Monday, July 2, 2012

Amanuensis Monday - Bess's Wedding

Here we are at Part IV of my grandfather's story and family history.  Today I'll be sharing his recollections of his older sister's wedding in 1909.  I'd love to have pictures to share with you, even just pictures of Bess.  All I can offer as of now, is this photo of the family home where the wedding took place.



As I read along Grandpa's story I can see that he continued to research even after he wrote this history.  The note about the date of the wedding is taken as is from his story.
************

Obviously, since I was not born until 1901, I was not present at Lillian's wedding.  But I was at the wedding of my sister Bess to William H. Ahlers.  It too was held at 13 Nafus Street.  I was the ring-bearer, attired in a white linen suit, a Buster Brown collar and black patent leather shoes.  The procession started on the second floor and proceeded down the long hall stairway (the one with the dark walnut balustrade which usually I slid down--but not that day) then past the double front doors and the parlor and down the hall to the dining room bay window.  I don't know why they by-passed the front parlor with its double sliding doors and attractive floor to ceiling windows, but the dining room bay window, outlined as always with Mother's potted plants and ferns which hung in cast iron brackets, provided a kind of natural alter.  At the foot of the stairs, and not sooner, I was entrusted with a satin pillow on which the wedding ring rested.  I don't have the date of the wedding but it must have been in 1909 when I would have been 8 years old and Bess 25**.  The Ahlers family home was on Fourth Street, right back of 301. *** I imagine that accounted for Bess and Will meeting.  Will was paymaster for the Lehigh Valley Coal Co at its main office in Wilkes-Barre for many years, then for the Racket Brook Coal Co in Carbondale, and finally for the Hendrick Manufacturing Co in Carbondale.

**It was October 20, 1909 and I was then 8 years old.


*** This refers to 301 Philadelphia Avenue in West Pittston - the home of the Hunter family, my grandfather's sister Lillian and her husband G Floyd Hunter.


Next week we come to my grandfather's recollections of a typical Sunday for the Matthews family when he was a child.

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