Week 33 (Aug. 13-19): Strength

 A repost of an interesting blog!

Notes:52 Weeks 52 Ancestors gives a suggested meme of Strength.  As I often do, I spent some research time on family ancestors (some of whom were still alive when I was younger...and now I'm turning into an ancestor!) The Attaway sisters were my first cousins three times removed.
This blog includes the comments made by 4 readers...a couple of whom would read and contribute to Sepia Saturday.  The most interesting story is in a comment by Gail, about how she got in touch with her husband-to-be in a town in California, and she noticed the town's name in the obituary of my cousin! Good reading there Gail!  Original posting:Friday, September 23, 2016 Shared with Sepia Saturday then and again this week, since I was a school girl in the following photo. I know the rest of this post isn't about me or school days...but it fits into the Ancestry theme of Strength (Strong women) so well!

Cousins called Aunt Alice and Gertie

I'm going to start from the following picture in front of our home in Houston.  I mentioned our blouses had been hand embroidered by the first woman dentist in El Paso, TX, who I never met, and her sister.




OK,  my maternal grandmother was Mozelle Booth Miller Webb Munhall. (1897-1960)

Her mother was Eugenia Almeda Booth Miller (1873-1936), and her mother was ...
Eugenia Almeda Whitty Booth (1852-1875) She married Richard R. Booth.

Richard's sister was Annie Booth, who married H.F. Attaway.  And with my searching today I found out H. F. stood for Henry Franklin.  So Annie and H. F. had three children, all girls, same generation as my great-grandmother Eugenia A. Booth Miller, or perhaps closer in age to my grandmother, within 10 years)

These girls were
Alice Fredonia Attaway, (1881-1964)
Ethel Booth Attaway (1885-1966)
Gertrude Attaway (1891-1979)

So they were some level of cousins of my grandmother. Did she know them as a young lady? I think she must. How else would she and they do our beautiful clothes? We were the ages their grandchildren might have been.  But Alice and Gertie didn't have children.  Though Ethel did have children, she had married and moved to California, so we had no contact with them.

But was Aunt Alice really the first female dentist in Texas?  Oh yes!

I guess she didn't make much of a splash, like most dentists don't. Her death certificate 31 Aug 1964, give cause as Senility, without any other causes.

She had the same office in downtown El Paso from 1913 till 1948.
It was in the famous Mills Building.  Suite 212.

Mills Building Directory (Alice Attaway, suite 212)

The Anson Mills Building today

The caption says,
"Most Significant Achievement of El Paso's pioneering architectural firm, Trost and Trost, was the 12- story 138,000 square foot Anson Mills Building that dominated the downtown landscape for many years following its construction in 1911-1912.

"At the time of its completion, the Mills building was the largest "monolithic" concrete structure in the world.  Every part -columns, walls,  ceilings, floors -  was made from poured concrete reinforced with steel rods, a more economical approach than importing steel beams from Pennsylvania. The original cost was $1.80 a square foot, and General Anson Mills was pleased that the building would have no need for repairs and no deterioration.  El Paso was a town of 15,000 at that time, with no paved streets when the building was completed."

So Dr. Alice Attaway was one of the original occupants of the famous building.

Inside the entrance to the Mills Building.

I have another distant cousin, of about my generation, who had the same ggg grandfather with a different mother.  She posted in Ancestry back in 2010, a copy of the Booth Family Bible.

Alice and Gertrude Attaway are on the right column

Both Aunts Alice and Gertie were listed in the El Paso business directory in the years 1935, 38, 45 and 48. They lived at the same home address throughout their lives, first with their mother Anna Booth Attaway, with her listed as head of the household, then after she turned 70, Gertrude became the head of the household.  I wrote my thank you notes to this address as they sent us pretty hand embroidered or smocked clothing. (probably from when I first could write in 1948 till 1958 or so)

Recent photo of the Attaway home in El Paso

The 1900 census has an intact family with father H.F. as a painter, wife and 3 daughters, living in Hillsboro, Texas (where the two younger daughters were born, and even where the Booth families were headquartered.)  Oldest daughter, Alice was born in Waco.

H. F. Attaway moved with the family to Houston, where he died in 1906.

In 1910 mother Anna Booth Attaway and the three daughters lived in Houston, where they took in 6  boarders and Anna  called herself a masseur.  Youngest sister Gertrude (19) was still a student, but Ethel said she was an artist, and Alice had no occupation at that census.

Gertrude Attaway may have married after she retired from being a draftsman for the Bureau of Reclamation, and before she died in 1979.  Someone added Ellis to her name on her death certificate. She died of cerebral hemmorrhage and deep thrombosis with gangrene in her left leg, according to that record. Who was this fellow Ellis? He was not the informer for the certificate, who was a man named Philip Jacobs.  I'm guessing the informant was someone in a nursing home or hospital, since Gertie had outlived her other relatives that I know of in El Paso. 

I have enough questions to continue to search for more days and weeks.

How did the Attaway girls come in contact with the Miller girls (4 sisters, daughters of their cousins who lived in San Antonio? I think the grandmother sisters, Eugenia Booth Miller and Anna Booth Attaway must have corresponded between San Antonio and El Paso. And maybe they visited each other by train at that time. Eugenia's husband was a conductor on passenger trains at that time.

What is/was the Bureau of Reclamation anyway? It was neat to see the early feminism in my family when Gertrude gave her occupation as a drafts-woman at that Bureau for the 1950 census. By that time she was declared the head of household with just her older sister Alice living at home, retired from dentistry.

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