52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks - Week 13: Home Sweet Home

Time for 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks.  This week's theme: Home Sweet Home.

My parents' "home, sweet home" was rented as long as my father, Arden Packard (1911-1954) was alive.  When I got serious about genealogy, more than 30 years ago, I read about how wonderful land and property records can be.  I tried to apply that evaluation to my parents, and came up baffled.  I couldn't  find one property record in their names.  I remember Mom talking about a particular house in Jacksonville, Florida, where I grew up, that she and Dad had rented during World War II.  Rented.  Oh, boy.

 The 1940 census does have them living in a rented house in Coronado, California.  I do remember that one of the houses we occupied in Pensacola in the early 1950s -- about 1951 -- was rented; then we moved into another rented house.  My father did not stay in one place very long, even within the same county.  That could explain why he and Mom never owned a house.  The first purchased house my mother lived in after marrying Dad was the house she bought after he died in 1954, when she took me and my brother and sister -- and my brother's bird -- back to Florida.  

To find where my mother and father were in any particular year before my own recollections begin, I depended on censuses and city directories.  City directories can be marvels, and for me, they helped to solve a mystery.  For years, I had heard my mom and dad and my grandma talk about a certain gentlemen that I never met.  At least, I don't remember ever having met him.  In one city directory for Jacksonville, from about 1953, there is a full page ad for an insurance company my father worked for.  And there, in the list of agents of the company, was this man's name.  

My husband and I rented in the first years of our marriage.  He was in the Coast Guard on active duty, stationed in St. Petersburg, Florida, and we actually tried to buy a house, but the mortgage company made a blatant error.  We told them they were wrong, but they were unable, unwilling, or both, to correct the error.  I hold grudges like my mother did, and that mortgage company and the owner thereof landed on my permanent excrement list.  So we ended up renting.  We ended up living next door to the unfortunate real estate agent we had worked with in trying to buy a house in St. Petersburg.  Mind you, she was as baffled and disgusted at that mortgage company as we were, and had done a terrific but, alas, fruitless job of trying to get the company to admit their error.  She was a wonderful neighbor and friend, and gave us free run of her citrus trees, which were bearing enough fruit to have fed our entire block.  When we returned to Jacksonville, where my husband was born and raised, we rented until we could find a house to buy.

Well, home sweet home is just that, whether owned or rented.  Each location generates memories and stories.

 

A to Z Challenge On the Move: F is for Florida

In the 20th century, members of both sides of my family -- the Packards (Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont, Canada, Illinois, California) and the Reeds (Ohio and Indiana) -- have ended up in Florida.

My mother, born in Detroit, ended up in Florida as a child in 1920, and was raised here.  Her adoptive father was a railroad freight agent in Pensacola.  My father came to Florida after graduating from the Naval Academy and service on aircraft carriers, for flight training in 1937.  He was born in California.

They married here, and their oldest child, my sister, was born here in 1938.  My brother was born here in 1942, when my father came back to Florida, stationed in Miami.  

We spent time here as a family in the early 1950s, as my father took various engineering jobs in Jacksonville and in Pensacola.  Then we went back to California, as my father's family was there.

Finally, my mother brought my sister, my brother, and me back to Florida after Dad died, to be with her adoptive mom and sister for help with raising us.   That was in 1954.  Mom's biological sister and brother also lived in Florida.  Later, a Packard aunt and uncle also relocated to Florida.

Though I was born in California, I have lived most of my life here, and now I consider myself "Floridated."

Within Florida, my husband and I have taken our family from Jacksonville, where he was born and raised, and where our older daughter was born, to St. Petersburg, where our younger daughter was born while my husband was stationed there in the Coast Guard.

After he was released from active duty, we returned to Jacksonville.  We lived there several years, then made a short migration to the county just south-southwest of Jacksonville, where we live now.  

During our time in our present home, we have separately spent time outside of Florida.  My husband took a special assignment in the Coast Guard that had him living in New Orleans for a year, then he spent almost another year in Washington, D.C., in connection with that same special assignment.  I spent a month in Seville, Spain and almost two years back in St. Petersburg, earning a master's degree at the University of South Florida St. Petersburg.

Our older daughter married a man who was also born in Jacksonville, and their son was also born there.  After all our peregrinations, we've become a Florida family.
 




 

Festival of Postcards -- Water!

My husband is a third-generation Florida native, and I have lived here for 55 of my 62 years. We are, therefore, surrounded by water. Here are some postcards from the collection of my husband's grandfather, showing water in Florida, in Ohio, and one I have added to the collection, from across the globe in the Mediterranean.

First, St. Petersburg, Florida, where my husband and I lived in the early 1970s and where our younger daughter was born. My husband was stationed here when he was in the Coast Guard. His grandfather spent time in Tampa, not far from St. Pete, and married a girl from Lakeland, just east of the area.

Mirror Lake
St. Petersburg, Florida
circa 1935

Unfortunately, most post cards, especially the older ones, do not come with dates on them, so I am estimating -- probably with wild inaccuracy! -- the dates of these postcards. The next one, showing a scene on the St. Johns River, is another one without a date. Most of the post card collection consists in those which my husband's grandfather bought to collect. He did have a few had been sent to him by others, but not all of those have dates, either.

This scene on the St. Johns, which flows north from near Sanford through Jacksonville to the Atlantic Ocean at Mayport, is from Blue Springs. My husband's family often visited Blue Springs and camped there. Usually, they went in their 17-foot outboard runabout.

Blue Springs
The St. Johns River
circa 1955

Next is a scene of a bridge over the Scioto River at Chillicothe, Ross County, Ohio. My husband's grandfather was born in Pike County, Ohio, just south of Ross County, and spent time in an orphanage near Chillicothe.

Bridge over the Scioto River
Chillicothe, Ohio
circa 1940

Finally, the scene below is of Palermo, Sicily, with the Tyrhennian Sea in the background. The postcard was sent to me in the 1970s by Manuela, a penpal from Rome. Manuela came to visit us and stayed about a week, making us some real Italian pizza while she was there. It was delicious!



Water, one of the most basic substances there is, plays a large part in many families' lives. Either there is too little of it, as during the drought and fire season of 1998, when nearly all of Florida was on fire, or there is too much of it, as in flooding experienced by a sorority sister of mine who lives near Johnstown, Pennsylvania. Sometimes it comes in the form of a natural disaster, such as a flood or hurricane, neither of which is any fun. Sometimes it is a source of recreation, such as swimming, boating, fishing, or water-skiing. What are your family's stories about water?