Uncle Peg’s Chronicles
April 30, 2026
“A Cotton Tablecloth”
“These
were their settlements. And they kept good family records.”[1]
Don’t
forget to look for the title which is embedded in the chronicle.
FAMILY ALBUM
And I Quote:
Thanks so much for the pictures of the Underhills. We had many happy times with Aunt Phyllis, the Nolte’s, and Lora. ~ Phyllis
Maggie Kate sends her love (she just snuggled up beside me on the couch and saw your name). Hugs from me, too. Ami
.
. . My daughter Jennifer and I just returned from a trip to the Okanagan.
I wanted to visit my mom, Dorothy Holmes, and Dad ‘s graves in Oliver. I
. . . thought I should go now as have not been back since 1974 when I buried my
mom. Her Dad, George Holmes, and Mom, Julia MacNaughton and the Teakles
are all in the same cemetery . . . Cathy Higgins.
1926
to 1928
1924 to 1928 are the years that our Holmes ancestors spent
renewing relationships that had somehow fallen by the wayside but with
organization, letter writing, and challenging travel – by hook or by crook –
they managed to come together again. They reacquainted and rediscovered their
family ties. And then, one by one, they died, and many of those ties died with
them.
2026 to 2028
Jeanni has waited patiently for me to
write about someone she knows, so I took these two weeks to look at William
Nelson Holmes and Anna Columbia Heath and their nine sons. I found a few items
– sorry, nothing new on Charles Holstead Holmes. FamilySearch’s Full Text
Search is a work in progress, and if you are a researcher, it is something you
should go back to from time to time. I found, among other things, a funeral
record. I don’t think I’ve ever seen one. I was pleased to find the informant’s
name and address on the document. Jeanni’s husband, Stoney, knew Liz of the
Steeves line, and I believe they had a visit after the 2016 reunion. Am I
correct? So, this should be a fun chronicle for Jeanni. I hope so.
As I looked for new records, I found
one of special interest to me. I just wish I could follow through on it, and
see what happened to Kimmy. If he went back to Japan, I don’t think I will find
anything new. I thought I remembered Fen writing about him, and how they lost
track of him. I went through my old emails, but I couldn’t find it. Maybe my
memory is playing tricks on me. (P.S. Nope.) As I looked through my old emails,
I found some to treasure. Words from people who are now gone from us. Our
history. Our stories. How many times have I wished for another chance to ask
them questions.
Big thanks and hugs to Matriarch Janet
for sharing her thoughts and memories of her grandmother, Ella Holmes
Underhill, via Julia. This will really dress up the Ella section! I hope to do
that others of you with the “Colossal Collection of Cousins.” You can help.
Around this table we always tell the
same old stories.
Cousin Sue. (Paraphrased.)
AROUND ELLA’S TABLE
Janet Nolte, granddaughter of Ella, shared memories of Ella
with her daughter, Julia, in April, 2026, and Julia passed them on to me. She
gave me permission to edit, so using mostly their words, I put the story into a
timeline order and added a few commas.
The Minella family, Mac, Lil, Bobby, Sis, and Janet, left Boston when
Janet was five. The visits all kind of blur together. Janet recalls that
Ella lived in two different houses, one up the hill and one lower. The first house she visited Ella in was on
Upland Terrace. She is trying to recall the street of the second house
which was down the hill. [Ranelegh]. The Minellas lived on Falkland Terrace. [There is a
third, in between Upland and Ranelegh – Brooksdale.] Bedrooms
and bath were on the second floor. Nancy shared her room with Janet when she
visited in the summers. Lora and Prudie shared a room. Donny had a tiny
little room. Harold, Nancy's dad, had the big beautiful room with the turret
facing the street and was next to the bathroom. Ella's bedroom was next to that
and Lil stayed with her mom when they visited. Also,
there was a young couple who boarded at Ella's in the 3rd floor
apartment. They entered the same front door, but off the second-floor
landing were additional stairs. The first- floor stairs were opposite the front
door in the entry hall.
She was an excellent cook! Janet has no memory of specific dishes,
just that everything tasted great. She did recall roast beef and chicken,
French toast, and no hamburgers.
The dining table was always set with a cotton tablecloth and cotton
napkins. Everyone had their own "spot" to eat, so if you came in
to eat and no one else was eating then, you still sat in your spot.
Lora worked late and often ate at the table alone in the evenings, so Janet
would often go in and sit to keep her company. Food was always set on the table
in bowls and you were only to take as much as you could eat . . . if not, you
had to sit there until you finished what was on your plate. Food was not
to be wasted - "the poor starving Armenians!"
The house had a butler's pantry which is where the toaster was
located. Toast was something that you could make and eat whenever you were
hungry. You would make your toast and then take it to your spot in the dining
room. Janet often had butter with cinnamon sugar or bananas on her toast.
Janet recalls
seeing her grandmother walking back from the grocery store with two bags of
groceries, one on each arm. She also recalls that a baker would come to the
house once or twice a week and that Ella would give her order or pick out bread
or rolls or sweet breads, etc., from his basket. Ella was very sweet and had a beautiful
smile. Janet has no recollection of ever seeing her grandmother angry. She was
a very loving grandmother! She remembers reading books to her grandmother when
she visited, since Ella couldn't see well and reading was difficult. Ella
loved to go for a ride in a car; she rolled to the side as the car made turns
and always enjoyed getting an ice cream cone before they headed back home. She
had a weight problem, which contributed to her diabetes. At some point someone built or had brought in
a porta-potty (chemical toilet) for Ella to use on the first floor so that she
had to only go up the stairs at night.
Janet and her mother, Lil, went to visit family in Canada in the
summer. Apparently, Lil was always a bit anxious when traveling into
Canada . . . she was concerned that they might not let her leave. Lil was a
worrywart, but Janet didn't realize this about her mother until she was much
older.
Janet remembers that Ella died young (in her 60's). Her daughter, Lil,
was with her when she died, sitting in her chair in the kitchen.
My question: was there only one bathroom? Yikes.
Julia: if I’ve made
any faux pas in my editing, let me know.
That’s the story.
Here’s one of the records: the 1940 US Census. It explains why there were so
many occupying the bedrooms.
46 Brooksdale Road, Brighton, Massachusetts.
Gordon, Althea, Arline, and Guy Griffin. The occupants of the third-floor
apartment.
Ella Underhill:
age 58, a widow, born Canada, no occupation.
Ruth Underhill
(Ella’s daughter).
Lillian (Ella’s
daughter), Robert, Lillian and Janet Minella.
Lora (Ella’s daughter) and Prudence Thornton.
Harold, Adele (Ella’s daughter), Nancy and Donald Watson.
46 Brooksdale Road; Google Maps, 2022.
The house number is above the front door. At a real estate site, I was able to
view some of the updated rooms. I now understand about the toilet – what a
beautiful but long stair case! In researching Ella’s years in Massachusetts, I
found several locations in and around Brighton. In the 1910 census, she lived
at 21 Montfern; in 1920, at 33 Newton; in 1930, at 31 Upland; In 1940, 46 Brooksdale;
in 1950, 11 Ranelegh. Upland is about seven miles from Brooksdale: Brooksdale
is right around the corner from Ranelegh. Ella was on Ranelegh when she died in
1950.
CORRECTION ON THE IDENTIFICATION
OF THE PEOPLE IN THE LAST HEADER PHOTO
Thank
you to Julia, Cindy, Karl, and Jean for helping me to correct and verify my
identification of the people in the header photo of the last newsletter. I
apologize to the descendants of Ella. Cindy agrees with me that the person on
the left is Cecil and the fourth person is Floyd, but it could be the opposite.
Cecil,
(son of Charles and Phoebe) (we think), Minnie (wife of Floyd), Nancy (daughter
of Floyd and Minnie), Floyd, (son of Charles and Phoebe) (we think), Lora
Thornton (daughter of Carl and Ella), Phyllis (wife of Jim Holmes, who is the son
of Floyd and Minnie), Lil aka Sis (daughter of Lil and Mac Minella), Margaret (wife
of Cecil), and Lil (wife of Mac and daughter of Carl and Ella Underhill).
News from Holmes
It is with sadness
that I share the news that Elizabeth Thorrun Steeves, aka Liz, passed away on
Wednesday, April 15, in Lincoln, Maine. I do not have her obituary. Liz was
interested in both local (Lincoln, Maine) and family history. She was
particularly helpful when I was writing my book, especially with the Steeves
family of New Brunswick and Massachusetts, and with some of the Louisa Holmes
Ballantyne family and the William N Holmes family, who lived in Maine for some
or all of their lives. She was very active with the Lincoln Historical Society.
In
the absence of an obituary, I give you an article that Liz wrote for “The
Icelandic Review” in February, 2003. Her parents were Jerome Irving Steeves and
Bjorg Kristjana Elfar. Jerome was in the Caroline M Steeves line. She leaves to
mourn her sister Anna, and half-siblings Martha Zavoski and Michael Steeves,
from Jerome’s second marriage, and many close cousins. I also included an
introduction of herself to us, her Holmes family. Although
Liz regretted that she could not attend the 2016 reunion, she would not leave
the side of her special friend, Harley Sproul, who she nursed for several years
during his illness until just before his death in 2022. Mum
and I met Liz personally in her “cute little home” in Lincoln, Maine.
My Icelandic Story
“I
was born in Reykjavik in the summer of 1942. By the middle of 1941, World War
II was raging in Europe and mobilization was intensifying in the USA. My
American Dad had graduated from college and enlisted in the US Army Air Corps.
He was taught to fly and, as the story goes, he and his squadron were put on an
aircraft carrier that steamed to the North Atlantic. Somewhere in those waters
they were ordered to take off and fly north, to “follow the stars” until they
came to Iceland. Both excited and scared, they did so and brought their fighter
planes down in the “Land of the Midnight Sun.” This was July of 1941, and my
23-year-old father settled in at the Keflavik base with his flying buddies. Not
long after, he met my Icelandic Mom. My
mother was a vivacious 21-year-old, brought up in Reykjavik, the eldest
daughter of a family of musicians. She was a pretty, talented young woman who
spoke several languages . . . and “a great cook,” my Dad reported, when he
finally got the courage to write home about her. Since fraternizing with the
Icelanders was frowned upon by both the US military and Icelandic authorities,
socializing was not an easy enterprise. But the Icelanders and the Americans
managed to get together, and by the latter months of 1941 my father and mother
were living together (whenever possible) at her home in Reykjavik. At some
point, it was apparent the birth of a child was imminent, and I came along in
July of 1942. Soon after, however, my Dad received orders to return Stateside.
It was only at this point that he dared defy US military restrictions against
marrying. He “went into battle” to get permission to marry and bring his new
family back home. A marriage ceremony was performed, though probably not with
the endorsement of the US Army, and my father returned to America in October
1942. My
mother was determined to rejoin her husband. In March, 1943, she booked the two
of us on a merchant steamer for the sea voyage to New York. It was said to have
been an arduous crossing, taking many weeks. The ship was forced to take a
circuitous route in order to avoid icebergs and prowling enemy submarines in
the North Atlantic. There were other young brides and babies on board the ship,
which ran out of supplies during the crossing. The babies were said to have
been fed Coca-Cola as a substitute for milk – a part of the story I could never
quite fathom . . . though, I suspect, breastfeeding may not have been the
custom then, and conceivably Coke could have been seen as a solution to the
problem of hungry, howling infants! Mother
and I were met in New York harbour by an Icelandic woman, a resident of New
York City, who had taken on the task of meeting every ship from Iceland in
those years. When arrivals were uncertain and husbands unable to stay in New
York, this woman put up the Icelandic brides in her home and acted as a contact
person until the husbands arrived. My mother was always grateful for this
fellow Icelander’s assistance and remained in contact with her for years after. Sadly, my parents’ time together
was short. They lived the busy, nomadic life of a military family for the
remainder of the War, moving from assignment to assignment, to bases in
Florida, Texas and Delaware. Soon, signs of the illness that would take my mother
became evident. There were years of treatment, surgery, and finally she was
hospitalized in a TB sanitorium in Colorado. My father was assigned to a nearby
Air Force base. My younger sister (born in 1944) and I went to live with our
paternal grandparents in central Maine. After my mother’s death, my father
escaped into his military career and eventually a second marriage. He never
found it easy to talk about Iceland, or about our mother and their life
together. Later on, in the years before his death, he was able to reminisce a
bit. He expressed a desire to return to Iceland one more time, but in the end,
he never did. My sister and I
were brought up on the family stories of our young parents in Iceland and the
dramatic North Atlantic crossing. The terror and the excitement of the World
War II years never ceased to fascinate us, and as with much of my parents’
story, in the telling and retelling, myth and reality probably became forever
entwined. As
a young girl growing up in a small quiet New England town, I clung to my
identity as an Icelander. I told my “born in Iceland story” to just about
anyone who would listen. I poured over picture books, photos and travelogues
sent from Icelandic relatives. Still, I knew very little about Iceland or the
Icelanders. There was a gap, a missing sense of lineage and knowing. In later years,
I did visit Iceland and met my large extended family there. And I came to know
Icelanders living in or visiting the United States, so eventually my knowledge
and understanding of Icelandic culture widened. More recently. I’ve enjoyed
subscribing to “Iceland Review.” The news/Daily Life columns (by both Icelandic
and American-born writers) have given me an up-close-and-personal perspective
on Icelandic life and customs. I hope “Iceland Review” will continue its unique
role, connecting Iceland and the world via the Internet. I would love to hear
the stories of other adult children of American (or British?) soldiers and
Icelandic war brides . . . to hear what
their stories and their parents’ lives and stories were like. I suspect the
oral history of World War II in Iceland has not been fully articulated, and
many of the storytellers will be gone in a few years. Perhaps “Iceland Review”
could play a role in recording and preserving some of this interesting history.
Elisabet Thorunn/Boston, February 2003.”
These are a few
paragraphs Liz wrote to introduce herself to us, her Holmes family. I edited it
slightly. I’m not sure of the date. Some details overlap.
“Hi Holmes-Folk: I’m
Liz Steeves, from Lincoln, Maine, USA. I recently moved back to the central
Maine community where I was brought up – having lived in the Boston area for
many years. Lincoln, about 50 miles above Bangor, is called the Town of 13
Lakes, and it happens to be the small town to which a number of NB Canadians
emigrated between 1860 and 1890. These included Holmes and Ballantynes and
Wilsons and Steeves. My
grandfather, Walter Steeves,’ mother, was Caroline Holmes Steeves, daughter of
Charlotte and Daniel Holmes. My Grandad probably came up to Lincoln to visit
his Holmes cousins (the family of William and Anna Holmes) and married my
grandmother, Villa Warren Steeves, in 1913. Villa and Walter raised seven
children – including my father, Jerome Steeves, who graduated from the U. of M.
and entered the US Army Air Corps just before WWII. With accelerated training
on Long Island, Dad’s air corps unit was the first to take off from an aircraft
carrier, the WASP, in July, 1941. The squadrons were sent aloft in the North
Atlantic and found themselves in Reykjavik, Iceland – on ‘active duty,’
unbeknownst to the rest of the world, well before the US officially entered the
War in December, 1941. Although the US soldiers were
not to ‘fraternize’ with the Icelandic women, this rule was quickly and
completely ignored – and a good number of my dad’s fellow officers ended up
coming home with Icelandic brides. This included my father, who met my mother,
Bjorg Elfar, and against orders, married her just before being shipped back to
the States. I was born in Reykjavik. My mother and I joined Dad in the States
in 1943, and my sister, Anna, was born in 1944. During the war years, we moved
as a family from base to base in Texas, Florida, and elsewhere. Then my mother
became ill with tuberculosis (which eventually took her life), and my sister
and I were brought to Maine – to live among our large extended family of
Grandparents and Great-Aunts and Uncles. Anna and I went through school in
Lincoln, busily enjoying all the good things a small town in winter – and of
course with the long Maine winters, we were quite the little snow-bunnies,
building ice forts and igloos (the latter not always entirely authentic, I must
admit). I
graduated from high school and went off to school in Boston in 1960, to Fisher
Junior College (at the time). My Dad had offered me three options: nursing
school in Portland, Teachers College in Gorham, Maine, or secretarial school in
Boston. And while I cared little about being a secretary, I cared a lot about
getting away to the big city, and off I went. I enjoyed my Boston years,
working in publishing, then at Harvard, Harvard Medical School and MIT in
administrative for a number of years. My
sister went off to nursing school at Deaconess Hospital in Boston, so for a
while we were in Boston together, until she got the traveling spirit and
finally ended up settling in San Francisco. I stayed in the Boston area most of
my work career – for many years being active in a UUA church there that had a
wonderful music program. Singing in choir and choruses was enormously rewarding
and exciting during those years, culminating in my 15 minutes of fame, when we
sang ‘The Sacred Concerts’ on stage in Symphony Hall with the Duke Ellington
Orchestra and a large gospel chorus! Very neat indeed. My later years were more
introspective, as I plunged into meditation practice and studying Buddhism,
with many retreats, several three-month-long silent retreats at a wonderful
meditation center in western Massachusetts. In
2008, I decided to return to Lincoln and purchased a cute little home, just
outside of town. I wanted to experience a few of those ‘good old-fashioned
Maine winters’ again (before I was too old to tramp around on ice and snow)!
Well, I do think my wish has come true – especially this past winter, which has
been utterly beautiful, not too cold, and filled with an abundance of pretty,
lengthy, unending snowfalls! Maybe I can move to Florida now, but I probably
won’t. I’m no longer as out-doorsey as when I was young, but I do enjoy winter,
and don’t think they’ll ever take the snow-bunny completely out of me, even if
nowadays, I’m more often on the inside, sitting in my rocking chair, looking
out at it! So
here I am, back in the land of the Ancestors: Holmes, Ballantynes, Steeves,
Warrens, Wilsons, etc, enjoying researching family history at the Lincoln
Historical Society, studying it on my own and meeting new cousins to help fill
in the gaps. (Thank you, Peggy V, for all the Holmes genealogy, which I knew so
little about before this past year!) And as time goes on, I’ll try to tell you
more about your Holmes cousins in Lincoln, and how quickly they became intwined
in and a part of the Lincoln area community.”
FAMILY HISTORY LESSON
The
following are a few documents I located at FamilySearch Full Text Search. Most
of the records are for the sons of William and Anna Holmes. This is the funeral record of
Fenwicke Lindsay Holmes, dated October, 1973. The informant was Mr. Louis A
Holmes, Fenwicke’s adopted son.
https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3QHV-LQ62-YSW9-Y?view=fullText&keywords=William%20N.%20Holmes%2CCaliforniaCALIFORNIACALIFORNIA&lang=en&groupId=
This is the death record of Harry
Holmes, son of William and Anna, who was born in 1881 and died in 1883.
This is a portion of an application
of a passport for the Jerome C Holmes family.
Images 594 – 598 of
693.
https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3QSQ-G965-NCPJ?view=fullText&keywords=MaineUnited%20StatesUnited%20StatesUnited%20StatesUnited%20StatesUnited%20StatesUnited%20StatesUnited%20StatesUnited%20States%2CJerome%20C.%20HolmesJerome%20C.%20HolmesJerome%20C.%20HolmesUnited%20StatesUnited%20StatesUNITED%20STATES%2CUNITED%20STATESMaineLincoln&lang=en&groupId=
This is the marriage license of
Ernest S Holmes and Hazel B Foster.
What triggered a memory was the
name of the contact person he had in the US: Jerome C Holmes, 1229 Glenn
Street, Santa Rosa. I pulled out Fen’s “Holmes Line” to reread what he had
written about a young Japanese man who stayed with them for a time. Fen wrote
about their foster brother, Kimmy. Could this be the young man who lived with
the Jerome Holmes family?
I had to connect them somehow: a
genealogist needs evidence. The city directories provided the proof I needed
that Masaichi Kamei was indeed Fen’s “foster brother” Kimmy.
In 1924 directory of Pomono,
California, Jerome and Jennie Holmes lived in Pomono, California, at 1166
Columbia Avenue. So did Kamei Masaichi. The 1928 card for passenger Masaichi
Kamei gave Jerome C Holmes’ residence as 1229 Glenn Street, Santa Rosa,
California. In the 1928 city directory of Santa Rosa, Jerome Holmes lived at
1229 Glenn Street. In the 1929 and 1930 directories of Santa Rosa, Masaichi
Kamei lived at 767 Mendocino Avenue, Santa Rosa. According to Google maps,
there are .2 miles between these two houses. At that point of my research, I
lose track of “Kimmy.” Perhaps he returned to Japan. You can see him standing
in the back in the header photo. He is with his “foster family,” left to right:
Jennie, Jerome K, Fenwicke and Jerome C Holmes. Jerome C is the son of William
N Holmes and Anna Columbia Heath. I found this comment in our
Facebook group from Jolynda, dated April 2, 2020. “Fen so badly wanted to find
his “big brother.” He talked about his search and disappointments to not being
able to locate him. He tried so diligently. And even at 98 years he reflected
on not being able to reconnect with him.”
I couldn’t go any further on
Ancestry, either. If he returned to Japan, Ancestry does not cover that
country.
https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3Q9M-C9BP-4Q6F-4?view=fullText&keywords=JEROME%2CHOLMES&lang=en&groupId=
It is
almost May Day. Do a happy dance.
This ends
week eighteen of our centennial virtual celebration of 1926 – 2026.
No comments:
Post a Comment