June 3: Avis

My blogging friend, Kim Johnson, Common Threads, hit a nerve with a proposal to share family photos in June. I have been looking critically at the old photos, like these from an album my mom created during her teenage years.

My Grandmother, Maria Avis, grew up in upstate NY as the adored only child of a fairly successful, Italian translator and dry-goods shop owner. Her stepmother, from what we can deduce, was involved with the Suffragette movement in Seneca Falls. 

Avis loved books and learning. She attended New Paltz Normal School, and became a teacher in the nearby Hudson Valley. She kept her college books, teaching magazines, and manuals in an attic trunk that was a special space for her granddaughter, who was also fascinated with books and learning.

 Like most teachers of her time, Avis boarded with a local family with children in the school.  That is where she met my Grandfather, Gerow, who although several years her junior, grew up right before her eyes. I think there might have been a bit of a hormones and lot of charm that festered in that old farm house over the years, and eventually they were married. 

This second picture is Avis and Gerow, with their three daughters, exactly 20 years after their marriage, at Keuka College, on the Finger Lakes. Their oldest, Mary Etta, was attending college, and her sisters, Lucille and Natalie (my mom), tagged along on the unprecedented, and from what I can deduce, not ever repeated, 500 mile round trip!  I can only imagine what that trip was like!