Yesterday was my mom’s birthday. I’d intended to post on the occasion but was overwhelmed by events. In the past I’ve posted a number of pictures of her—as an infant, as a toddler, as a young wife, and as a mature woman. There are gaps in my catalog of pictures of her. I don’t believe I have any pictures of her between roughly the age of four and the age of 16, when she graduated from high school. I don’t have anything from 16 to her mid 20s. Once my dad started taking pictures of her she had hardly an unphotographed moment. Those ended when he died and she was at a relatively young age.
Rather than post a picture I thought I’d do something different. As you may recall my mom and her parents were in vaudeville. Theirs was an unsettled existence, moving from town to town, mostly in dusty western towns. Not hitting the high spots.
Above is an image of her first contract. As you can see, it’s with the owners of a theater in Houston, Texas when she was three years old. She might have been three but I suspect she was actually two. It’s hard to know for sure. I have three birth certificates for her, each with a different year of birth. Even she didn’t actually know when she was born.
Something else worth mentioning is the name. I don’t know that my mom went by the name “Coleen Neff” as anything but a stage name. Her mom at that point was known as “Babe Neff”. I’ve got some old clippings with those names I’ll show you some time.
Just curios, does a grandparent sign for your mom, because this looks to me as hilarious as a three-dollar bill. A contract with a minor is void ab initio, that thing don’t exist.
I give you many kudos for how much you respect the memory of your parents, Dave. It’s a credit to both you and the parenting they must have exhibited in your days as a child.
If you have covered this before, Dave, I apologize in advance. Have you done your own genealogy study, or hired it out?
I was asked the other day about my predecessors. I know my paternal great-grandfather was a piano tuner in southern Indiana, and on the maternal side they were southern IN farmers. Its all Scottish and English blood. I’m almost afraid to do my own study because the boat mine came over on was most assuredly not the Mayflower (heh, and I have business associates in Boston for which that is the case, and a former partner who’s lineage goes back to the first governor of Virginia) but rather, say, a ship of pirates or common galley hands.
I’ve done my own research although my dad had done quite a bit of research on his own geneaology and, as a lawyer, he was pretty good at it. I’ve verified and extended his research a bit.
I’ve done all of the research on my mom’s side. Some just verified what came to me by word of mouth but I’ve also made some corrections and even surprising discoveries.