Agatha Green Archives - Page 4 of 4

Paternal grandfather McKinley Green, “Pop”

Though married to my grandmother Agatha (Walker) c. 1932, McKinley Green was NOT living with her or my father in 1940,.

Some months ago, this fellow named Jack, who worked with my paternal grandfather, sent me something on Facebook:

Roger, I have an old Binghamton [NY] Sun Newspaper dated May 23, 1959 that has a story about WNBF-TV-AM-FM and their move to the Sheraton Inn. They show pictures of the staff and a brief story about each. Here’s one on your Grandfather, Mac.

“McKinley Green, Maintenance – A World War I veteran, McKinley hails from Bloomsburg, Pa., and now lives at (yes, they actually posted his home address) He has a 32 year old son who is a World War II veteran. McKinley is a member of the WNBF Employees Club and of the Elks. His Wife belongs to the Order of the Eastern Star.

Thanks, Jack. I’ve not done as much searching on Pop, which is what we always called him, than I did with other branches of my family.

Some of what I found in a quick Ancestry.com search.

Military registration card:
Name: McKinley Green
Address: Bloomsburg, Penna.
Date of birth: Nov. 2, 1895
What’s your present trade: laborer
By whom employed: Tide Water Pipe Co
Married or single: Single
Race: colored
He was tall, medium build with brown eyes and black hair, according to the document of 6/2/17 (2 June 1917)

I never knew his birth date, and he never wanted to celebrate his natal anniversary.

Yet the 1910 US Census tells a slightly different story:
Name: Mckinley Green
Age in 1910: 14
Birth Year: abt 1896
Birthplace: Pennsylvania
Home in 1910: Bloomsburg Ward 3, Columbia, Pennsylvania
Race: Black
Gender: Male
Relation to Head of House: Son (Child)
Marital Status: Single
Father’s name: John Green
Father’s Birthplace: Maryland
Mother’s Birthplace: Maryland
Household Members:
Name Age
John Green 47
Mckinley Green 14
Dewey Green 9
Wilbur Green 7

I wonder what happened with his mother?

And the 1940 Census tells another variation:
Name: Mckinley Green
Age: 43
Estimated Birth Year: abt 1897
Gender: Male
Race: White
Birthplace: Pennsylvania
Marital Status: Married
Relation to Head of House: Lodger
Home in 1940: Binghamton, Broome, New York
Inferred Residence in 1935: Binghamton, Broome, New York
Residence in 1935: Same Place
Resident on farm in 1935: No
Sheet Number: 81A
Occupation: Laborer
Attended School or College: No
Highest Grade Completed: Elementary school, 6th grade
Hours Worked Week Prior to Census: 40
Class of Worker: Wage or salary worker in private work
Weeks Worked in 1939: 52
Income: 508
Income Other Sources: No

They got the race wrong, and the year is fuzzy, but this was my grandfather. Though married to my grandmother Agatha (Walker) c. 1932, he was NOT living with her or my future father, Leslie, in 1940, but in a lodging house with about 45 other people. Agatha and Les were residing with HER parents, as they were in 1930.

By the end of 1953, Mac and Agatha were living upstairs at 5 Gaines Street, Binghamton, NY, while I, with my father and my pregnant mother, were living downstairs.

The more I know, the less I understand…

A picture of two relatives

My sister Marcia posted this picture of my mother. I assume it’s Daniel Dickinson school in Binghamton, NY. Can you find her?

But it was the black youth in the back row that intrigued me. He looked familiar. Specifically, he looked like a Walker, my paternal grandmother’s people.

My dad’s cousin Ruth confirmed that it was indeed Malcolm Walker, son of Melissa Walker Jackson. Melissa was the sister of my grandmother, Agatha Green, but she died when I was very young. He is first cousin to my father (Les Green), Sheldon Walker, Sydney Bullett, Gene Walker and Ruth Lewis.

Oh, my mom is in the third row, on the far left.

So this is a surprising piece of my genealogical puzzle. At some point, Dad’s first cousin went to school with my mom. It’s not shocking, but I never knew this.

BTW, yesterday was my Grandma Green’s birthday. When she died in 1964, she was the first significant person to die in my life.

G is for the Greens

NO ONE left IBM in those days, and certainly not for some likely short-term government job.

I grew up in Binghamton, which is in the Southern Tier section of New York State, not far from the Pennsylvania border. I had, and have, two sisters, Leslie Ellen Green, born about 16.5 months after my birth, and Marcia Elayne Green, born a little more than five years after me.

We grew up with our parents, Leslie Harold Green and Gertrude Elizabeth (nee Williams) Green, at 5 Gaines Street in the city’s First Ward. When I was born, my parents lived upstairs in the two-family dwelling, but soon my parents moved to the first floor, and my paternal grandparents, McKinley Green and Agatha (nee Walker) Green then lived upstairs.

The house was owned by my maternal grandmother, Gertrude (nee Yates) Williams, who lived a half dozen blocks away at 13 Maple Street with her baby sister Adenia (Deana) Yates. Our house was a small place, with a living room, two bedrooms, kitchen, and what was essentially a large hallway.

After Marcia was born, when the girls were destined to get the second bedroom, my father built a couple of walls in the hallway to create a very small bedroom for me. He painted the solar system on my ceiling.

Our mother worked at McLean’s department store downtown, first as an elevator operator, then later in the bookkeeping department. Although we were supposed to attend Oak Street Elementary School, since we went to Grandma Williams’ house for lunch, it was determined that we would instead go to Daniel Dickinson school instead. This, of course, had a profound effect on us in terms of who our childhood friends were, a surprising number of which we still are in touch with.

Our father had several jobs: truck driver, florist, painter (both artistic and sign painting). He had a job working at IBM for about six years. It was at night, and it wasn’t particularly intellectually stimulating, moving inventory on some conveyance.

When Dad quit his job to work for something called Opportunities for Broome, a project funded the US Office of Economic Opportunity, my ninth grade homework teacher, Mr. Joseph, told me that my father was crazy. NO ONE left IBM in those days, and certainly not for some likely short-term government job. Frankly, I thought it was a great decision, and time proved this to be correct.

Grandma Green died in 1964. She was one of my Sunday school teachers, and she taught me how to play the card game Canasta. I taught my Aunt Deana how to play canasta, and we also played 500 rummy and other card games; she died two years after Grandma Green. I played bid whist and pinochle with my parents.

Each of my parents was an only child. This meant that my sisters and I never had uncles, aunts, or first cousins. This makes our tribe rather small these days, with our parents deceased, and each of my sisters and I each having just one child, a daughter.

Grandmother Agatha Green, found at last

Her greatest contribution to my development was that she taught me how to play canasta.

When my parents moved downstairs at 5 Gaines Street, Binghamton, NY, my paternal grandparents, McKinley and Agatha (nee Walker) Green moved upstairs. Her name, BTW, was pronounced a-GATH-a, not AG-a-tha. Yes, it is I who she is holding.

Grandma Green was almost certainly my first Sunday school teacher at Trinity A.M.E. Zion Church, only a couple of short blocks from our home. She had a certain refinement and bearing. While my maternal grandmother would nag me, this grandma gave me the parameters she expected, and I pretty much did it.
It’s rather like some Bill Cosby routine. Grandma Williams was Cos’ mom, “Go to bed, because it’s important for…blah, blah.” Grandma Green was like Cos’ dad: “Go to bed.” OK, grandma.

Of course, I visited her and Pop (my grandfather) virtually every day. One time when I was three, I fell down the flight of stairs from their dwelling to mine. To this day, the hair will grow on an area of chin, just below my lower lip. (Also odd: two of my co-workers fell down flights of steps when THEY were three.)

She was the eldest child of some half dozen kids, and I recall when her father died; I was around 7, so it would have been about 1960. He was this little tyrant, even at his advanced age, and all of his kids were afraid of him, though he was nice to my father and to me.

Red threes

Her greatest contribution to my development was that, when I was six or seven, she taught me how to play the card game Canasta. It’s an arcane game, but I learned to love it. I then taught my great aunt, my mother’s Aunt Deana, how to play. I’ve been playing cards ever since, though the last time I played canasta was against my high school girlfriend’s father over four decades ago.

Then suddenly, at the age of 62, she died. I no longer know from what, though I assume now it was a heart attack. I remember going to the funeral, and the burial. What I don’t recall is ever going to her gravesite afterward, even though her husband and her son lived in the area.

Floral Park

In fact, I pretty much couldn’t remember precisely WHERE she was buried until my niece came across Paul R. at Find A Grave, who is “retired so I have time to walk through the cemeteries and take pictures. In mid-July 2010 I started a project to record as many memorials for the cemeteries in my county (Broome, NY) with pictures that I could.” He added this record on 10/29/2010. She’s buried in Floral Park Cemetery in Johnson City, the village adjacent to Binghamton, and within walking distance of the house that the family moved to in 1972.
Thanks, Paul R. You’ve cleared up part of a family mystery.

When I went to Binghamton in mid-July, my family went to Section M and found the headstone. It was next to a newly-dug grave of her sister-in-law, Jesse Walker, who had died a few days earlier. The SIL was known as “Earl’s Jesse”; my grandmother had a sister named Jesse Walker, and so their brother Earl’s wife got the odd appellation.

I is for I

There was a lilac bush right next to the house; it didn’t look very impressive, but it smelled wonderful. Still the single smell that reminds me most of growing up.

Lacking any INSPIRATION for a topic, I defaulted to writing about me this week. It is I, during my significant birthday week. But what to write about that I haven’t addressed before?

I spent the first 18 years of my life in the same house, at 5 Gaines Street in Binghamton, NY. Gaines was a very short street between Oak Street and Front Street, with only 16 possible addresses, and actually fewer buildings than that.

At the corner of Gaines and Front was O’Leary’s convenience store. I went there and bought packs of baseball cards, but I also had to buy my father’s Winston cigarettes, which irritated me greatly.

In the yard at 1 Gaines Street was a huge gnarled tree which terrified me. It looked just one of those angry apple trees from the movie The Wizard of Oz. At some point, the family that had moved in there decided to take it down. My father told the owner that the way they were cutting the tree, it was going to crash into their house. The guy told my father to shut up and mind his own business; the tree crashed into their house, doing considerable damage to the roof.

The folks at 11 Gaines had an extra-large lot with a huge garden and chickens. When a foul ball would fall into that yard, the fence was too high, yet too wobbly to climb, and we had to wait for someone to throw the ball back.

The family at 13 Gaines was named Greene. We often got their mail, and vice versa.

There was a factory across from our house, but I never knew what was made there. It changed hands several times.

We had our tiny lot at 5 Gaines, where I played kickball with my sisters. Our house was actually green, with asbestos on the exterior. There was a lilac bush right next to the house; it didn’t look very impressive, but it smelled wonderful. Still the single smell that reminds me most of growing up.

When I was born, we lived upstairs in the two-family dwelling, but by the following year, when my first sister was born, we had moved downstairs, and my paternal grandparents had moved upstairs.

Our half of the house was quite small. When my second sister was born, my room was carved out of what was essentially a large hallway. But it was OK. My father painted the solar system on my ceiling, with the proportions from an encyclopedia entry I found.

Dad was always painting on the walls; I don’t mean painting the walls. In the living room, on one wall, were snow-peaked mountains. On another was a scene in the tradition of a busy Western European marketplace; I assume he tried to recreate an existing painting, but don’t know which one.

I’d go up and visit my grandparents often. One time, when I was about three, I fell down the steps. To this day, I have a bump just below my lower lip where I cannot grow facial hair.

Our Christmas decorations were kept upstairs, “under the house,” which is to say in the room off the kitchen where the roof slanted so that an adult could not stand.

When I was born, our church, Trinity A.M. E. Zion was downtown. But when that street was turned into a city park, the church moved to within two blocks of our house, at Oak Street and Lydia Street. (Hmm – I wonder if the naming of my daughter was affected by the street on which I spent a LOT of time.)

Enough about me for this week.

The guy in the middle is my father; the woman on the right is his mom. Not sure who the others are, though I suspect the boy is a cousin of dad’s; he has the Walker “look.”

ABC Wednesday – Round 12