Past Remains: June 2014

Accoutrements of Catherine Barnwell (Higgins)-Grandmother

This will be a different kind of post: I'm going to tell a story through photos.
Some of my grandmother's (Catherine Barnwell) children and her husband Jack (Victor) Higgins are covered in other posts on this blog.

See 52 Ancestors-#9 Barnwells on Past Remains Blogspot and 52 Ancestors- #21 Higgins Kids of the Past [on Past Remains Blogspot] , and 52 Ancestors-#24 Jack (Victor) Higgins on Past Remains Blogspot.

I visited my grandmother Catherine (Kitty) every week, so I felt like doing something a bit different. This will be a picture story about everyday objects that evoke memories of her.
Of her family, the Barnwells, I have only a bit of reliable information on her parents and siblings.
Her vitals and family information are in the chart below. BUT SCROLL DOWN to the vintage photos :) Catherine was known as Kitty or Kate.

Catherine Barnwell’s Parents
Father:John Joseph Lawrence Barnwell B. Dec 16 1881 in Brooklyn, NY D. Oct 1948 NY, NY
Mother: Agnes McCune (last name, variously spelled) B. Feb 1886 NYC D. about 1934? NYC
9 Barnwell children & spouses
Alice	1905–1952	M. Patrick McGee
Lawrence Joseph	1909–1991	M. Helen Hannon
*Catherine	B. Sept 2, 1911 M 1926 D. Jun 4, 1992	M. Victor "Jack" Higgins
Richard Jeremiah	1913–1981	M. Mae Jones
Regina Mary	1916–1980	M. Leslie Waite
Thomas Joseph	1918-1976	M. Vera Gibson
Gerard	1921–1985	M. Augusta Lucille Knapp
Josephine "Lucille"	1924–2000	M. George Traylor
Vincent	1926–1990	M. Veronica Dooley
Infant deaths:	Agnes, John	and Edward

Before Jack and Kitty moved up to Sullivan County in the 1930s Jack was first sent to work in the Dannemora prison there and Kitty followed.
Kitty found the long winter in this northern county too much for her (Clinton County is the furthest north and easterly state in NY, bordering Canada).

She would tell a story of her getting a new Easter outfit in Dannemora, probably a dress with matching hat, likely new shoes or at least new stockings.
Easter Sunday morning came and she arose eager to dress in her new outfit only to find they’d become snowbound by a blizzard overnight (normal weather for Easter in northern NY).

As she told it, she decided then to pack and to return to NYC: which she announced to Jack.
That they moved to Sullivan County and not Clinton was all we need to know about the conclusion of the story.

She was a woman who liked dressing up and going out. The sleepy life of small towns like Neversink and Woodbourne didn’t suit her but she had plenty of activity raising children. Remember, she was not yet 16 when she married, the only “adult” life she knew apart from being a mother was being a teenager: dressing up and going out.

However, having a big family meant she was always either working, working at home, or taking a break from working. Vacations were trips to see her sisters in New York now and then. I don’t recall her being in clubs or outside activities.

I don’t have any photos from her youth. Here she is in a family photo taken in Neversink about 1942. She had very white skin, dark brown eyes, and dark brown, nearly black hair.

Kate abt 1941

I think Kitty liked glamor, or at least, “the glamor of glamor.” Here are a few objects which I always associate with her.

I A wall plaque on her kitchen wall
I don't know who gave this to her or when, but it is certainly "vintage" by now. It's a simple varnished wood plaque, on which is painted a woman in a mink stole, a man in a top hat, and what seems to be the NYC skyline in the background with this saying:

“We don’t want to be big shots--just live like ‘em.”

II Ponds Cold Cream
Kitty was one of the millions of people who used this. She'd remove makeup with it, so she often smelled of Ponds. She comes to mind whenever I catch a whiff of this still used this product.
I found a Ponds Poster on line from the 1920s which she might have seen:

Here is an older version of the Pond's Cold Cream--I think the ones I recall were a different color label, same jar, same contents.

III Dresses

I think Kate knew how to dress with style, though never had much money to spend on it.

She seemed to select which suited her figure and height (she might not have been barely 5’2’’).

These styles were probably reflect how she dressed-or wanted to-in each period. (I’m pretty sure she shied away from browns in the 50s--she wasn’t a “brown” personality at all.)


late 1920s

mid 1930s

Notice the "peplum" feature has gained a foothold in the 1930s.


1945

The peplum feature remains--and the "sweetheart" necklace has been added by the 40s.


Evening & Day dress- late 1940s

Peplum feature remains but dress lengthens.


Kitty at Richie's graduation c 1960

Notice Kitty's dress is 2-piece, with a hat to match and a white purse (after all, it was spring).

IV Shoes
Kitty's feet were very small and she had a high instep and a high arch to her feet. She would often wear strap shoes with open toes, a bit of a wedge heel (but usually in canvas).

or a selection for summer:

V Lipstick
Kitty liked red lipstick - at least that's what I recall. She looked good in it, too. Remember those "golden" tubes?
Did every manufacturer buy them from the same vendor?


circa mid-1960s

VI Costume jewelry
Costume jewelry is my friend-and Kitty was in agreement with this. When I was old enough probably 9 and up, she would occasionally give me a handful of old costume jewelry. It was always stuff she was done with--and usually nothing I really wanted to keep but it was “new to me” and entertained me for an afternoon.

The brooches I recall were large and loud. I could never figure out when and why women would wear them. Since they usually were in good repair, I guess Grandma couldn’t make them work for her, either. I’d pin them on at home but they pulled on the clothes and just looked odd on a cotton jumper, so they ended up lost to the ages.

Very 60s. A wa-cha-ma-call-it

Supposed to be a star


Flies chasing one another?

VII Lucky Strike cigarettes
It was her brand, it's an old brand. Kitty may have tried Virginia Slims when they came out, but Luckys were her brand. (No, I don't smoke--and she advised against it. "I'm stupid! That's why I smoke!) She did quit late in life, however.


LS (MFT - means fine tobacco)


Plain Zippo lighter

VIII Perfume (cologne)
Evening In Paris (which you can still buy). I think of this as her trademark fragrance. But trademark fragrances can be overdone:
One year several of her grown children gave it to her for Christmas. Her tiny dressing table was afloat with Evening in Paris. That was probably the year she swore off of it too.

1960s bottle - for sale everywhere

Thank you to the many "vintage" collectors and resellers who posted images on Google Images. I shamelessly used your pictures--and I hope you get some sales as a result!

My mother (the descendant this Phebe Willets) made it clear to us all from our youngest days that all people are of equal value. I did not know that there was a racism problem in this country until I heard about it on radio. Both my parents set a good example for us and their children imitate what their parents embrace (and, by extension, the culture will be affected).

These ancestors had embraced ideas regarding people’s equality first on religious grounds, and some of them paid heavily for it.

In this ancestral line some fought the Civil War for the Union, others were engaged in helping escaped slaves make it to safely to the North, and others spearheaded the first manumissions in New York.

Phebe Willets, my 7th great grandmother, was born in 1699 a Quaker home. Phebe became Quaker preacher and traveled and preached. She is the subject of Post #22 on this blog (with regard to her preaching).
Eventually, she married first at 32, a much older man, Adam Mott. They had three children, including my 6th great grandmother Elizabeth Mott. After Adam died, she married widower Tristam Dodge (she was in her 40s). She died in her 83rd year.
I find scattered references to Phebe Willets Dodge (or Phebe Willets Mott Dodge) in history books now and then. They usually say something like this:

However, what this doesn’t reveal is that she actually began the ball rolling at Old Westbury Meeting: beginning with her, the Friends at Meeting eventually manumitted all their slaves. This wasn't as light a matter as it sounds: people often found they had serious financial loss when they manumitted a slave. Long Islanders needed manpower to get jobs done: if you pay someone it makes a dent in your pocketbook.

In 1939, Marietta Hicks (the niece of my great-great-great grandmother Marianna Hicks) turned over the original manumission papers which were witnessed (or "affirmed") at Old Westbury Meeting to {name?} someone for safekeeping.

The papers were transcribed, and someone eventually copied them, and we now have digital versions of these papers. (Though only some of the originals are available).

The typical wording of the manumission paper was similar to Elias Hicks’ and it went this way:

However, Phebe Willets (Dodge) was the first person in Old Westbury to manumit her slave.

In contrast to the others, Phebe’s commitment to her faith rings out in her manumission paper: it was a cause based in her faith, not a statement for the Meeting. Her conscience provoked her sense of obligation, and her ethics derived from that, not the other way around. By this time, she was elderly, she had nothing to gain, yet she felt it unChristian to keep another person as a slave.

Her manumission has a distinctly different tone to it (as its transcription shows).
Phebe had been considering this issue for "some years" and it was a concern. It was her "duty as a ..Christian act to set her at Liberty." ["her" is Rachel, a slave her 2nd husband had left her when he died]

I would guess since she had been a Quaker preacher of some notoriety, she probably also urged others passionately (along with several other Friends who felt similarly, such as Elias Hicks) to do the same, and to stimulate the Friends in Meeting on this.
Indeed, by the end of the Revolutionary War Old Westbury Meeting had manumitted all their slaves.
But what is striking to me--having lived in other cultures--is that the faith was proactive in its goodness.
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Below find the transcribed manumissions--there might be an ancestor of interest in here: