SOME NOTES ABOUT PEOPLE I REMEMBER
NOTE: This is far from finished. C.J.
Someday,
Laura, Sam, Eleanor, or Sam's
and Eleanor's children, may get interested in family history. I'm the
only one left who remembers much--or anything--about the people I'm
about write about, except my sister Emily, who was born nearly five
years after I was and remembers different things. So I have made this
page for them; it includes some of my memories, and Emily has
contributed some of hers, which I precede here with her initial in
parentheses.
THE MANNER FAMILY
My mother,
Kathryn Manner Jefferson (1902-1987),
was brought up by her father's parents; her father died when she was three,
and she lost her mother around that time to circumstance. She had no siblings,
but her two aunts, Carrie and Minnie, seemed to me to be her sisters. When
I'm in the mood, I'll write something about her--she was a formidable, impressive
person. She was 24 when the picture was taken.
Grandma Manner (Great-grandmother Katarina Elizabeth Sensenstein, 1851-1934)-- She died when I was about seven. In my memory, all she did was sit in a chair on the porch. She was shapeless, a little heavy, and had bright white hair, tied in a bun with tufts sticking out. We moved to her house, 2727 Routh St., Dallas, when I was six, and only stayed there a year. Other people told me that she came from Pennsylvania, and that she was red-haired. After her husband died (or maybe before as well), she ran a rooming house at 2727, where my mother grew up. "Pal" Bogan, one of her roomers (see below), simply stayed on when she ceased to accept guests, and Aunt Carrie and Uncle Billy inherited him.
Here is the house they lived in, about 1900:
And here is the family in front of it:
Left to right, rear: George, Alfred; front: Minnie, Kate, Carrie. Herman is missing.
Though my great-grandfather,
Georg Karl Jacob Manner (1828-ca.1916),
died before I was born, I heard a lot of stories about him. He had been in
the piano manufacturing business in New York, but that business failed-the
story was that his partner stole everything, but who knows? In Dallas he
became an eminent musician; he played at one Jewish temple, and was involved
with a local Turnverein, a German singing society. He married twice; my grandmother was his second
wife. Here he is with my mother, ca. 1902.
"In his later years, when Carrie was teaching piano students and one would leave a phrase unfinished he would race downstairs and finish it. He and his friends played cards or dominoes on the dining table while Mother did her homework on the other end. Papa wrote several hymns and lots of music published by the Watson Company. He wrote 'Texas Schottische' for the Dallas Exposition in 1888.
"When he died, Mama, who was 23 years younger than he, was left to run the house. She was Pennsylvania Dutch, born in Bethlehem and raised in Egypt. Once she took Mother to Pennsylvania to the family farm. Mother said cats ran all over the kitchen and she had to drink goat's milk, which she did not like.
"To keep money coming in, Mama took in boarders. One was Pal (see below), who
worked for Western Union. Another was Nell, who once asked someone on the
telephone, 'Have you saw Roz?' Mother remembered that for years. When there
were few boarders, Mother was given a room which she fixed up and then Mama
would put her trunk in the hall and rent the room."
Agnes Freeman, my grandmother on
Mother's side--a great mystery. What I was told, I think by my mother, was
this: She and my grandfather, Alfred
Eugen Manner (1880-1905), pictured
here on their wedding day in 1901, married against his father's wishes.
For some reason, Grandfather went to sea in the merchant marine, and was
killed in Hawaii when he fell off a mast and hit the deck. Either before
or after his death, my mother somehow was put into the care of her grandfather
and mother. At some point when she was still in a pram Agnes and Agnes's brother
came with a pistol to take my mother away from her grandparents. They failed;
I don't remember why. My mother told me she occasionally she saw Agnes on
the streets of Dallas, but they didn't speak. Sad. For more details,
click here
.
Aunt Carrie
(Karolina Mathilde Manner Rawlins (1877-1962)--She was my favorite relative
by a long shot. I remember when she and Uncle Billy (W.O. Rawlins) built
their new house on Crescent Avenue, I think in 1934, when I was six or seven.
It was splendid, vastly bigger than any house I'd ever been in, with huge
front and back yards. They had a thin, very dignified black maid named Etta;
her husband, a rotund, jolly man named Livingston, was Uncle Billy's chauffeur
and handyman. When I was very small I remember going to Aunt Carrie's house
on Sunday afternoons. Daddy, Uncle Billy, Uncle Lee, and Pal (to be discussed
later), played "42," a domino game somewhat like Bridge. As soon as we got
there, Aunt Carrie would reach into her coat closet, in the hall just inside
the entrance, and pull out a fruit basket full of balls. We'd roll them around
the floor, and she was lively and would jump up and down and we would laugh.
Nothing was too good for me. We also played croquet, sometimes just Aunt
Carrie and me, but most often she and Mother and Aunt Minnie played, too,
and once in a while the men even played. My greatest joy was to get to knock
Aunt Carrie's ball off a long way. She never complained, but always looked
a little pained that I'd do such a dastardly thing to her. We also played
Parcheesi, probably the most popular board game that existed until Monopoly
usurped the throne.
She and Uncle Billy went every Saturday
to the "gill well," a sulphur water well in Reverchon Park, to get healing
water. I remember the big statue of Gen. Lee on a horse, but Emily tells me that was in Lee Park, not
Reverchon. Sometimes I got
to ride with them, which was wonderful, for they had a huge, gorgeous car,
a 1927 Gardner sedan, dark green on the bottom and black on top. It had
little pull-out awnings in the rear seats, and was plush through and through.
They never sold that car, and I always wondered what happened to it when
Aunt Carrie died. One day, though, while we were on the way to the park
a bumblebee flew in the window and stung me on the hand. I cried and cried.
I'm not sure, but I think they aborted the trip and took me back home to
Mother.
I always loved Aunt Carrie; she was always
nice, and never caused me any trouble the way Mother had to, so I thought,
and I guess I still do, that she was the nicest person in the world. When
I knew her she was overweight and old (she was my mother's aunt, not her
sister), but I have a picture of her as a girl and she was lovely, as was
Aunt Minnie. They both went to Mrs. Woodrow's School, and for some years
after they graduated (I was told) she played the piano for Mrs. Woodrow's
performances. Mrs. Woodrow was a graduate of Emerson College in Boston;
she apparently specialized in presenting her girls in formal tableaux.
of charm and was full of things to look at and leather-bound books to read. She laughed a lot and cried a lot. Once I broke a doll and she cried so I went and hid. I still feel badly about it, so she must have been really upset. Later in her life she cried mostly at some insult from her sister Minnie.
"Aunt Carrie had lovely long hair, and wore it braided on the top of her head.
"She and Uncle Billy had a wonderful yard full of rose bushes and lots of apple and pear trees. We played croquet in the back yard.
"Willie and S.T. were a couple who lived in the servants' quarters on Crescent, where the Rawlins lived. Willie wore a blue maid's uniform and apron and did the cooking. She made superb silver dollar biscuits. Our family dinners were most often held at the Rawlins house and she prepared huge feasts for us. S.T. often
served at meals. We called him 'Esty.' He was tall and smiled a lot."
Uncle Billy
(William Osbin Rawlins, 1877-1962) was a printer, but I think he somehow made more
money than the average printer. He worked at Johnson Printing Company in
Oak Lawn, Dallas, and may have been a partner. We occasionally stopped there
for a few minutes on the trips to Reverchon, but I don't remember going in.
He was very tall, and skinny, and always smoked a cigar. He died of a "malignancy,"
as Aunt Carrie called it, of the lung. He was a sober sort of man, and easily
irritated, particularly if anything interrupted the 42 game. I was afraid
of him, but I respected him greatly. Even though Uncle Lee had been a judge,
it was clear to me that my father had much greater respect for Uncle Billy.
He had travelled a great deal when he was young. He had been to Arizona,
and was standing in line to shake hands with McKinley when the President
was shot in Buffalo. He immediately went to the railroad station and left
town. All the grownups called him "W.O." When he liked some dish, he'd smack
his lips and say, "Larrupin' truck!"
Arizona. By the time I knew him he worked at and partly owned the Johnson Printing Co. in Dallas.
"His 1929 Gardner with pulldown shades and plush seats was a well known sight on Knox St. He drove, Carrie did not. We went to Ashburn's Ice Cream Shop and I had lemon custard (which has never been equalled by another ice cream). Then we would drive to a bakery and get "salt rising bread." Then to the
cemetery where Carrie's parents are buried (Oak Grove), and then to Reverchon Park, where they filled bottles from a fountain of mineral water which tasted to me like rotten eggs. Aunt Carrie and Uncle Billie must have liked it, because they often went to the Crazy Hotel in Mineral Wells to partake of the "waters." He died in 1952 while I was in Northwestern, and later on mother sold the car to a collector.
"I liked Uncle Billy a lot, although I don't remember talking to him much. He was not a handsome man, but tall and thin and a cigar smoker. He wore gray suits, white shirts with suspenders, and high-top black shoes."
"Pal," or "Mr. Bogan." (E.) "Pal sat in an easy chair in the small study off the living room at Aunt Carrie's. He wore wire-frame glasses and read constantly. He was deaf by the time I knew him, and always smiled sweetly at me and patted my hand. At big family dinners he ate very tiny helpings, and always praised the
food lavishly. He didn't like sage in dressing, and neither did I, so Willie, Aunt Carrie's cook, always made two kinds. Pal wore a red velvet smoking jacket, and I believe he joined the uncles and Daddy at 42 after the dinners. He once worked for Western Union. I don't know why he lived with the Rawlins, but he was always there."
I can't add much, though somewhere I must have a record of his full name, and will find it soon. I do remember that in the summer he sat on the front porch of the Rawlins house--and read, as usual. Once I looked at a book he'd left on the small table by his chair outside and discovered that it was a novel. He was
slight, short, and thin, with beautiful white hair. When he died I think I was off in the Navy, but when I returned Mother gave me his beautiful gold Hamilton pocket watch. The kind with a gold cover over the face, it still runs when I wind it every twenty years or so, and you can open the back cover and look at a ticking gear wheel. It's attached to a black silk fob with some kind of symbolic gold figure on the other end. The way I heard it, he used to work for the railroad as a telegrapher.
Aunt Minnie
(Minna Gertrud Manner Richardson, 1875-1950)--She was very fat, had a quite visible
black moustache, and seemed to be angry a lot; I was a little afraid of her.
She had a great big gander called "Hoover," who scared me to death. For
a long time she lived in an old, run-down house on LaClede street--it was
a mess. I think the chickens she kept wandered in and out. I always had the
impression that Uncle Lee was henpecked. My mother told me that he served
only one term as City Judge because Aunt Minnie wouldn't let him run for
a second--I don't know why. Soon after Aunt Carrie built her house, Aunt
Minnie and Uncle Lee built one themselves, on Hanover Street in University
Park. It was one of the first houses on the block, I seem to remember, but
I also remember that somebody thought it was pretentious because it had two
stories and the houses nearby had only one. Anyhow, it was nowhere as nice
as Aunt Carrie's.Aunt Minnie still kept chickens, and had a big garden there.
When we went to her house for dinner, she always served immense dinners,
as did Aunt Carrie, with three kinds of meat--beef, ham, turkey, or goose--and
numerous vegetables. At her house she was always after me to eat more. Poor
Aunt Minnie never seemed to be happy, and I never understood why.
(E.) "Aunt Minnie was Carrie's sister and nothing like her in
temperament. She was bossy and I always thought rather mean. She
henpecked Uncle Lee and always frightened me. They built the first
two-story house on Hanover Street, mostly so it would be bigger than Carrie's. Her
nephew H.H. Manner, son of Herman, Minnie's brother, was the contractor
on her house and I saw her argue with him many times. The house had an
upstairs bathroom walled in blue mirror which I loved and Mother
pronounced tacky. As far as I could tell, I was the only one who ever
went upstairs, and that was to see the bathroom and slide down the
banister.
"Aunt Minnie did a lot of "fancywork": she made quilts and crocheted
quite well. She also painted china. Aunt Carrie taught elocution and
piano at Miss Woodrow's school, but Minnie wasn't musical, I guess. She
was good in the garden and raised vegetables in her yard. She also kept
chickens and ducks on Hanover
St., along with a big gray goose named Hoover who hissed at me viciously whenever he
saw me. She kept a cardboard box with a lightbulb in it as an incubator
for baby chickens on her grand piano in the living room--another reason
family dinners were at Carrie's, I presume.
"She would keep Mother on the
phone for hours, complaining about everything. She told Carrie she had
killed Uncle Lee by taking him downtown to Sanger's, where he fell.
"When she died Daddy and a friend
went to the house to round up the twenty or so cats that roamed in and
out of the house. They were pretty wild, and one bit Dad through the
leather work gloves he wore. Cleaning the house, Mother found box after
box of shirts and ties we had given Uncle Lee for Christmas over the
years.
"She wore shapeless dark print dresses and black straw hats with flowers, and had a mustache."
Uncle Lee Richardson (1867-1947)
-- He came from Mississippi and had some enormous red lawbooks. He was always
friendly, but seemed dwarfed by Aunt Minnie. I liked him all right but really
never got to know him. Like Aunt Minnie, he was fat. He was also grey haired
and mostly bald. Once he showed me a nickel-plated revolver, the first real
one I had ever seen.
Uncle Herman Manner (ca. 1883-1935)
and Aunt Annie (Black) Manner--I
know I saw them more than once, but my only recollection was once outdoors
at 2727 Routh. They were sitting around on the porch steps 
drinking coffee, and he gave me some, even though I told him my mother didn't
allow me to have it. He talked very loud, and it frightened me slightly.
His hands were all crippled with arthritis. My mother said he never ate
vegetables--called them rabbit food. Aunt Annie was very dark, with black
hair.
Elizabeth Manner (Galloway)
, daughter of Herman and Annie, was pretty young when I knew her; I think
she may have been about seventeen. She was pretty, rather buxom, and I liked
her. She dropped out of our lives completely when Aunt Carrie and Uncle Billy
fell out with H.H.Manner
, her older brother, over some financial problem; H.H. was their contractor.
I'm told I called her 'Bism,' and I remember being sad because I never saw
her anymore.
Here are some other things Emily has contributed.
"Of Mother's family tree those were the ones we knew best. I do remember Uncle Herman and Aunt Annie, who had two children, H.H. and Elizabeth, lots older than we were. Uncle Herman had arthritis in his hands. They lived in a house with a big front porch with railings around it.
"I don't actually remember 'Mama.' I heard lots of stories about her. When I was a year old our family moved into the house on Routh St. and Mother took care of her in her 'last illness.' She was in a downstairs room. Upstairs were my brother and me. He went to the first grade and brought home chicken pox and whooping cough, whereupon he gave them to me. Mother says she was tired all of the time!"
THE JEFFERSON FAMILY
My father,
Bradley Carter Jefferson (1894-1966),
had four sisters: Annie, Mary, Linnie Mae, Allie. All of them called him
"Buddy." For some reason, I never called them "Aunt so-and-so;" I called
them by their first names. 
Grandma Jefferson
(Addie Elizabeth Barnett, (1869-1943) was a small, thin woman, quite
old when I remember her, of course. She always wore dark clothes, and had
on a thin sweater even on the hottest days, and in Texas that means hot.
When she came to our house, my mother always had to light the gas stove to
keep her warm. She seemed
nervous and excitable to me; I recall that she talked a good deal, and always
seemed a bit scandalized. She tended to keep her arms folded tightly. My father
I remember as looking at her with a tiny, tolerant smile most of the time.
You'll hear a good deal more about her in the section on my father. Here
she is with my grandfather, Walker
Carter Jefferson (ca. 1852-1916),
and her son Bradley, my father. And in the other picture, she's about
62, sitting on the steps of our house with her two granchildren, Donald Sanders
and me.
(E.) "Daddy's family was totally different and as far as I recall never mixed with Mother's at all.
"Grandma Jefferson seemed ancient to me. She was small and had white
hair in a knot on top of her head. She wore long dresses and didn't
talk much. There is one picture of me with her and Mother's Mama
sitting on a porch swing. so I guess they knew each other. I was ten
when she died, and don't really remember much more."
Ann Jefferson Martin-- She was a tough babe. While the other sisters seemed shy and a bit frightened,
Annie looked as though she'd make life miserable for anyone who gave her
trouble. We all were astonished when she married, late in life. Somehow I
didn't have much to do with her, though I saw her often enough. I tended
to steer clear, and she made no advances.
(E.) "Ann, who was called 'Sister,' worked at Butler Brothers.
Only once did I spend time with her. Mother and Ann too me to St. Louis
for a plastic surgery.While we were there we went to the St. Louis
Municipal Opera and it poured rain and Ann's dress shrunk. I was about
ten."
Mary Jefferson Sanders. Like Annie, she was dark, and she had wonderful Scots-Irish features; I think she must have been beautiful as a girl. When I knew her, she was married to Leon Sanders , a drygoods salesman, and had two sons. They were poor, I think poorer than we were, and she looked worn out most of the time. She was always nice to me when I stayed overnight at her house. I got the impression she was basically ineffectual; Leon pontificated and seemed to dominate her. I don't want to give a bad impression of him; he was nice to me, and I think he acted as men acted in those days.
I used spend the night with Mary and Leon's son,
Don when we were small--I remember
sleeping on a pallet with him. He was natural artist--he used to copy the
little cartoons in the ads for art classes that were in the paper, and he
got them exactly right. Jerry
being younger, we mostly ignored him.
(E.)"Mary was the aunt I knew best.
Her son Jerry was a constant companion when I was little. He was a
couple of years younger, maybe only one. We spent a great deal of time
at his house, which I liked, because Mary was much more permissive than
our mother. Jerry had a fertile imagination and we spent hours on
acting out cowboy and outer space stories in the back yard.
"Sheila says Leon, Mary's husband, was a drunk and that's probably why
Mother and Dad didn't like him much. Leon sold novelties, things Daddy
said were sold in 'racket stories.'"
Allie Jefferson Kilchenstein.
Very nice to me, she always seemed slightly withdrawn and a touch frightened.
Yet somehow I think of her as capable of being very stubborn. I don't remember
her as having much to say, but she smiled nicely, and I liked her. My cousin
Sheila recently showed me a scrapbook of poems she wrote. She, too,
married late, to Roy Kilchenstein, a very nice man who doted on her.
(E.)
"Allie was a twin. Thomas died at five of diphtheria. She never talked
much, but was always very nice. She was Sheila's favorite and died at
95 in a nursing home in Florida near Sheila."
Lynnie Mae Jefferson Delfeld.
Linnie Mae seemed shy, and spoke in a low, sweet voice. She was nice to
a fault, and had a fragile blond beauty. She could draw beautifully, and
worked as a commercial artist for at leat a short time. Her husband,
Leo Francis Delfeld (1909-1998),
I liked a lot. He treated me like a grownup, and had interesting things to
say; I regret that I don't remember what he talked to me about, but I remember
that he taught me how to drive after Daddy had failed miserably, which I
don't blame him for. Del was always calm, which was very nice. I hadn't
seen their daughter, Sheila Delfeld Hanes, more than couple of times
since she was a small child until July of this year, and still don't have a decent picture. I just put
in the picture of Del and Lynnie Mae dancing to show that people had a good
time, even in the dark ages.