Family Treasures

We’d planned to stay in St. Paul for about three weeks; a full week to visit the Minnesota Historical Society (MHS) to photograph family ancestor items, Chris was also obligated to work a convention in San Francisco in the middle of our time there, then a few more days in the area after her return to St. Paul to finalize the gathering of family history information. We’d completely underestimated the volume of papers, photos and military memorabilia contained in the MHS and other areas of St. Paul that held probate, birth and death records and even an attorney that settled the estate of a distant cousin. We extended our stay by over a week to fit it all in and still could have used more time.

During the last day’s drive to St. Paul, Chris completely organized family papers relating to her grandfather, Charles P. Clark and great grandfather, Charles Asa Clark, the two relatives whose other papers and photos were contained at MHS, into an accordion folder for easier access and research. She then spent their first day in St. Paul, Monday, May 17^th, reading as much of the information as possible to grasp an understanding of their lives before viewing the items at the MHS library.

The library didn’t open until 1 p.m. on Tuesday, so, Chris and Jay spend the morning visiting the Clark family homes in the city. As Chris was photographing the home on Marshall Avenue she thought the house looked too new for her grandfather’s family to have lived in it in 1886 when he was born. A conversation with the next door neighbor revealed that indeed, the house had been moved from a location a block away several years before. Well, at least the right location had been found if not the original house.

The location of where Chris’ grandfather was born – but not the same house.

Our next stop was 1376 Summit Avenue. This house became home base for the Clark family when in town and was the residence of Chris’ great grandfather’s sister, Harriet Wheeler, her husband Rush and children – the most notable being Cleora Clark Wheeler. Cleo was an illustrator, photographer, our original family historian and a fiercely independent woman who never married and lived in the family home until her death in 1980 at the age of 98. When Chris was younger, she remembered her mother talking about Cleo and communicating with her regularly about family history information.

We found the house which appeared to be under some kind of renovation as there was a dumpster container on the front curb and the house appeared vacant. After querying some neighbors we learned there had been a fire in the house the previous February and the owners had moved to a nearby home while renovations were completed. Chris got the names of the current owners to send a letter asking if she and Jay could meet with them and see the house.

1376 Summit Avenue in St. Paul where Cleo grew up and lived.

Shortly after 1 p.m. we were registering at the MHS library and spent the next 7 hours reviewing the documents and letters of great grandfather Clark in Box 1 of 4. Chris was so excited by the information contained in the papers but also felt a little overwhelmed at the prospect of photographically documenting all of it. Most of the papers and photos no other living relatives had ever seen and she felt an obligation to photograph as much of it as she could for the family genealogy records and to share with other family members. She also wanted access to the information to glean a better understanding of who her ancestors were and what kind of lives they led.

The Minnesota Historical Society building

Thus Chris began many days of long hours at the library’s photo stand photographing over 2000 papers and photographs of family information contained in 4 boxes. Unexpected treasures she found were the Aero Club membership of her great uncle Harold Melville Clark for whom Clark Air force Base in the Philippine Islands was named in 1920; a diary of her great, grandfather’s journey from the U.S. to the Philippines during his time of service as a Lieutenant in the Spanish American War; letters from her grandfather to his father about his travels in China as well as countless other letters between family members during the early 1920s and WWII; military service records, newspaper articles and so much more.

Harold Clark’s Aero Club membership book.

Note the number of 679. He was the 679^th aviator in the entire U.S.

In addition, she and Jay spent two days in the bowels of the building photographing the 3-D items of the collections consisting mainly of Charles A. and Charles P.’s military collar pins, medals, WWI field first aid kit, food containers and photographic equipment used by Charles A. and Cleo. It seems that Chris’ photographic bug has deep roots in her family. A disappointment was the unknown whereabouts of Harold Clark’s saber. There are records of it being in the MHS collection but many years before it was transferred out to an unknown entity and records at the time were not as accurate as those of today. Chris had a feeling it was sent to a museum at Clark Air Force Base but has no knowledge of where those items may have gone once the base was closed in 1991 due to the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo.

The Croix de Guerre with Silver Star medal awarded to Chris’ grandfather from his heroism during battles in France during WWI.

Balloon Pilot wings of Chris’ grandfather.

In the middle of all this Chris took a trip to San Francisco, leaving a few days earlier than the start of the convention to visit her three cousins that live in the area. She stayed with her cousin Laura, another family historian, and they spent hours perusing the documents from MHS that Chris had burned to a DVD. Meanwhile, back in St. Paul, Big Red was a mess after the hectic drive north and Jay’s Virgo was offended by being seen in a filthy truck. Red had also not had a good paste wax applied since we bought it and Jay was itching to make it beautiful again. So, while Chris was away he spent several days washing and waxing the truck one section at a time. He tackled the project in this way not only because Red is a massive machine, but because doing it all in one day would cripple his upper body muscles.

While in San Francisco, Chris was elated to receive a call from Raina Eberly, the current resident of the Summit Avenue house, in response to her letter, and made arrangements to meet with her and her husband, Brian Engdahl, the Saturday after her return to St. Paul. The visit with Raina and Brian was wonderful. They told all kinds of stories about the house and how they bought it from the attorney handling Cleo’s estate and took us over for a visit. The damage caused by the smoke of the fire, which started in the basement under the living room, was unbelievably extensive. The entire floor in the living room was ripped up and we could see into the basement. All the other floor coverings on the main and second levels were gone and the kitchen and all bathrooms were completely gutted. Our hearts went out to these kind people and we wished them well in dealing with the long road ahead of completely rebuilding their home.

The rest of the week was spent visiting the city library and learning all kinds of information about Cleo’s life, printing out probate records from the courthouse and visiting with Cleo’s estate attorney, John Hughes. He had lots of information about Cleo and even had in his garage boxes of the engraved plates she created for her Christmas cards, bookplates, photos and other items. We arranged to get some samples from him and Chris would photograph them and contact the MHS to see if they would want to add them to their collection of Cleo’s other items. We even discovered that items from the Philippines, originally in the MHS Clark collection, had been transferred to the local Science Museum. It seemed that every time we uncovered information about one thing it opened up a whole new direction in which to learn and document more items. We could easily have spent the entire summer in St. Paul doing nothing but genealogy research but considering the time we had Chris was ecstatic with the discoveries and the information she had been able to gather.

One of the engraved plates Cleo created for a Christmas card.

A protective sleeve for the plate above with the print it makes.

Jay was able to drag Chris away from photographing and researching long enough to visit the Mall of America! Chris was skeptical about what could be so great about a mall, but both of them were impressed by the sheer size of it, not to mention that there is an amusement park, complete with roller coaster, in the centrally located atrium with a roof height of easily 80’. They were there the better part of a day and, despite their valiant effort, still didn’t see everything.

We were there!

We wouldn’t have believed it if we hadn’t seen it – a roller coaster in a mall.

Their last day in St. Paul they actually did some sightseeing. It is a beautiful state capital city and Summit Avenue has the largest number of restored homes in the country. We did a walking tour of the Avenue ending at the St. Paul cathedral, a magnificent, early 20^th century, stone structure sitting atop one of the highest points in the city. The MHS had a wonderfully done exhibit of Minnesota residents recollections of WWII that Jay just had to see. Chris chuckled when she saw a flour sifter in the 1940s era kitchen display that was exactly like one she has. Remember that she rarely gets rid of anything that is still useful.

The St. Paul Cathedral rivals, in beauty, any in the world.

Exhausted from such intense research, but wanting to do more, campground reservations beckoned us to our next destination. On Monday, June 14^th, almost a month after our arrival, we left the Clark family behind and headed for the stunningly beautiful North Shore of Minnesota and the land of Gitchee Gumee.