Throwback Thursday: A Midshipman on Leave

 This picture was taken sometime between 1930 and 1934.  The people pictured are my grandmother Elizabeth Jane (Reynolds) Packard, my father Arden Packard, and my grandfather Walter Hetherington Packard.  The picture was probably taken in Pasadena, California, where my grandparents lived.  My father is in the uniform of a midshipman at the United States Naval Academy, Annapolis, Maryland.  He was on leave from the Academy, which suggests he was in his third or fourth year there.

 

A is for Arden

This post is part of the A to Z Challenge for genealogy bloggers.  I'm catching up today, because I got a little bit of a late start on this.  This is a Facebook group, so you'll have to log in to Facebook to find out more about it, if you'd like to.

Arden is a name that has been in my extended paternal family for four generations now.  My father was the first.  His parents, Walter Heatherington Packard and Elizabeth Jane (Reynolds) Packard could not decide on a name, as the story goes.  Walter put on the birth certificate "Walter Heatherington Packard, Jr." but grandma Elizabeth ("Betty") put her foot down.  One Walter Heatherington Packard in the family was quite enough, she said.  They could not come to an agreement on a name, so for the interim, they did agree to put Arden on the birth certificate.  They chose that name as a stopgap, because grandfather Walter worked as the supervisor at the Arden Dairy in Los Angeles at the time.

They never did come up with another name, so my father was Arden Packard.  He had no middle name, probably because that, too, had been set aside for a while during the time grandma and grandpa Packard were supposed to be agreeing on a name!

My brother was Arden Packard II, but was called "Ned."  That nickname came from a Naval Academy classmate of my father's who was killed at Pearl Harbor, Edward Worthington, who was called "Ned."  My brother died in 1996.

Various grandchildren and now great-grandchildren in the family have Arden either as a given name or a middle name, preserving the legacy of my father, who died in 1954.  One of these new little Ardens is a girl, and the name fits for both girls and boys.  I have to say that it touches me that my cousins and others in the family have seen fit to preserve that legacy, my father and brother apparently having made quite an impression on them.

Women's History Month: Marriage Records

Today's instruction from Lisa Alzo at The Accidental Genealogist is:

March 4 — Do you have marriage records for your grandparents or great-grandparents? Write a post about where they were married and when. Any family stories about the wedding day? Post a photo too if you have one.

I have a marriage record for my maternal great-grandparents and my paternal great-grandparents, and for my maternal grandparents, but not for my paternal grandparents -- just haven't got round to that one yet.

My maternal great-grandparents were Francis Harvey "Frank" Reed and Florence Elizabeth McKee. The marriage was announced on page 1 of the Monticello (Indiana) Herald, Thursday, September 18, 1884: "Married, at the residence of the bride's mother, on Wednesday, Sept. 10, 1884, at 12:30 p.m., by Rev. L. J. Natzger of Logansport, Mr. Frank Reed, of Portland, Ind., to Miss Flora McKee, of this place. The ceremony was witnessed by a number of friends and relatives and the happy couple were the recipients of many handsome and appropriate gifts. They left on the afternoon train for Logansport, their future residence, bearing with them the well wishes of many friends in this locality."

On the marriage certificate itself, the minister signed his name as Lyn Naftzger, so the newspaper had it misspelled, but one can hardly blame the poor copywriter!

I do not have a wedding picture, but I have a picture of the two of them many years later. They look like typical reticent midwesterners!


My maternal grandparents, Benjamin Franklin Reed, also called "Frank," and Ruth Nave, were married 23 November 1913 in the county courthouse at South Bend, Indiana. He was a railroad switchman and she was a telephone operator. I have no photographs of them at all.

My paternal great-grandparents, Oscar Merry Packard and Sarah Augusta Hetherington, were married 17 August 1871 in Bloomington, McLean County, Illinois. I have no photographs of either of them.

I do know that my paternal grandparents were married sometime around the turn of the 20th century in southern California. My great-grandfather had brought his young family to southern California sometime in the 1890s, and it was a good place for him to be in the next 30 years, as he was a real estate salesman and developer. I do not know if my grandfather, Walter Hetherington Packard, had followed his father's footsteps originally, but later on he was supervisor of a local dairy. My grandmother, Elizabeth Jane Reynolds, is shown in a photograph in 1897, taken by a Los Angeles studio, and has signed her name "Bessie Reynolds" on the back. I do not have a photo of their wedding day, either. The only photo I have of my grandparents together is this photo, later in life, with their son Arden, who was visiting home on leave from the United States Naval Academy, probably 1932 or 1933. Arden Packard was my father.


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Women's History Month: Names and naming

Here's today's Women's History instruction:

March 3 — Do you share a first name with one of your female ancestors? Perhaps you were named for your great-grandmother, or your name follows a particular naming pattern. If not, then list the most unique or unusual female first name you’ve come across in your family tree.

First name, no. My mother told me that she was going to name me Barbara -- which is not a name which appears in the family -- but she changed her mind when she read something in a magazine and came across the name Karen, and liked it. It is probably a good thing she did change her mind, because I know several Barbaras, including one of my best friends. I have two great close friends, Amanda and Barbara, and if my mother had not changed her mind, introducing ourselves might have sounded like a routine out of the old Newhart television show: "Hi, I'm Amanda and this is my friend Barbara and this is my other friend Barbara."

There have been several Elizabeths in the family, including the maternal progenitress of my paternal line, Elizabeth who married Samuel Packard in around 1635 or so, her surname being so far unknown. Elizabeth, in fact, seems to be the most common female name in the family on both sides. My great-great grandmothers include Florence Elizabeth McKee and Elizabeth Jane Reynolds.

One of my favorite given names comes from the old Puritan line of my father's, the name being Freelove Packard. I don't think it meant to the Puritans what we think of when we hear that name, especially those of us who came of age in the 1960s!
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