Old Postcard Wednesday--The Old Charming Inn, Victoria, B.C.

In 1913 my grandparents sold their home and property in Kansas City, Missouri, and began what would become a lifetime of moves, as my restless grandfather considered each move an opportunity to better their condition. Before calling numerous U.S. cities home that first move, the one from Kansas City, was to Victoria, B.C. This was before my mother was born, and the family at that time included my grandfather's two girls from his first marriage (wife deceased), and the three boys from his marriage to my grandmother, Nellie. The eldest boy was Jim, who 35 years later would mail this postcard to his widowed mother Nellie when he and his wife traveled to Victoria, B.C.

Note his message to her discusses that the building on the postcard (The Old Charming Inn) was known in his boyhood days as the Oak Bay Hotel, and that it was located across the street from where they lived! Nellie's handwriting is at the top of the card, noting the former hotel name and including a request to "return" it to whomever it was that she shared it with. I loved seeing her handwriting with the same ink color that she used in all her letters to my mother when I was a kid. No one else wrote in that color, and I thought that was because it was the color of her eyes and made for her alone.

I've been unable to find history indicating when the Oak Bay Hotel closed and The Old Charming Inn began operating. I have found that there is an Oak Bay Beach Hotel located off Beach Drive that has enjoyed a status reputation since 1938. It must have acquired the use of a portion of the former Oak Bay Hotel's name after the latter became The Old Charming Inn. One thing is absolute, however, as proven by this video and that is that The Old Charming Inn was demolished in 1962.



The person who submitted this video at YouTube included these notes: This is a regular 8mm movie that my Dad took of the demolition of The Old Charming Inn on Beach Drive in Oak Bay. The condo that took its place is called the Rudyard Kipling after the author, who once stayed there.

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For a real estate ad featuring a condo in the current Rudyard Kipling building found on the site where The Old Charming Inn once stood, click here. There are views of Oak Bay from inside the condo. It's interesting to see the view that guests once enjoyed while staying at The Old Charming Inn and at its predecessor in my grandparents' day, the Oak Bay Hotel.

Old Post Card Wednesday--Breakers Hotel, Atlantic City, NJ

From acweekly.com:

When Atlantic City was considered the Queen of Resorts, the Breakers Hotel was one of her gleaming palaces. The mere mention of the hotel’s name caused heads to turn with visions of opulence and thoughts of the hotel’s luxurious rooftop garden lounge. Designed by noted architect Vivian Smith, The Breakers, located at New Jersey Avenue and the Boardwalk across from the Garden Pier, was a vacationer’s dream during the early to mid-20th century. In 1974, at the peak of Atlantic City’s downslide, the hotel fell victim to the wrecker’s ball.

This is one of the prettiest postcards preserved by my grandmother, Nellie. My mother, Margaret, was born in Berkeley in 1915 but the family moved soon afterward to Atlantic City, New Jersey, where they lived during her toddler years. If my grandmother purchased her Atlantic City postcards during the time they lived there, this dates to around 1916-1920. After they left, one grown daughter (from my grandfather's first marriage) remained in Atlantic City with her husband and daughter. She may have sent it to Nellie a few years later, but I doubt this because the back wasn't used. In any case, it's an old card. So old that Cuba is specified in the text inside the stamp square as a possible addressee site (click on the card to enlarge).

In keeping with some days of posts with a garden theme begun yesterday -- and I know you have wondered about this nickname all your life -- click here to read a fact sheet about "The Garden State" and Other New Jersey Nicknames.

With love and reverence for my mother and her family of origin, but also with a healthy dose of humor and awe for the headgear I'm posting a photo of her on the boardwalk at Atlantic City, and a family shot (my mom is the little one) also there on the boardwalk.

Lydia #2

My middle name Lydia derives from two Lydias in my family tree, maternal and paternal branches. I blogged about Lydia #1, the maternal link, here.

The woman in this picture is Lydia #2, my father's mother. The photo was taken in 1910 in Lapua, Finland, shortly before she immigrated from Finland to North America.

Unlike Lydia #1, who lived and died long before my lifetime, Lydia #2 was living in Duluth, Minnesota, when I was 21 and longing to look up my father's side of the family, none of whom I'd ever met - including my father. My week-long visit there with my grandfather and her was our only time together and the memories are sweet. When I take myself back to the hours in their apartment overlooking Lake Superior that summer I see now what I didn't acknowledge then: that I was a treasure to them and it was the fulfillment of a dream for me to be there. The soundtrack of our time together would be . . . silence. They were quiet people, old Finn immigrants who both became U.S. citizens but preferred to communicate in Finnish rather than broken English. Since I didn't and don't speak Finnish we did a lot of sitting together. It's amazing how much I could collect from them by sitting quietly with them and looking out the window at the great lake, or by sipping coffee from the saucer Finn-style with a slurp of the lip and a twinkle in the eye, or by honoring age and the need for an afternoon nap and in so doing having my silent grandmother cover me with a sweet-smelling afghan on the sofa as I looked over at my grandfather sleeping in his chair. These are the tangibles I can tell.

I know a little more about her from what my brothers, nephews, and cousin have shared. Lydia and my grandfather both came from Finland to the United States by way of Canada. I have some postcards addressed to Lydia at Crean Hill, Ontario, Canada, and there is a photo of her that indicates on the back that it was taken at Crean Hill.

In 1913, before her marriage to Richard in Duluth he wrote a four-page letter to her, in Finnish, that I would adore having transcribed. It undoubtedly was a part of their courtship, and meaningful to her for she kept it. Postmarked with two one-cent stamps from Duluth, it is addressed to Miss Lily Maki at Sawyer, Minn. Maki, a shortened version of her last name, is on other photos and Lily appears to be an endearing nickname he called her. Sawyer, Minnesota, located within the Fond du Lac Indian Reservation, is 31 miles from Duluth --where they lived for the rest of their lives. As Fond du Lac Indian Reservation was established by treaty in 1854, Sawyer was associated with it in 1913 when Lydia was there. I wish I knew what led her to both Sawyer and earlier to Crean Hill in Canada prior to settling in Duluth.

Lydia found her way to Duluth and was serving tables in the dining room of the upper-crust gentleman's club downtown. Richard, a shipyard worker all his life, saw her in the window from the sidewalk and pursued her afterward. They married and later raised first-generation Americans: a daughter, Helen, and my father, Eino.

They were industrious, hard-working, and frugal people who never took a handout, not even during the Great Depression. During the depression Lydia planted a garden near a remote lake where Richard often fished, and they got by with some to share. My two older brothers, Richard and Tony (my mother was not their mother) still fish at the same lake in summer!

I don't know why my Finnish grandparents immigrated to the U.S. via Canada rather than coming through Ellis Island. While blogging about Lydia I became curious to know more about Crean Hill, Ontario, Canada. A quick Google search informed me that Crean Hill is now a ghost town. Some fascinating but scant information about this place that Lydia knew can be viewed at:
Crean Hill - Ghost Town.

"All we are is dust in the wind . . . "

Lydia #1

This is Lydia Margaret McKee, my maternal great-grandmother.

She married Henry Marshall on December 28, 1871. Soon after the birth of their third child, a son named Harry, she became ill, and, as was common in those days, her doctor prescribed morphine for her pain. What a tiny woman she was. It must not have taken the drug long at all to grab hold and run away with her.

Lydia did, in truth, run from her family somewhere around 1882. She left the little white-washed house there on the Missouri plains. Henry, daughters Jenny and Nellie (my grandmother, then a tot) and the boy suffered the knowledge that her decision must have been made to spare them from her tailspin down into addiction and a certain hideous death.

There was a report from someone who knew the family that Lydia had been seen wandering the streets of Chicago, alone. That was the last they knew of her.

Not surprisingly, my grandmother, Nellie, grew to become a wonderful, loving wife and mother to her husband's two daughters from a deceased first wife, and to their own three boys, their daughter (my mother), and to the infant girl they adopted when the boys were grown. Nellie was a tea-toadler her entire life. The addiction gene that was passed down from Lydia hid and waited ... waited for me.


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