May: Growing Up and Living in California

I’m finally back!  I’ve been enjoying many fun activities and travels and all, but needing to write a blog post has been in the back of my mind.  And, it’s Confession Time again.

I confessed earlier that I had to realize that my neat and tidy plan for writing about one ancestor at a time, for one month at a time, was not working very well.

Now I have to let go of another part of my original plan!  I wanted to tell everything, and I wanted to tell it in chronological order.  But I’m realizing something.  If I spend too much time worrying about getting everything in perfect order, and somehow including everything, I will never get to tell you all the stories I want to tell!  So I’ve decided to just ramble on, and if I remember/find something later, I’ll simply tell you about it when I remember or find it, okay?

And, now it’s time to tell you something else before I forget!  If anyone has something to add, or something to contest, or something to question, or anything at all to say, please email me at the email address I use to send you a link to my blog.  I am so happy when I hear from you all!  And, I will be delighted to include your parts of the story, here in the blog (with credit given, of course!).

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Since we are about to follow up on the story of Walter and May’s romance, I wanted to point out that May was 13 or 14 years old when they moved to Los Angeles in 1904, and her sister was 10 or 11 years of age.  I wish I knew details about May's schooling in California.  I do know that her brother-in-law, Frederick Morgan Brown (later known as ‘Jack’), who was one year younger than May, “completed grammar school in the Avenue 54 School of Highland Park and went a year and a half to Polytechnic High” (from a World War I Soldier Service card, which is filled out in May’s handwriting!).  It seems pretty likely that May attended that same school, since she lived at (then) 129 East Avenue 58 (now 129 South Avenue 58).  Another confession:  I just now made this connection, between her schooling and that of Walter’s brother, and now I am fighting the urge to go research that!  (…so I can keep things in order and complete.  Oh dear!)

In the story of Walter and May’s romance, I included a ‘just finished’ photo of the house that the Ludwigs lived in during the first part of their time in Highland Park, taken before landscaping was begun. That photo was one that our cousin Toni has.  I am attaching again a copy of that home taken later, after they were living there.  Grandma told me that she remembered playing with paper dolls on the upstairs porch which opened off the bedroom she shared with her sister.  

We located and photographed that home in 2011; it had been painted a dull beige.  When we drove by again on a trip in 2016, it had been updated in red, white, and blue!  Note that the tiny palm tree, planted over 110 years previously, has a towering top which makes it look like a telephone pole!

We found a rather interesting home on our trip in 2016 - we were just driving around in an area of Highland Park, where we speculated that Walter might have done construction, and we happened on this home - very similar to the home above, only better - with a wrap-around porch:

We also found a home on that street in Highland Park that was extremely similar to one that we know Walter built (and his family lived in), in Eagle Rock.  I will post that photo later.  Does anyone feel the urge to research property records in Los Angeles County?  Newspaper articles usually say that ‘Mr. ….is building a home’ - which doesn’t tell us who the actual builder is.
 
Now we have May in Highland Park, possibly going to school with Walter’s younger brother; and Walter and May are both attending Highland Park Baptist Church, according to various news articles, photos, and a baptismal certificate.   Aha!! I just realized that this newspaper article describes a party which May and Zetta attended the previous Tuesday evening, for the eighth grade pupils of the Avenue 54 school, held at a home at 132 East Avenue 58 - so they did go to Avenue 54 school, and it sounds like the party was very close to their home at 129 East Avenue 58.  May would have been 16, Zetta 13.  A second article from the November 3, 1906 issue of the Highland Park Herald reveals that the two girls were also present at a party the previous Wednesday evening, at a home on East Avenue 59.

So, in November of 1906 May was included in a list of ‘little folks’; and less than two years later, in August of 1908, Walter was writing to her father, with a declaration of his love for May.  Linnea shared that May said she wasn’t ready to marry, that she was just a little girl!

However, by 1909, May is listed in a Los Angeles City Directory as being a bookkeeper for the Vita Manufacturing Company; and her address is shown as 5676 Hub.  [There is a photo of May and Zetta outside that home, in the post about Walter and May’s romance, with the notation ‘Working days’. That is the address that Walter was sending letters and postcards to during their engagement.]  May was obviously putting her bookkeeping training to good use, working for a company that provided dry batteries.  My husband Steve remembers his grandfather (who lived at a remote location where there was no electricity) having a radio that ran by dry batteries.  The first photo below has a sign on the wheel referring to ‘Prosperity Week’ during November 1908.  Since these photos were in May’s photo album, she was likely working there at that time.

 This photo of May was also included in the album:

And the next photo, a portrait of May with her mother, Delia Ludwig, does feature the engagement ring on May’s left hand:

Two more photos of May, who was undeniably beautiful!

Grandma wrote on the back of this photo, to explain the reason for the photograph:

I hope I don’t find out that there is a limit to the number of photos I can post on this blog!  I do want to include one more photo from 1909 before I close this post.  Walter and May had taken part in a popular excursion tour, and were at Hotel Redondo on July 4th, 1909.  They are standing just behind three little girls in the photo:

Remember - you can make the photos larger, by clicking on them!  : )

At the time of the census in May of 1910, the Ludwig family, including May and Lizetta, lived on Aldama Street, near the intersection with Baltimore Street.  No street number is given on the census, but that would be in the area of 5768 Aldama Street, where Walter built the large home for his mother.  Are you keeping track of all the homes the Ludwig and Brown families lived in?  You haven’t seen anything yet!

I’ve been talking about some of May’s activities, leading up to her wedding to Walter in 1910.  It is my intention to post again soon, to fill you in on some of what Walter was occupying his time with as the special day drew near!  It appears to me that he had a deadline, and worked hard to meet it - as we see him do repeatedly in his years as a builder…