MARY KIRCHER RODDY
  • Home
  • Coaching and Research
  • Lectures
    • Upcoming and Past Presentations
  • Searching For Stories blog
  • Publications
  • Contact
  • Resources
  • Privacy Policy

Searching for Stories

Making Letters Come Alive

5/16/2017

9 Comments

 
Picture
Photo of the Federal Building in San Francisco from SF Public Library, courtesy www.sfpl.org/sfphotos
On Sunday I posted a transcription of a letter my uncle wrote to my grandparents on 8 July 1942 describing leaving his home in San Francisco and traveling to Navy boot camp in San Diego. 
 
When you are reading and sharing your family letters, it will be a much richer experience if you take the time to understand the context in which the letter was written.  Here are some ideas to get you started in researching the context.
 
Look for images.  Warren mentioned several places in his letter, among them the Federal Building in San Francisco and the Santa Fe railroad depot in Los Angeles.  I was able to do image searches on google and find historical photos of those buildings.  Libraries and state archives are another good resource for finding vintage images of buildings.  With these searches I was able to go back in time and see what my uncle saw.
 
I knew that Warren was in the navy, and I was able to use Fold3 to discover a bit more about his experience.  A 31 December 1943 muster roll from the submarine Searaven showed an enlistment date of 6 July 1942, just two days before he wrote the letter.  That immediately got me thinking about what my 21-year-old uncle might have been feeling – excitement, fear, homesickness and more.
 
I thought about the date.  July 6 was a Monday.  Just two days after Independence Day, the most patriotic of holidays.  I imagine the first 4th of July after Pearl Harbor must have held some particularly impassioned celebrations.  Might those have perhaps prompted Warren to enlist?  What was going on in San Francisco and the world at that time?
 
I looked at the San Francisco Chronicle and found some answers.  On Sunday 5 July 1945, page 1 of the comics ran the cartoon, “Terry and the Pirates.”  In this strip, the evil Chinese captor threatens Muzz and derides her independence.  Mazz ponders the words of the Declaration of Independence regarding the inalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and how we must invest in our futures to keep those rights.
 
Elsewhere in the same paper, above the masthead on page 1 of the news section, was a striking photograph, the full width of the page, captioned “Yesterday, San Francisco saw a parade.  San Francisco has seen other parades, many of them, but never one like this.  For passing grimly down Market street marched sudden death.  This was typified by a 3200-man combat team of the Army of the United States.  Armed to the teeth, this unit, however, was not unique.  It was only representative of hundreds of other such units in the United States and over the world ready – and anxious – for a scrap.  Above, infantrymen of the unit march by with fixed baoynets.”[i]  Other page 1 stories included “New Zealanders Pile Into Rommell; The Tide MAY Be Turning in Battle of Egypt,” “First Yank Flyers Skim Dutch Housetops to Bomb 3 Airdromes in Nazi Europe” and more.[ii]  It seems that every day the first several pages of the Chronicle were filled with accounts of the war.  Warren must have had those stories in his mind when he enlisted and as he wrote his parents of his experiences as a new recruit.

When you’re reading old correspondence, make sure you spend some time studying the history, reading the local newspapers of the time, and finding images to make your family letters and the people who wrote them come alive.


[i] San Francisco Chronicle, 5 July 1942, page 1, col 1.

[ii] San Francisco Chronicle, 5 July 1942, page 1
9 Comments

    Author

    Mary Kircher Roddy is a genealogist, writer and lecturer, always looking for the story.  Her blog is a combination of the stories she has found and the tools she used to find them.

    Read more of Mary's writings at "Adventures of A Broad Abroad" and at Letters from Limerick

    Archives

    April 2021
    January 2021
    November 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    November 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016

    Categories

    All
    Achard
    Ahern
    Aldrich
    Amador County Genealogy
    Ancestry.com
    Archives
    Blair County
    Bradley Family
    Brannack
    Brannock
    Brown
    Brown Family
    California Genealogy
    Cemetery
    Census
    Citations
    City Directories
    Clark County
    Death Records
    DNA Strategies
    Education
    Enslaved People Research
    FamilySearch
    Family Stories
    Fields Family
    Freuhauf
    Genealogy Conferences
    Genealogy Education
    German Research
    Germany
    Graham Family
    Grandparents
    Hardy
    Hartmann
    Indexes
    Ireland
    Kircher
    Letters
    Lunenburg
    Map
    Mapping Tools
    Midwest Resources
    Midwives
    Military
    Newspaper
    Newspapers
    New York
    Ohio
    Pennsylvania
    ProGen
    Railroad
    Records
    Research Techniques
    San Francisco
    Sonoma County Genealogy
    Spreadsheets
    Springer
    Tiburon
    Timelines
    Virginia
    Virginia Genealogy
    Vital Records
    War
    Webster
    World War II Research
    Writing

     Subscribe in a reader

    Enter your email address:

    Delivered by FeedBurner

    Picture
Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.
  • Home
  • Coaching and Research
  • Lectures
    • Upcoming and Past Presentations
  • Searching For Stories blog
  • Publications
  • Contact
  • Resources
  • Privacy Policy