A to Z Challenge 2024 - All Wrapped Up

 This year I got farther into blogging in the A to Z Challenge than I have ever got before.  Maybe next year, life will have simmered down and I might complete the whole program.  This year,  our daughter's illness has overshadowed everything.  

I wish to thank everyone who read my blog and who commented.  The poor thing has been somewhat neglected in the past several years, and the A to Z Challenge was a great way to rejuvenate it.  All of you helped me in that effort, and you have my gratitude.  What seems funny is that my participation in this challenge has been in the last three presidential-election years!  I won't wait four years before doing it again!

I am also participating in the 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks challenge, created and curated by Amy Johnson Crow.  I got into it late, again due to the stressful events mentioned above.  I'll do my best to keep up with it! 

Delving into my ancestors' occupations and professions was an interesting journey, especially the discovery of a female journalist of the early 20th Century in the family.  

So many times, our findings about our ancestors may puzzle us in some of their practices, beliefs, and opinions, and the ways they conducted their lives.  It is wise to remember, as we historians do, that "The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there."  (L. P. Hartley, The Go-Between (1953))

Thank you again!

A to Z Challenge 2024 - Professionally Speaking - P is for Pullman Conductor

I'm jumping in this entry from my family to the family of my husband, Keys Rhodes, to his grandfather Andrew Lewis Rhodes (1882-1966), who began as a Pullman Conductor in June of 1912, and ended that career in retirement in September of  1952.  

He was born 23 September 1882 in Morgantown, Pike County, Ohio, son of Samuel H. Rhoades and Ida May Dewey.  It was during Andrew Rhodes's lifetime that the spelling of the familial surname was changed, for reasons unknown.  Andrew Rhodes spelled the surname both ways in his Railroad Retirement paperwork, finally settling on the spelling we all bear today.  I knew the Rhodes family from church since I was 7 years old, when Keys and I first met.  Andrew Rhodes had a wonderful thick head of pure-white hair in his later years.  He died 12 March 1966, while Keys and I were in college.

He began his railroad career in February of 1903 as a clerk for United States Express Company, a freight delivery company that operated from 1854 to 1914.  He alternated between Clerk and Messenger in Ohio until June of 1912, at which time he signed on with Pullman as a conductor and was assigned to Jacksonville, Florida.  Early on, he served in the Tampa area, and that is where he met Della Mae Marshall of Lakeland.  They were married in Lakeland on October 14, 1918.(1)  A year later, almost to the day, their son L. Marshall Rhodes was born in Tampa.  Their movements can be traced to Jacksonville around 1922 by an Abstract of Title for a period from 3 November 1922 to 26 March 1928.(2)  Their daughter, Della Mae Rhodes, Jr., was born 12 February 1925 in Jacksonville.  The family remained in Jacksonville.

(1) Andrew Lewis Rhodes, Railroad Retirement File. United States of America, Railroad Retirement Board, copy conveyed by letter to M. Keys Rhodes dated 11 July 2006.

(2) Title & Trust of Florida, Abstract of Title, 3 November 1922-26 March 1928, for Andrew Lewis Rhodes.  Original in possession of Karen Packard Rhodes.

A to Z Challenge 2024 - Professionally Speaking - O is for Optician

 I wore glasses from the age of four to the age of sixteen, as my eyesight went from far-sightedness to "normal."  I resumed wearing them a few years later, as my eyesight began to trend toward near-sightedness.  My eye doctor was local, in Jacksonville, Florida, where I grew up, but the professional who made my eyeglasses was in Cleveland, Ohio.

He was my granduncle, Lawrence Leslie Reed (1896-1971), my mother's uncle.  He was an optician.  He was born into the large family of Francis Harvey Reed and Florence Elizabeth McKee on 2 May 1896 in Logansport, Indiana.  No matter the degree, we all just called him Uncle Lawrence.  I never met him, but for years, I wore glasses he made for me.  My aunt Elizabeth Reed would order glasses for me every time I was given a new prescription by my eye doctor.  And when the new pair arrived, I would go around the corner to the next street, where Aunt Elizabeth, whom we all called "Sissy," as she was my mother's adoptive sister, lived with her mother, my grandma Mary Reed, and pick up my new glasses.  My grandma's nickname was "Chollie."  Yes, there's a story there.

I never had a choice of frames, and for some reason -- I guess because I was a young girl -- Uncle Lawrence favored sending me glasses with pink frames.  I never could stand pink.  I was a tomboy, a climber of trees, player of baseball, and rider of my bicycle all over the south side of Jacksonville.  My favorite color has always been blue.  But sometimes, when in my adult years I did pick my own frames, after Uncle Lawrence passed on, I would pick pink.  Maybe it was in tribute to the far-away granduncle who made my glasses and selected my frames so long ago.

A to Z Challenge 2024 - Professionally Speaking - L is for Lawyer

My great-great granduncle Major Wellman Packard (1820-1903) was not a military officer.  Major was his given name, not a rank. He has been known down the generations in the family as Wellman Packard.  He was a lawyer in Illinois, and was friends with another Illinois lawyer named Abraham Lincoln.  In the collections of the Library of Congress is a letter that Wellman wrote to his friend Abe on 22 February 1860.  Lincoln had previously written to Wellman asking him to take care of a matter that Lincoln had somehow overlooked:  he was supposed to have paid the Bloomington, Illinois, property taxes of one William Florville, a Haitian immigrant.  In his letter to Lincoln, Wellman reports that he has done as Lincoln asked and paid the taxes.  Wellman had collected ten dollars from another man who owed it to Lincoln, and used it to pay Florville's taxes of $10.10.  On the balance of ten cents, Wellman dismissed any debt on Lincoln's part, saying, "Bal 10 cts which will be just enough to drink my health with, which please do if it suits you -- but in any event you need not "remit" at the present high rates of exchange!  

Wellman goes on to ask Lincoln about a certain case.  Then a bit of the politics of the day comes in to Wellman's next remark: "My brother-in-law N. S. Sunderland has just returned from Ohio, and he assures me the tide of politics is settling decidedly in favor of 'Old Abe' for President."(1)

 Twenty-five years after Welllman died in 1903, a small book that he had written was printed in a very small edition of only 30.  It was reprinted in 1971, also in a limited edition, but larger, of 500 copies.  I was provided a copy by a cousin.  In this small book, Wellman wrote of a trip he took to California with a party of "forty-niners," people lured by the discovery at Sutter's Mill of gold.  Wellman went on the trip to observe, not to go panning for gold.  One of his observations: "It was indeed providential that the news came to us late in the autumn months of 1848, and the journey overland could not be attempted until the following spring.  Even then very many started without the necessary preparation, and suffered the penalty of their want of foresight in much suffering and unnecessary hardship and privation."

One of the more thrilling events was the day the wagon train in which he was traveling found a tremendous herd of bison bearing down directly on it.  The herd was as has been described of herds that once roamed the plains in the thousands, and it took several brave men on horseback, with their lungs and with firearms fired into the air to turn the herd and save the wagon train.(2)

Major Wellman Packard, a man of law and letters, returned to Bloomington and died there 28 February 1903.

(1) Abraham Lincoln Papers, Series 1.  General Correspondence.  1933-1916: Major W. Packard to Abraham Lincoln, Wednesday, February 22, 1860 (Florville's Taxes), https://www.loc.gov/resource/mal.0241700/?st=pdf (accessed 17 April 2024).

(2) Packard, Major Wellman. Early Emigration to California, 1849-1850.  (Reprint: Fairfield, Washington: Ye Galleon Press, 1971).

A to Z Challenge 2024 - Professionally Speaking - J is for Journalist

 I am pleased to find a journalist in the family, and more pleased that this family journalist was a woman.  Helen Augusta "Gussie" [Packard] DuBois, my great-grandaunt, was a feature writer for the Pasadena Star-News in the 1920s and 1930s.(1)   She was born in Chautauqua County, New York in 1851, probably in New Harmony Township.  She died in Los Angeles County, California, in 1941, probably in Pasadena, where she lived for many years.  She married Louis Stanley DuBois in 1880.  He died in 1911 and she never remarried.  

She contributed stories to a number of California newspapers and magazines, and was also known as a poet.  Speaking to her broad range of interests, she also wrote for religious publications, being a member of a Presbyterian congregation, and was known for her celebrity interviews conducted with "skill and tact."(2) 

For the funeral of her friend Nellie M. Russ, head of Pasadena's public library, Gussie DuBois wrote a poem she titled "Friends."

To be a friend, O strong and subtle power

That so demands the best the soul has known.

Life has no greater honor for its dower:

I hold it higher than to win a throne.(3)

 (1)  "Helen Root Wolf New Organist-Director of Local Christian Church," San Pedro (California) News-Pilot, 28 Aug. 1941

(2)  "Mrs. Gussie Packard DuBois Dies at Home," Bloomington (Illinois) Daily Pantograph, 17 Sept. 1941, Page 2.

(3)  "Noted Librarian is Laid to Rest," Pasadena Post, 3 Nov 1927, Page13.

 

A to Z Challenge 2024 - Professionally Speaking - I is for Insurance

One of the occupations my father Arden Packard (1911-1954) pursued after retiring from the Navy at the end of World War II was as an insurance salesman.  He worked for the Angus B. Rosborough agency in Jacksonville, Florida in the early 1950s.  The Rosborough Agency represented Massachusetts Mutual Insurance Company in the Jacksonville area.  

A half-page ad in the 1951 R. L. Polk Jacksonville City Directory answered one question, solving a small mystery for me.  For many years, as a teenager and adult, I had heard my mother and grandmother mention a man of the surname Stoudemire as a family friend.  I had never met this individual; I don't remember him being a guest in our house either before or after my father died in 1954.   But there in the half-page ad in the city directory was the name right below that of my father.

Another insurance salesman -- one who over the years sold policies to my grandmother, my aunt, my mother, myself and my husband, and our daughters -- told me one time that my father had mentored him in insurance sales when he was a young man just starting out in the field.  

But again, as he had so many times before, my father got happy feet and, even having been fairly successful in insurance sales, he wanted to move on to something else, and soon we were on our way to California.  Once again. 

A to Z Challenge 2024 - Professionally Speaking - H is for HVAC

HVAC stands for Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning.  After my brother Arden ("Ned") Packard II (1942-1996) was medically retired from the Marines, he took some training in HVAC.  His MOS (Military Occupational Specialty) in the Marines had been Aviation Electronics, so the switch was not all that much of a change.  

He was placed in charge of the HVAC facilities on an aircraft carrier out of Bremerton.  That meant, for one thing, that he got to go out to sea on the carrier from time to time.  He later went to work for CDI Marine, of Bremerton, as their Senior Electrical Designer.  

All this was a result of being different from most of the other boys we knew, who could be found hunched over the engines of their cars or their parents' cars.  Not Ned.  No engines for him.  He could be found lying upside down on the front seat of Mom's '51 Packard with his head under the dashboard as he fiddled with the radio.  His interest in electronics was lifelong.

A to Z Challenge 2024 - Professionally Speaking - E is for Engineer

 My father, Arden Packard, graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1934, with a degree in civil engineering.  During World War II, he devoted his career to his first love: flying.  Medically retired in early 1941, he was recalled to active duty in October of 1941, as the country experienced a military buildup in anticipation of future involvement in war raging across the world.  The surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, 7 December 1941, brought the future into focus for everyone in the nation as the U.S. entered World War II by declaring war on Japan.

After the war, unable to find engineering work, he entered into the world of advertising with his brother, Jack.  This endeavor was chronicled in the first entry in this year's A to Z Challenge: A is for Advertising.  After the agency dissolved and my uncle went into business for himself, also in advertising, my father served as the general manager of a printing company, then sold insurance.

Finally, in about 1951, he landed a civil engineering job helping design a duPont chemical plant in Pensacola, Florida.  My memory is sketchy on this because I was only four years old at the time.  There was a book published on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the Class of 1934, but our copy of it was disposed of without our knowledge by someone who shared living quarters and wanted our space for her belongings.  I have tried to track down a copy of that book, and intend to try again this week.  In that book is an essay by my mother on my father's life and career, and she mentioned this engineering job of my father's.  

A to Z Challenge 2024 - Professionally Speaking - C is for Crafts

 At least three of my ancestors were craftspersons who made their living with their crafts.  My mom and dad were hobbyists at particular crafts.

My paternal great-great grandfather Mathew Hale Packard (1822-1881) was a carpenter in New York and in Illinois.  His occupation as a craftsman was interrupted by the Civil War, in which he served in two different regiments of cavalry from New York.  After the war, he moved the family to Bloomington, Illinois, and returned to his craft.

While Mathew was being a carpenter or a soldier, his wife, Emily A. Hoyt (1823-1904) was a milliner.  I have not been able to find any more information about how she practiced her profession: whether she worked from home or had a shop, or whether she designed for women only, men only, or for both.  I'm thinking local newspapers might have advertisements she may have bought.

My maternal great-great grandfather, Nelson Reed McKee (1838-1908), was a jeweler and watchmaker.  He had a shop in Monticello, White County, Indiana.  In 1879, he disappeared, sparking a search of the town and its surroundings.  Later, he turned up in Wisconsin, where he married again . . . without the benefit of a divorce from his first wife, my great-great grandmother Sarah Ann Sunderland (1848-1922).  Sarah eventually married again, taking pains to obtain an uncontested divorce from Nelson first.  Finally settling in Beloit, Wisconsin, Nelson again practiced his craft as a jeweler and watchmaker.

My mother, Martha Shideler Reed (1916-1980) was a craftsperson.  Her crafting activity was confined to home and family, rather than in any commercial venture.  She could knit like a pro, and knitted socks, hats, sweaters and other garments for us.  She was working on a pair of socks for my father when he died in 1954.  She never took up her knitting needles again after that.  She was also good at sewing -- a pursuit at which I am totally incompetent.  She made dresses for my sister and me and shirts for my brother out of flour sacks when we were very young.

My father, Arden Packard (1911-1954) also had a craft, as a hobby.  He did leatherwork.  One of my last memories of him was sitting at the dining room table working on a belt.  He also made wallets.  He also was a great storyteller, which is a craft as well.

A to Z Challenge 2024 - Professionally Speaking - B is for Business

 Some of my ancestors were involved in business in one way or another.  

My adoptive maternal grandfather, Perry Wilmer Reed (1885-1938), was a railroad freight agent, having to do with the business of shipping goods for all sorts of commercial enterprises by rail.  After retiring from railroad work, he became the Executive Secretary of the Pensacola, Florida, Chamber of Commerce.

My paternal grandfather, Walter Hetherington Packard (1879-1937), had his fingers in all sorts of pies relating to business.  He was a builder and developer in California during the early 20th century boom.  He was a stock broker.  He sold real estate.  He had mining interests.  Whatever fortune he may have accumulated from these enterprises up to that point vanished in the Crash of 1929.  He managed to rebuild some of that by the end of the Depression. It was on his way to sign a mining contract that he was killed in an automobile accident. 

My paternal great-grandfather, Oscar Merry Packard (1849-1932), began his professional life as a builder and developer in the Chicago area, but moved to California at the end of the 19th century.  He settled in the Los Angeles area at the beginning of a real estate boom.  

With my father Arden Packard (1911-1954), the apple didn't fall far from the tree, as he had some projects relating to business after retiring from the Navy after World War II.  The Navy was his primary and most-loved occupation, being graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1934.  I've already posted about his brief adventure in advertising with his brother, John Creighton "Jack" Packard (1909-1987).  After their advertising partnership dissolved, Uncle Jack continued in advertising, with his sole proprietorship, Jack Packard Advertising, until his retirement.  My father also sold insurance in California and in Florida, and used his degree in engineering on a project in Pensacola, Florida.

Francis A. Packard (1833-1911), brother of my great-great grandfather Mathew Hale Packard, was a merchant in Bloomington, Illinois.  His career also was interrupted by the Civil War, in which he served in a unit of Illinois volunteer infantry.  After the war, he returned to Bloomington, where he sold insurance and real estate.   

Some of my ancestors got up to business of a different kind -- monkey business!  I've blogged about that in the past, and as soon as I find out about any more monkey business on the part of my ancestors, I'll blog about that too.  It's the mischievous who are most interesting.

 

A to Z Challenge 2024 - Professionally Speaking - A is for Advertising

When my father, Commander Arden Packard, USN, retired from the Navy after World War II, one of the first jobs he had was in partnership with his brother, John Creighton "Jack" Packard, in the advertising business.  They opened their agency, Packard & Packard Advertising, in Los Angeles, both being natives of that city.  The firm was written up in two case studies of successful advertising campaigns.

One of their projects was for a company in Glendale, in Los Angeles County, whose owner did not believe in advertising.  Before the war, his small company had made shoelaces.  During the war, it ended up making nylon cording for parachute shrouds under government contract.  On a parachute, a shroud is any of the lines running from the canopy to the harness.  After the war, the company, left with some twenty tons of surplus nylon, decided to make nylon fishing line.  The business got off to a rocky start and was in danger of folding, when the owner decided that maybe he should try advertising, after all.  He contacted Packard & Packard for the job.

The Packard brothers advised a national advertising campaign.  The company's owner produced twelve thousand dollars as a budget.  The brothers started with full-page, color ads in periodicals aimed at the hardware trade, where the fishing line would likely be sold.  One-third-page ads were placed in sporting periodicals aimed at consumers.  The business owner favored the use of coupons in the ads, which consumers could fill in and use to request more information.  Coupons sent in would show the effectiveness of the advertising campaign, and provide data for further refinements of the campaign.  

The coupons sent in requesting more information were answered with the information and samples of the fishing line.  Consumers returning the coupons had also been asked to provide the name of their local sporting-goods store.  Initial response was 2,900 coupons mailed in, and hundreds of inquiries from dealers interested in carrying the product.  According to this case study, when the campaign began, the fishing-line company owner was "cautiously counting the mail resulting from the ads.  By the end of the campaign he was weighing it."(1)

The second case was for a Los Angeles company that manufactured rectifiers, equipment that converts alternating current into direct current, for technical applications.  Though having been in business for nearly two decades in manufacturing technical equipment, the company had been ill-served by its former advertising agency, and was only locally-known.  This company needed a national advertising campaign, and they turned to Packard & Packard.

The problem was not the battery-charger market the company had always produced for, which was the military and commercial aircraft industry.  The company was entering, simultaneously, two new markets:  motion-picture projection equipment and quick-charging equipment for automotive repair businesses.  The target for the advertising campaign would be jobbers and distributors rather than the general public.  The ads had to be technical enough to convince the target audience of the manufacturer's ability, but also had to be massaged into the proper technical language for each of the three different industries to be served.  Even at this technical level, the Packard brothers again used coupons effectively.  The campaign was a success in both domestic and international markets for the manufacturer's products, and the CEO of the company remarked that the campaign would be expanded as needed.(2)

As successful as the Packard brothers were in advertising, they dissolved their partnership.  I doubt it was because of any disagreement between my father and my Uncle Jack.  There certainly was no animosity between them, as they remained in contact, with frequent visits always jovial in nature, as I remember.  Our families were very close into the 1950s, and after my father died in 1954, remained so.  Uncle Jack and Aunt Billie were very close to all of us, and were among my favorite relatives.  Jack stayed in advertising, in his own firm, Jack Packard Adversing, of Glendale.  He retired in the 1980s, and he and Aunt Billie moved to Florida, where we lived.  Visits were much more frequent with them living so much closer to us. My father may have received or had notice of a job opportunity in his field of engineering, and might have welcomed the chance to use his degree from the Naval Academy.

Notes:

1.  "Didn't Believe in Advertising; Tried It; Now Does," in Printer's Ink Editors and Contributors, Case Histories of Successful Advertising: Problems - Solutions - Results.  (New York: Funk and Wagnall's and Printer's Ink Publishing Company, 1949), 42-44.

2.  "Hit-or-Miss Ads Failed, but Consistent Campaign Clicked," in Printer's Ink Editors and Contributors, Case Histories of Successful Advertising: Problems - Solutions - Results.  (New York: Funk and Wagnall's and Printer's Ink Publishing Company, 1949), 128-132.