Mystery Monday - Workin' on the Railroad

This picture was amongst the belongings of my maternal grandmother, Mary Davis Walker Hill Thomas. I don't know who any of the gentlemen in the picture are, but I can be pretty sure that they likely worked at the railyard in Norfolk, Virginia, since that is where my grandmother lived, and sinceher father, Walter Davis, and at least on of her husbands worked for the railroad. I would love to be able to identify these men, especially since one of them may possibly be my great-grandfather!


Note: It's possible that the gentleman who is kneeling in front with the brake bar(?) in his hand might be James Allen Walker, my grandmother's first husband. He has the same light complexion and sharp features, however, the man in this picture looks older than 27 (to me), the age Allen was at the time of his sad and tragic death. However, I can't rule him out because Allen did work as a brakeman at the Virginia Railway coal pier, so this very well may be him.

Note 2: It's also possible that one of these gentlemen could have been my grandmother's father, Walter Davis. I've never seen a picture of him, but he, too, worked at the pier, and was mortally injured in a train accident in 1935.

Sentimental Sunday - My Grandmother's Loss (Part 1)

A few weeks ago, I was the recipient of a random act of genealogical kindness. A fellow researcher provided me with several articles from the Norfolk, Virginia "Journal and Guide", which featured, or pertained to some of my maternal ancestors. If you missed the post about this, and would like to read it, you can click here.

It has taken me some time to be ready to post about the article which affected me most, but now the time has come. If you follow this blog, you probably already know, or at least sense, that I was extremely close to my paternal grandmother, Anna Green Yarborough. However, my relationship with my maternal grandmother, Mary Davis Thomas, was more distant, even though she lived in closer proximity to me. I never spent much time thinking about this - it's just the way it was. I loved her, and I knew she loved me, but we just didn't have a very intimate personal connection. Grandma Thomas didn't say much (not around me, anyway), and unfortunately, though I saw her often, and she even lived with us in her later years, my memories of her as a quiet, and rather stoic person, make it difficult for me to truly recollect much about our interactions. This said, I'll now admit that when I received the email from Hollis Gentry, with the links to to the nine articles about my family, the very first one I read, which saddened and stunned me, caused me to reflect long and hard about life of the woman whom I'd only known as my, "Grandma Thomas", whose young adult life was impacted and shaped by a series unfortunate events through which she (as seems to be the case with all of the women in my ancestry) persevered, overcame, and maintained her Christian faith.

James Allen Walker - Part I

My grandmother, Mary Davis, with her first husband, Allen Walker.

I did not grow up knowing that my grandmother had been married before or after she married my grandfather, but when I found out as an adult that she had, and I asked what had happened to the first husband, I was only told that he'd "died on the railroad". So, when I opened this first article from Hollis, and really came to terms with what my grandmother, then a young bride must've gone through, I began experience a feeling of mourning, as if I'd been there with her when she got this terrible news, and experienced the first, of what would eventually be three spousal losses.

Yes, my maternal grandmother's first marriage ended when her husband, only 27 years old, was crushed between two train cars.  They'd not had any children, so I'm assuming that the life they'd been building together came to an abrupt and unexpected end when Allen left for work that morning. 

Thanks for reading.

Renate

To read Part 2 of this series, click here.