the tree. 

I did not know these Grandparents,  they were gone before I was born.  I would have like to have known them.  I hear Grandma Mary was very jovial.

More Life Story Pages

School Picture 1924



Some of my work friends get together once a month to scrapbook at a friend's house.   So I did some more work on my parent's life stories.  Mostly my Dad's at this time.   This one is a school picture.  I do not know which boy he is.



First Holy Communion 1925

 This is his First Holy Communion in 1925.  In this picture he looks so much like my brother, or my brother looks so much like him.  You think you where looking at the same person.  The apple didn't fall far from the tree.   I really like this package of blue and brown paper I found for his pictures.  I thought my Dad looks a little old for First Holy Communion, I thought I made mine at age 8.  I wonder why the delay, or was this really confirmation?  I made mine at 11.  But in his own handwriting on the picture he wrote Holy Communion.  I guess maybe things change between 1925 and 1959. 

Graduation 1926





Dad's graduation from St. Fidelis Catholic elementary school.  My dad told the story that he was the last graduating class from St. Fidelis. So all these years I thought the school was closed. I was surprised after a Google search to find that it is still open. When I study the class picture of 1924 I noticed that it is a wood frame building now the school is a brick building I am guessing he was the last graduating class from the wood building that was replaced with the brick building. That is  my dad for you his stories have an interesting twist to them.

Christmas at the Hartmann's 1940

This picture I am going to place in the place in the album I am making for the Grandparents.  What I know about these pictures was that everyone liked to go to the Hartmann's.  My aunt Em told me that there was good food and good company and happy times for holiday dinners. This is the house my grandfather and Dad built and the same house I lived in until I was 11. My dad took over the tradition of having holiday dinners at our home. My memory is more of chaos too many people, too much cooking, too much cleaning up. Also as a kid I had to sit at the kids table and since I was the oldest cousin, I didn't think this was very much fun. The kids sat in the kitchen. 

My Maternal Grandmother

On this page I have a picture of my maternal grandmother this is Minnie Elizabeth Spahn in 1905 in her graduation from nursing school picture. Isn't she beautiful.



The start of my life story



Earlier this week I was still very excited about the Here's What Happened pages that I just had to use the page for 1948 the year I was born. Though this is the first page of my life story that I've started. I'm not planning to do a lot on this right now but I couldn't resist doing this one-page.

This has been a lot of fun working on these pages I'm getting kind of excited about sharing these with my brothers when they're finished hopefully they will enjoy them.

A Duh Moment

This morning while at work I had a Duh moment and I had to wait until this evening to post it. 

I know that the family story is my grandparents, my Dad's parents did not like my mother because she had been previously married and that marriage was annulled.  (According to my parent's marriage license.)  They considered her the "Gay Divorcee"  and not good enough for their son.  So the story continues they waited until my grandparents were gone to get married. 

After I started doing my Genealogy and paying attention to dates I realized that my grandmother has been gone three years and my grandfather two years.  So why the wait?  This morning while at working and showing one of my co-workers my lovely pages.  I was reading the area on Politics and look what I notice!

Is it because they waited for WWII to be over!  It sure looks like it.  The war ended in September and they were married October 9, 1945.

My Dad was exempted from going into the service during WWII because he was a New York City Fireman.  I would think it was still a very busy time for firemen.  Plus an unstable time in the country. 

I'll never know for sure but it sounds reasonable to be.

One small step for me and my ancestors.

Two More New Fun Pages

This is how I did the page for the year my Mother, Edith was born. I printed a scan copy of the youngest picture photo I have of her.  I used colored card stock and added a couple of cute things in the plain corners.  I did a punch design on the top and bottom borders and placed some color paper behind it. 

I like it!

For my parent's wedding day I used  

paper with a design.  Again I printed a copy of a scan photo I had.  I had a hard time deciding what color paper to use.

I did these two pages this way since I didn't want to totally rearrange the completed pages .

How I Used My Fun Page

On the first page I just added them in spots so the Birth certificate was not covered.

On the second page I moved the picture up and moved the one journal entry down. Luckily I had only used a little bit of stickem.

I finished a front and back of another page.  This page I just framed the front & back of a hard card stock page my Dad had made.  I wanted to keep that intact since it had his writing on it. 

Double click on pictures to see a larger version.

Here is my Dad with his Mother and Father in 1913, Queens New York. Mary Jirak Hartmann and George Joseph Hartmann.  In the first picture on the left you can see part of a car right next to my Grandfather.  I don't now who it belonged to. 


One small step for me and my ancestors.

This is Fun

Last Saturday when I stopped in the Scrapbook Barn to to look around for a few minutes and I found this fun page.  Here's What Happened!  This is the year my Dad was born and I thought I would add it to his Life Story pages I am making. 

1912 Happenings

It is fun to see names of people I knew from TV who were born the same year as my Dad.  As well as my too favorite cookies made their first appearances, Oreo and Lorna Doone. I haven't decided yet if I want to cut each area up and place them on different pages or if I want to add a picture to the middle.  I wanted a couple of other years like 1916 when my Mother was born and 1945 when my parents were married but the shop didn't have them.

I Googled the name of the company and found their website, KCK Creations and was able to order more pages.  I'll keep you posted on how I use them. 

Sorting Saturday: George Joseph Hartmann

 
A while back I did a post about sorting old pictures and making scrapbook pages of those pictures and a bit of a life story for my mother. Recently I began doing the same thing for my dad's pictures.

Baby Picture about 3 months old

My dad didn't speak a lot about his early life so it's kind of hard to fill in some of the details to his life. I will definitely write the ones that I know.

First Holy Communion

So here the first three pages I made for your viewing pleasure.  In this picture my Dad and brother look so much alike at the same age.  The apple didn't fall far from the tree.

Georgie???

On Saturday I was making some scrapbook pages about my Dad. I decided to scan the back of the picture and show it on the page. It was labeled "Georgie" Hartmann. Now my Dad was not a Georgie to me, he was a George. Well he was mostly Dad or Pop but never a Georgie.  I do not remember my Dad telling me any of stories about his childhood.  I am glad he was a Georgie to someone.  

Back of Baby Picture

That address on the back of the picture is the same address on his Dad's draft notice for WWII. 

Baby Picture

The only story I remember is that when he graduated from St. Fidelis his class was the last graduating class from that school in 1926,  I don't remember he telling me about playing games, or things he enjoyed. 

I just Googled St. Fidelis in College Point and I guess it is a school again.  I also found this link about a book.


St. Fidelis Parish in College Point, NY - The First 75 Years 1856-1931

by James E. Haas


The story of one Queens, New York, parish--its priests and people--as a microcosm of the German-American Catholic experience from the mid 1850s through the early part of the 20th century.

Yes he grandfather was from Germany.




Back of Communion Picture





Communion Picture



As a parent he was strict, didn't like fooling around or teenage girl drama, and I was mild with the drama.  I wonder why?  He taught me there was no free lunch and if it was worth doing, it was worth doing well.  There was a place for all things and all things needed to be in their place.  His favorite quote was, "There is the Army way, the Navy way and my way or the highway."

I would have liked to know more about his childhood and his parents.  He just didn't talk about those kinds of things.

Remembering Dad

Today would have been my Dad's 99th birthday. 


Dad as an infant in 1913



Happy Birthday Dad!

love from me

A Volunteer Went the Extra Mile

When I entered my request for my Mom’s grave stone, I did not request my Dad’s I am not sure why but I did not request it. Christine the volunteer did take a picture of my Dad’s gravestone. I did not realize it until a couple of days after the original post on my Mom’s stone. I did send her a thank you note when I noticed the gravestone. Here is the link to the picture.



http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GSln=hartmann&GSiman=1&GScid=72494&GRid=68940907



A Rosary Case like my Dad's

 My first reaction when I saw the rosaries on my Dad’s gravestone was, “How appropriate.” I am not sure if my brothers chose this or my Dad. I was not involved with the funeral arrangements. One of the memories I have of my Dad was he always had his rosaries in his pockets. He carried them in a little black case and every time he placed them in his pocket he would cross himself with the rosaries (in the case) in his right hand and them kiss the case and place them in his right pocket of his pants. There were many an evening during Lent that we would sit or kneel and say the rosaries. I can remember him saying the rosaries for Mom when she was so sick with cancer or before one of her surgeries. He was a man of faith and prayed frequently.

Can You Read the Address??

From Marriage License 1945

On Sunday when I was making a study of all the address were my mother Edith lived I looked at this address on the marriage license and wanted to hit my head against the wall.  My Dad's address is clear but my mother's is not.  I know she was 28 when she married so my educated guest is the address is 108 W. 87 guess that is St. for street.  I sure wish the clerk had cleaned out his typewriter keys so they would have made a nice crisp imprint. 

Can anyone make out anything different from what I see?  I would appreciate any comment you would leave.



New Document and a New Spelling

Last night just before going to bed I found a 1910 Census with my Grandmother listed as a daughter with her 3 siblings and her mother as head of the house. 

You will notice that the last name is spelled Jirek. I have always seen the spelling as Jirak. Her Mom's name is correct her, sibling names are correct. Her age and her borthers' ages are correct. I have a different age for the sister but my original source might not be reliable on that.

The other interesting facts are Mary's brother Joseph is married but no wife is listed for him and there is a boarder an infant a William Doherty age 1 & 2/12. Where is his mother?


My great grandmother has been a widow since 1902, so for 8 years. According to this census she spoke Bohemian.

My Grandmother worked in a Cigarette factory and her brothers were painters. 

Well I have learned more and need to find out more. 

One small step for me and my ancestors.