Wilhemina Watzke Durling
This picture is Wilhemina Watzke, who married George Washington Durling. Betty's mother, Bertha, and our mother, Ruth, were both children of this union, along with seven others. All of those folks are gone now.
posted by David R. Snow at
10:38:00 PM
3 Comments:
Thanks for posting this. It helps me eliminate Grandma Durling as a suspect in another photo of a long-haired lady taken about the same age. I think maybe the one I'm trying to identify is Aunt Nora, Wilhelmina's sister, who stayed in Alabama when the family moved...maybe she was already married by then.
By the way, did you know that subsequent to Wilhelmina's marriage to George, the Watzke family's trekking around the country was because Fannie (Great-grandmother Watzke) was following her eldest daughter, Wilhelmina? It was family lore, both among the contingent that remained in the Alabama/Georgia area and those that eventually ended up in Wichita. The saying was: Wherever Wilhelmina went, Fanny was never far behind.
This necessitated considerable moving around for both families starting when Wilhelmina was still in her teens. Her asthma was so severe that doctors advised moving to a different climate each time her asthma got out of control. That's how Bertha and Bessie happened to be born in Raton, NM, and a couple of years later the family was running a restaurant on the main street of Boulder, Colorado.
Another point to remember in picturing these families is that both Fanny and Wilhelmina were producing children during an overlapping period of time. My mother, Bertha, came along in the middle for Wilhelmina Durling (5th baby for her before age 21). (Great)Aunt Anna was Fanny Watzke's second to last child.
Bertha and Anna were the same age. Anna and (Great) Uncle James, Fanny's last child, were younger than their nieces and nephews (Wilhelmina's oldest children)... Clarence, Clara, and Claude(? I never remember where he came in the sequence).... Begins to sound like "I'm My Own Grandpa"!
I love that hair...
Ashley Ann's comment reminded me of a couple of family stories: 1) According to my mother, Bertha, their younger sister Gladys caught pneumonia and died after she sat in a window drying her hair. 2) My mother's hair began to fall out and the doctor told her she would have to have her hair cut short. Shock! That was at the beginning of the Roaring 20's and only WILD, WILD WOMEN bobbed their hair. My mother said she was so mortified after the barber cut off her hair that she sneaked down the alleys all the way home, because she didn't want anybody to see her hair. Once she got home, Clara helped her use the curling iron to fix it so that it looked like long hair that had been pinned up.
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