1026 Madison Topeka KS (Updated - 12-2-12)

1026 Madison - 1962. It was torn down soon after to make way for I-70 through Topeka.

Cindy and Scott in the Grandparents' bedroom, one of two in the house.

Sally and Dad, Ray, peer up the stairs at the house. Looking at this, I'd say my fear of those stairs was justified.

Sally and I in the other bedroom. It had a great view of the street.

Scott, Cindy and I in the living room. From the empty bookshelves, I'd say it was close to the move to Oakley.

All of us except Sally who must have taken the picture around the table. Note Scott in the high chair. He was 5.

Vala in the pantry.

Vala at the stove.

Vala and her sister-in-law, Rose Morgan Hamon, in the garden. I remember it as so thick with flowers, one could barely walk through them.

Update - We siblings discussed whether the pictures were from 1959 or 1962. I certainly didn't remember, but Sally thought 1962. I probably should have know it was 1962 because my braids were cut off after 1959. But the definitive source is Mom's recollections she titled My Life.  She composed most of it from the calendars she kept through the years. The following is quoted from the 1962 calendar . .  . April 5th, Ray's parents sold their house to the highway department. . . April 12th we moved Ray's parents to their new house on Oakley.

But no mention of why Scott at age 5 sat in a high chair.

Steve's Birthday

Steve and elephants_1950

Steve_Halloween_1950

Steve, Sally and Susan Halloween 1951

Steve's birthday with Mom. You can see a bottle of milk, still coming in glass bottles.

To celebrate Steve's hallmark birthday, I'm posting a few pictures from his early years. We know that he survived, but his parents have let him get very close to some slumbering elephants.

Happy Birthday, Steve!

Our Tall Ancestor

The unknowns, but to me the woman on the right looks like Ada Fraser below.

Jimmy, Ada, Miller and Hugh Fraser - Carmel CA, Labor Day, 1927.

As everyone knows, the Internet can be distracting. Earlier this week I was working on identifying people from Gussie's notebooks. These were pictures from 1907 that for some reason were unidentified.  Looking at one I thought it looked like the Frasers. Betsy Sharpe Walker's sister Roseanna married Hugh Fraser and some time during the first decade of the 1900s moved to California.



It would be more definite to me, if both pictures had three men instead of one having two and one three. But back to my Internet distraction. Searching through Ancestry.com, I found that the 1940 census record identified Ada's daughter Kaetherine, as an artist who worked as a cartoonist in California. (One record indicated that she had sailed from Yokohama Japan and sailed into Liverpool, September 1939. For another aside Liverpool was the port her mother Roseanna and the other Sharpes had departed 70 years earlier. She returned to America via New York in October 1939.) I thought maybe her Kaetherine's daughter might be alive, but that came up empty. Then I realized that maybe Kaetherine had had an artistic career that might be of note. I googled Kaetherine Sumner Einfeldt and up came Kae Sumner Einfeldt with her own page in Wikipedia.

Her claim to fame is she formed the first modern tall club, The California Tip Toppers Club. It eventually grew into a world wide organization. You can read the rest by following this link, but it goes on to say she worked on the Disney's Snow White, painting the dwarfs.  Kae Sumner Einfeldt Wikipedia.

This second link expands on women like Kae who worked for Walt Disney on his cartoons in the 1930s and 1940s.
Vanity Fair article describing the work of the painters at Disney

So drink a toast to our second cousin, once removed. Cheers, Kae! I'll watch the dwarfs in Snow White with more interest now.

EA's Sinclair Station in 1936

EA at the Sinclair Station, 10th & College Blvd.

 In 1936 one of the Topeka newspapers highlighted EA's 16 years as owner of the Burkhardt Battery and Electric Company.

It will be a big week this week at the Burkhardt Battery and Electric Co., 118 W Fourth. E. A. Burkhardt, owner, is celebrating the sixteenth anniversary of the establishment of his business in Topeka and is also opening a new Sinclair Super Service station at Tenth and College avenues. The station which will be fully equipped to handle all kinds of service, will be formerly opened the latter part of the week.

After Burkhardt had finished his work at Washburn college where he captained the football team in 1911, he started to work in the electrical department of the Santa Fe Railway. Later he became foreman of the Keele Electric Co where he became interested in forming a business of his own. After operating a Willard Battery Service Station in Osage City for two months, he returned to Topeka and opened his local store at the present location, 118 W Fourth street. From that time on his business registered a steady growth and his personnel increased from one employee until he now has a staff of 11.
So successful was he in retailing Willard batteries that he was given a district distributorship so that he could handle, thru other dealers, the entire Topeka trade territory of 16 counties. Since he distributes for 235 Willard Storage Battery dealers, he now has to buy batteries by the carload, a thousand at a time. This firm also is distributor for the following nationally-known merchandise: Delco-Remy automotive parts, Mohawk tires and Grizzly Brake linings.

The new Burkhardt’s Sinclair Service station will feature . . . . washing, cleaning and polish service for car owners. Cecil Haug will be manager of the station; O B Thomas is the retail sales manager of the Electric Shop; and Burkhardt spends most of his time doing promotional work in his distributing territory. 

Happy Birthday Helen and Mary Grace

Helen taking care of Mary Grace in 1923.

Helen helping Mary balance on the car.

As a toast to Mary Grace and Helen on their birthdays are a couple of pictures of them in the early years. Mary Grace's birthday was September 26 and Helen's a mere 10 days later on October 6th. 

Mary, Helen, Allan & Ethel on a trip to Colorado in 1931.

Ethel, Helen and Mary in Topeka in 1942.

Electric Park

Electric Park in Kansas City 1907.

 Lily Walker married John Leib in 1903 and was soon living in Kansas City, Missouri where John grew up.  John was a traveling salesman and there is at least one letter he wrote to his children on the road in the collection of documents Laura and Dorothy had collected.

These are photographs from one of Mary Grace's scrapbooks.

Electric Park 1907

Electric Park according to Monroe Dodd's 2003 book, Then & Now 2, was started by the Heim brothers who had a brewery in the East Bottoms. The park featured a roller coaster and beer garden with the beer piped directly from the brewery. The park derived its name from the massive amounts of electricity for nighttime.Vintage Postcard of Electric Park


As a member of the Methodist Church, Betsy Sharpe Walker would have been a member of the Women's Christian Temperance Union. But I'm guessing since she visited this park she would have had an open mind about the use of alcohol. I would guess she didn't partake of the beer.

But back to Electric Park - eventually the Heim brothers moved it to a larger area north of Brush Creek, but the park was destroyed by fires in 1925 and 1934.

Fred, Betsy, Lily and Eula at the Electric Park 1907.

Electric Park 1907

 My thought when I look at these pictures is I'm glad I was born and grew up in a time when you didn't have to wear you hair up. I can also tell by looking at these that I descend directly from women who considered their hair an after thought. They have their hair up but it doesn't look like they put in a great deal of time putting it up. Slap it up and go.

The Leib home on East 13th St Kansas City Missouri in 1907.

1921 Picnic

Visiting with Helen last Saturday at Morgan's wedding, I said I would post some pictures from a picnic in 1921. Helen's comment was they didn't picnic like others as they used skillets. I'm guessing to cook fried chicken.

Eula, Grace, Edna and Jennie-October 1921

More fun in the road.

Helen, EA, George Bale, Percy, and Frank Faust in October 1921

I couldn't figure out the fascination for standing in the road, but it makes for interesting pictures. One wonders if EA is aware that Helen is strolling apparently unattended down the road.

Bud Walker, Marcie Walker, Mildred Faust, Marguerite Faust, Allan, Ethel, Bernice Bale and Helen in October 1921. Seven of Betsy and Edward's eight Topeka grandchildren. Missing is Walker Smith, son of Ada and Bill Smith. Bernice and her parents lived in Clay Center. Also absent are the three children of Lily and John Leib who lived in Kansas City, Mo.

The 1886 - 1912 Scrapbook Continues

 Today is an assortment of photos from 1907. The one at the left I would guess is Edna's high school senior portrait. Its only label says 1907 and in 1907 Edna would have turned 19 in May.

Next is one from that same year - at least that's what it's labeled as.The white dresses and hats covered with flowers caught my attention. I wonder if they would be Easter dresses?

The next photo is anyone's guess. I don't recognize anyone in it, except the one guy looks like Nick Collison, whom I'm sure it's not. The only identification says Meryl Parks and he's not anyone I recognize. Gotta love the newspapers.



The final one for today has no identification except the year 1907. It's here because I like it's composition.

Edna, 18 and Ada, 13, in 1907.

Meryl Parks 1907 - why the newspapers?

Mom's Notebooks

As you know Mary Grace put together numerous notebooks-scrapbooks they were originally-of her life, her parents, her in-laws, her children and grandchildren. What to do with them? That is the question.

Sally and I have decided that scanning them is probably the best plan. For the past few months, I've started doing that. Apparently so often, that even 3-year old Cameron says, "Don't you think you need to do your pictures?" I've shared a few of them, but I thought I should try and do it more often. Daily seems like an impossible goal, but maybe with Cameron's goading I'll get it done.

Mr. F E Vincent and his class in 1898. Edna is second from right.

Mr. Vincent's Class

Mr. Vincent

Edna on the end of the first row in 1900 so she'd be 12.

Included in the scrapbook is a thank-you note from Mr. Vincent to Edna for her visit while he was home ill. According to the letter he'd been absent from school for nearly two weeks. Considering that she saved the letter and photographs Mr. Vincent must have been important to Edna.She did teach after college until she married. It's hard to believe, but once she was married she could no longer teach. I guess the thought was that she didn't need a job because she had someone to take care of her. It was immaterial that she was earning more than EA.

Hope to be posting again soon.

Mom & Ernie

Edna on the left & Morna Collins.

 Mom had many stories about growing up and she wrote them all down in her collection, My Life. But one I've always remembered was about Ernie falling out of the car and no one noticing. Even back in the fifties and sixties when the only thing holding you in the car was a door, it was hard to visualize. As time has passed and children are now carefully ensconced in car seats, it's unfathomable.

I'm not challenging the veracity of the story, I'm just illustrating it with these pictures. The following is Mom's description: 

As I was growing up my parents were good friends of the minister and his family.  Their name was Collins. . . My mother liked his wife very much and they did things together a lot.  They had four children like my parents. 

The Collins-Burkhardt families--Mary on the right and Ernie the left.

The youngest one was named Ernie and we were not in school so we would be with the two women.  One day my mother was driving down the river road that ran beside the Kaw River on a dirt road going to my Uncle Percy’s cabin.  The door flew open and Ernie fell out.  They didn’t notice and it took awhile before I get their attention that Ernie was no longer in the car.  I did not push him.  I liked Ernie.  

Collins' Summer home on Crystal Lake, MI- 1928

The Kaw River from Percy's Camp in 1927.

The Collins & Burkhardt children. Mary & Ernie are the little ones in front.

Burkhardts and Collins' on the shores of Crystal Lake-1928.

 Her description continues:
We spent one summer vacation with them on Crystal Lake in Michigan.  At that time Women sometimes wore knickers while on vacation.  Evidently my mother didn’t like the way the pictures came out as she cut the bottom off all the pictures that she was in. The Collins owned a cabin on the lake.  Everything was very sandy.

One other detail she has in her memoir is that Edna allowed Dr. Collins to keep his beer in their refrigerator, because he couldn't in his at home. One has to remember that the twenties were a time of Prohibition so it would have been highly improper for a man of the cloth to have illegal substances in his home.

I've heard these stories multiple times, but it's nice to see the people involved.