Letters from Anita

Anita (Loveman) Sellers and Nanny Ireland, 1960

I wrote a few years ago about the efforts I took to track down my father's youngest half-sister, Carol (http://www.ancestraldiscoveries.com/2021/08/finding-my-aunt-carol.html), and her mother, Anita, so I could return several photographs to them.  After that, Anita and I wrote to each other for a while.  Recently I was going through one of my genealogy folders and found three letters that Anita had written to me.  I had been trying to remember when exactly I had been able to find her, and I guess it must have been around 2001, because that's when the first letter from her is dated.

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17 Oct 01

Dear Janice,

I'm sorry it took me so long to answer.  I really appreciate your sending me the pictures and the family tree for the Sellers family.  This is really a complicated amount of facts.

Your Mother was the second wife of your Dad.  Right?  Her name was Myra Meckler.

Bert always called your Dad, (Sunny).

I'm glad you also sent Carol a copy of the family tree.  Did you get to talk to her.  Please forgive my writing.  After breaking both wrists I tend to scribble.

Thought you might like to know Carol did go to college with my help only.  Her Dad never sent us a penny.  She was 17 and graduated 4 years later from Douglas College in New Brunswick NJ.

I worked at Fort Dix N J for 22 years.  Because I had no college I could not get a higher position than a GS-4 Top Pay.

God has been Good to us and I managed to take care of myself & Carol with no help.

I had to retire at 60 years old as Mother was sick and had to have my help.  She died at age 89 and my husband Henry Reynolds died at 79.  He insisted I go live near Carol in Fla.  I've been here for 12 years.

Pray you are keeping well and thanks again for caring enough to contact me.

All the pictures were of my family or Berts, plus a few friends.  Did you notice too the one of Nanny Ireland.  She stayed with us for 6 months after we were married.

Will close for now and thanks again.

A friend & relative

Anita

P.S. You have such beautiful hand writing.  Hope you are able to read mine.

☺

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19 Nov 01

Dear Janice,

I went through all my photos and found a couple you might like.  I am sending these four because they show Nanny Ireland plus. (other family)

I wrote on the back of them.  They were mostly taken in 1960 while we were visiting (Aunt Bettys in NJ) except for the one of Carol at age 6 months.  I couldn't remember Aunt Catherine's husband's name.

I'm surprised your Dad didn't recognize Nanny Ireland.

You might not want the one of me with Nanny but it was a better one of her. ☺

I would love to have a picture of you.

I really liked Sonny, as his Dad called him.  I'm sorry if he felt unkind toward me because of his Mom.  I didn't know they were still together.

Yes, I did meet Mary Lou while they were still married and Carol was a baby.

If you would like a picture of me at age 75, I'll send you one.  If you wouldn't I won't be offended.

Hope to hear soon again.

Love Anita

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6 Aug 02

Dear Janice

Was so good to hear from you.

I too want to say thank you for sending me your picture a while back.  I don't think I ever told you thank you.

Glad you were pleased with the picture I sent of Bert's family.  I gave you the one I thought you would want.

No I never saw that picture before.  It looks like a baby boy because the hands and feet are large.  Where did you find this picture?  What was the background on this picture?  The nose and ears don't look like your Dads or Carols.

Please forgive my writing.  My wrist has arthritis in it and hurts when I write much.

Carol has some of your Dad's features.  When Carol was born she had a little bump in one ear (Like a mole).  The doctors took it off.  They told me that your Dad had that same bump or mole in the same ear.

How's your Dad doing?  Say hello to him for me.  He was always nice to me.

I guess the weather there is hot like here.  We have 90's every day.

God is good and I'm doing OK for an old lady ☺ 76.

Write me when you get time.  From looking at your picture I can see you have a beautiful personality and a very pretty & sweet face.

I'm so glad you got in touch with me.  Thanks for wanting to know me.  My wrist is really messing up.  Hope you can read this.

Guess I better close for now.

Pray you are keeping well.

Love Anita

===

I know I would have told Anita I wanted a photo of her, but she didn't end up sending me one.  So the photos I have of her are from when she was married to my grandfather, which was from June 20, 1953 to August 1961.  The photo in this post is the one she mentioned in her letter of November 2001, taken in 1960 in New Jersey.

Wordless Wednesday

 

Wordless Wednesday

My Grandfather Bertram Lynn Sellers and His "Wives"

My paternal grandfather, Bertram Lynn Sellers, was born April 6, 1903.  This took quite some time to confirm and turned into almost a scavenger hunt.  But eventually the documentation showed that yes, this was indeed his birth date.

Grandpa was married three times, lived in sin with my grandmother (while still married to his first wife), and fathered five children that I know of:  three with his first wife, one with my grandmother, and one with his second wife.  Here are photos of him with my grandmother and the later two wives.

Anna Gauntt and Bert Sellers (probably 1930–1940)

Anita (Loveman) and Bert Sellers (probably 1954–1957)

Adelle (Taylor) and Bert Sellers (probably 1961–1970)

Something I realized while writing this post was that the first names of all three of these women begins with the letter A.  I never noticed that before.

Another thing I realized is that not a single one of these photos is dated.  I can narrow them down somewhat, but that's very frustrating.

Not as frustrating as still having no photo of Grandpa's first wife, however.  I've been trying for a while to find a photograph of Grandpa with Elizabeth Leatherberry Sundermeier, but no one in my family seems to have one, or even one of her by herself.  It's almost as if she never really existed, except that I knew my aunts, who were her daughters.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: 20 More Questions

Hmm, this week's questions for Saturday Night Genealogy Fun actually require a little bit of thought.

Here is your assignment, if you choose to play along (cue the Mission:  Impossible! music, please!):

(1) Ellen Thompson-Jennings wrote 20 More Questions About Your Ancestors and Maybe A Few About You this week and Linda Stufflebean thought it would be a great SNGF challenge.  I agree!

(2) Copy the questions from Ellen's post or from my post below and insert your own replies.  Be sure to comment on Ellen's blog so she knows you wrote about it.

(3) Tell us in your own blog post, in a comment to this post, or on Facebook or Google+.  Please leave a comment on this post with a link to your post.

Thank you to Ellen for her post and to to Linda Sufflebean for suggesting this topic.  If you have an idea for an SNGF topic, please let me know.

Q1:  Why do you love doing genealogy/family history?
A1:  Solving the puzzles.  No two families are the same, so the answers are never exactly the same.

Q2:  How far have you traveled to research an ancestor?

A2:  Only to Connecticut.  But I sent my brother on research in Manchester, England. 

Q3:  What do you think your favorite ancestor would think of our lives today?

A3:  I'm not really sure that I have a favorite ancestor.  If I have to pick someone, I guess it would be my great-great-grandfather Gershon Yitzhak Nowicki (~1858–1948).  His occupation on the passenger list when he arrived was given as wood turner, but in the United States he became a Hebrew teacher.  From what I have been told, he was a pretty lively guy, even right up to the end and apparently adjusted reasonably well to living in this country after moving here at the age of about 64.  I think he would be curious about our lives today and willing to learn new things.

Q4:  What do you think that your ancestor would like/dislike?

A4:  That's a damned good question.  I haven't a clue.

Q5:  What was the most unusual cause of death that you’ve found?

A5:  I can't think of any particularly unusual causes of death that I've found in my own family.  In my half-sister's family, I did find four generations of men who all (but one) died of heart attacks before reaching the age of 60.

Q6:  Which ancestor had the most unusual occupation?

A6:  I must have a pretty boring family, because I don't recall any particularly unusual occupations.  The aforementioned great-great-grandfather, who was marked on his 1922 incoming passenger list as a "likely public charge", probably because of his age, was enumerated eight years later in the 1930 census with the occupation of Hebrew teacher, however, so he was still working at the age of about 72.

Q7:  Have you ever gone to where your ancestor lived and it felt like home even if you’ve never been there before?

A7:  Unfortunately, no.  That happened to me the first time I came to Portland, but I have no family connection to the city.

Q8:  Do you have a distant ancestor (several generations back) that looks like someone in the family?

A8:  Sort of.  I have a copy of a photograph of an unidentified man whom I believe to be my 3rd-great-grandfather, because he bears a strong resemblance to my great-great-grandfather (his theoretical son) and has the distinctive Gorodetsky ears.

Q9:  What is the oldest ancestral photo that you have?

A9:  The oldest photo I have is of my great-great-grandparents Victor Gorodetsky and Esther (Schneiderman) Gorodetsky and their first child, Etta.  It was taken in Kamenets Podolsky, Russia (now in Ukraine), probably about 1890.

Q10:  Did you have an ancestor that had an arranged marriage?

A10:  Not that I know of, although it's likely that some of my Jewish ancestors did have arranged marriages.

Q11:  If you could live in the time period of one of your ancestors what year would it be?  Where would it be?

A11:  About 1834 in Manchester, Lancashire, England, the year after my 3rd-great-grandparents Richard Dunstan and Jane Coleclough married.  I especially would ask Jane who her parents were and where she was born.

Q12:  Which ancestor was married the most times?

A12:  My father and his father were each married three times, but my grandfather also had a long relationship with my grandmother without benefit of marriage, so he probably wins.  Grampa married Elizabeth Leatherberry Sundermeier about 1922, Anita Clarice Loveman in 1953, and Adelle Cordelia Taylor in 1961, and he lived with my grandmother Anna Gauntt from about 1934–1952.

Q13:  If you’ve tested your DNA, what was the biggest ethnicity surprise?

A13:  The 12% Irish ancestry that Ancestry said I have, and then also said that my brother has.  So far I have nothing in my research to substantiate that.  On the other hand, I don't actually believe it, either.

Q14:  Did you have a female ancestor who was different or unusual from other females from that time period?

A14:  My mother, who was not inclined toward domesticity and worked outside the home from the earliest that I can remember.

Q15:  Did your ancestor go through a hardship that you don’t know how they managed?

A15:  Not an ancestor, but a collateral relative.  According to information from the 1900 census, my 3rd-great-grandfather's brother's wife (I said collateral, remember?) had three children who were living, but in 1910 she reported that she had had three children and none of them was alive.  Losing all three of your children within a ten-year period would have to be devastating.

Q16:  How often do you research?  Are you a genealogy addict?

A16:  I do some research almost every day, but even if I'm not researching, I do something related to genealogy every day.  I'm definitely addicted.

Q17:  Do you have someone in your family that will take over the family history?

A17:  Not yet, and definitely not for my own family.  So far the most interest has been shown by my older stepson, in my research into his family.

Q18:  Have you had a genealogy surprise?  What was it?

A18:  By the time I finally got the results of the DNA test it wasn't that much of a surprise, but I did confirm that my paternal grandfather's biological father was not the man his mother married.

Q19:  Are you a storyteller?  What’s your favorite family story?

A19:  I am a pretty good storyteller, which works well when I'm giving genealogy presentations.  My favorite family story is about how my father competed on Ted Mack's Amateur Hour and came in second place to Gladys Knight.

Q20:  What was your greatest genealogy discovery?

A20:  Learning that the Sellers family is descended from Alexander Mack, the founder of the Schwarzenau Brethren (Dunkers), even though I've since learned that I'm not actually a descendant of Mack because I'm not biologically a Sellers.