Tag Archives: family photos

Family Ties and Tragedies: Ben and Nettie Anderson

An Anderson couple

Bernard Franklin Anderson and Nettie Anderson-Probably on their wedding day in 1901.

Bernard Franklin (Ben) Anderson (1881-1963)

Young Love

Aren’t they just the sweetest couple?   I particularly like “Uncle Ben’s” pompadour.  This is probably a wedding portrait, from the 1901 wedding of Bernard (Ben) Franklin Anderson (1881-1963) and Nettie C. Andress Anderson (1882-1911). I think theirs was a true love story.

It is just as well that Ben and Nettie Anderson did not know what was in their future on that May day in 1909 when the extended family gathered at Guy and Vera’s farm.

Despite the fact that Uncle Ben’s real name was not Benjamin, but Bernard,  my mother said that he liked to claim that he was named for Benjamin Franklin, and identified himself as Ben or Benjamin in some official records.

Extending Family

I wrote earlier about the picture of Guy and Vera Anderson’s family  that was taken on their farm. Here’s the portion of that picture showing Ben (2nd from right) and Nettie (to his right –our left).

Ben and Nettie Anderson

Portion of Guy and Vera Family 1909 With Ben and Nettie Anderson to the right of Dr. Stout (seated)

You can see their son, Estill Anderson (1905- 1926), seated on the ground in the front row of the picture below, the light-haired boy. He would have been four when the picture was taken.  On the far right you see Telmar Anderson (1903-1982), son of my grandfather Guy Anderson and his first wife.

Ben and Nettie Anderson - son Estill

Portion of Family picture 1909. Children in front row.

Ben and Nettie took in Telmar when Guy’s first wife died and he married Vera (my grandmother). You may have noticed that Nettie died at the age of 28, only three years after posing for the big family photo.   Estill  was only six years old when his mother died. Estill was just a little more than a year younger than his cousin Telmar.

Ben and Nettie Anderson

In tribute to Uncle Ben, I made apple crisp for dinner–with oatmeal and almonds. I can imagine Nettie making this apple dessert.

When the family picture was taken, Ben was a fruit farmer, according to the census. That confirms my mother’s childhood memories of Ben having an orchard of apple trees (one of the principal exports of Holmes County in the 1800s according to one history.) His farm was located in Killbuck Township, but could not have been too far away from the farm bought by Daddy Guy, shown in this picture.

The two brothers were close, and were very similar physically–small and wiry.  Ben was ineligible for service in World War I because of his poor hearing, and when I was young, the fact that my Daddy Guy wore a hearing aid made a big impression on me.  No wonder. He carried the instrument, as big as an early transistor radio in his shirt pocket and the wire to his ear was very visible. (My mother inherited the hearing problems, as did I.)

From Apple Blossoms to Motor Oil

After Nettie died, Ben left the farm and lived in Killbuck, where he sold cars. The Uncle Ben I remember seemed more like a salesman than a man who would be happy at the solitary job of farming. He was outgoing and always joking, like my Daddy Guy. His draft card in 1917 describes him as having dark brown eyes and gray hair (although he would not have been forty years old.)

Unlike the many male ancestors who remarried soon after their wives died, Ben remained true to Nettie.  Although he had the responsibility of raising two young boys (his brother’s son Telmar and his own son Estill) he never remarried. He managed for a time on his own, and then with the help of other family members. In 1919, Ben and Guy’s mother, Mary V. Brink Anderson,  who had been a widow for 40 years, remarried, and Ben and the two young boys he watched over, moved in with his mother and James Kline, her new husband. Ben continued to work as a salesman in Killbuck.

A Sad Decade

During the 1920’s tragedy struck.  In 1926, Estill, the only son of Nettie and Ben, died at twenty-one, leaving just Ben and his ward, Telmar.

During that decade, a terrible accident occurred. It might have had something to do with a railroad accident–falling on a track perhaps. I don’t know for sure. UPDATE: May 2018. I now know that his accident took place on an oil well  According to a new-found cousin, “He owned several oil wells. While turning a crank on one of them it spun out of control and very badly twisted his arm so that it had to be partially amputated.”

I do remember the novel sight of Uncle Ben, a man of good humor, who had a hook where one of his hands should be. As a little girl, I knew nothing of his other two losses, and the hook seemed more fascinating than tragic. How amazing, that he could pick up things and get on with life with a piece of metal where his fingers should be!

From then on, he was unemployed, I suppose living on government “dole” or insurance money. My cousin Herb remembers Uncle Ben hanging around the Killbuck pool hall, where he played an excellent game of one-handed pool.

Ben’s mother died in 1935, and he moved in with his grand-daughter Ruth, who had married Elbert Steele.  Ten years later his brother Guy died. By then Ben had moved away from Killbuck to the Akron area where he once again lived with family members–but without the sweet Nettie and their only son.  He died there in 1963. And it puzzles me that I do not recall hearing anything about his death.  He and Telmar seemed to drift away from the remaining members of Guy’s family. There was no great falling out–just falling away.

For more about the later years of Ben’s life and the following generation, see this post.

 

Note: For a little more information about apple crisp I made in honor of Ben, the once-fruit farmer,  see my earlier article about fruit desserts. It is simple to make. Slice the apples in the pan. Mix 1 cup oatmeal, 1/4 cup butter and 1/2 cup brown sugar with cinnamon or nutmeg. Sprinkle on top of the apples. (I also added almonds this time).  Bake at 375 degrees for half hour. Serve with milk or whipped cream or ice cream. 

By the way, in that photograph, you’re looking at the biggest apple I ever saw, a very large Honey Crisp. It makes the dish look smaller than its 9″ by 9″.

How I Am Related

  • Vera Marie (Kaser) Badertscher is the daughter of
  • Harriette (Anderson) Kaser is the daughter of
  • Leonard Guy Anderson, who is the brother of
  • Bernard Franklin (Ben) Anderson.

Notes on Research

1900 United States Federal Census, Monroe Township, Holmes County, Ohio, Roll: 1288; Page: 6A; Enumeration District: 0029; FHL microfilm: 1241288

1910, 1920, 1930, 1940 United States Federal Census, Holmes County, Ohio.

Ohio, County Marriages, 1774-1993, Ancestry.com, Holmes County Probate Court, pg. 351, No. 629, Bernard Franklin Anderson and Nettie C. Andress, Nov. 29, 1902, Accessed at Ancestry.com

U.S. World War I Draft Registration Cards 1917-1918, Holmes County, Ohio, Roll: 1832249 Accessed at Ancestry.com

U. S. World War II Draft Registration Cards, 1942, Holmes County, Ohio, National Archives and Records Administration (NARA); Washington, D.C.; State Headquarters: Ohio, accessed at Ancestry.com

Ohio, Deaths, 1908-1932, 1938-2007, Ohio Department of Health, Certificate: 16582; Volume: 17205. Accessed at Ancestry.com

Family Photos “Pick at Time”

When I am not in the kitchen, I’m at the computer or looking at a family photo.  When I started Ancestors in Aprons, I also added to my first blog, A Traveler’s Library.  As I was reviewing a novel called A Lady Cyclist’s Guide to Kashgar on A Traveler’s Library, I discovered some lines by author Suzanne Joinson that definitely struck a chord with this family historian–and maybe with you as well.

Freida, a character in the book, has inherited a whole apartment full of a woman’s life-long accumulation. There she discovers a picture of her mother who has been out of her life for a long time. She says at the beginning of a chapter, “A photograph can do this, unpick at time.” On the next page:

Looking again at the picture she almost physically fell backwards: Family photographs are slips of time, trap-doors to the past…

Family Photo of Brother in Kaser gardent

Brother in garden at Loretta Avenue house in Columbus, Ohio (Circa 1950)

That seems so right to me.  One look at an old family photo sends me spiraling back to summer on Loretta Avenue in Columbus, Ohio. I smell the wet grass. I recall sitting on the steps of the back porch watching fireflies blink. I smell the garlicky tomato sauce cooking next door. I hear kids calling each other up and down the block, taking advantage of the last shreds of light on a summer day. All those things  are not in the photograph, but are in my memory–picked loose by the picture.

Family Photo of Garden

Paul Kaser’s carefully planned garden in Columbus Ohio, Circa 1950.

The garden on this, what I believe was an Easter family photo, shows mostly flowers, but there were vegetables, too, and one of the memories is Daddy (Paul Kaser) sitting at the kitchen table with graph paper, plotting out the arrangement of flowers and vegetables, taking into account the height, the time of blooming and the color.  As I pondered the time he spent on that garden, it suddenly occurred to me that this was the very first house he ever owned. No wonder he put so much of himself into it.

Alas, we only lived in the Loretta Avenue house slightly over two years until Daddy decided that the city was not a healthy place to raise children, and we moved back to the small town of Killbuck. There he got out the graph paper and planned another glorious vegetable garden in the yard that supplied salads all summer long.

Do you spiral back in time when you look at family photos?