Long before women burned their bras, my Grandma Shellabarger was a working woman. In fact, she worked most of her life. At first it was because her family couldn’t survive during the Depression on the 33 cents an hour my Grandfather made. After their divorce it was necessity. She needed to feed herself and her…
Tag: Oakland
Before He Became a Painter and Writer
Another entry in my Labor Day photo series… Frank Milton Shellabarger was my grandmother’s third husband. My software’s relationship calculator says that we are not related by blood. I will always know him as Grandpa Frank even though he died when I was 1 year old. When my grandma met him in the late 1950s,…
They Owned Laundries
Another for my Labor Day photo series… My great grandfather was Charles Mazeres . Charles was from Ogeu les bains, France. He made his way to San Francisco in the early 1890s. He and my grandmother, Brigitte Breilh, owned French Laundries. The earliest laundry I’ve documented is the one he owned in Modesto, California, 1903. …
Women Working in the Factories
Here’s another entry for my Labor Day photo series. I found this photograph in the Oakland Tribune [Oakland, Alameda Co., CA], 15 May 1942, Front Page. The article was titled “Women Now in War Plant in Emeryville.” The article documented local women who were moving into manufacturing jobs as men headed off to war. This…
Genealogist Are Awesome!!!
A week or so ago, I blogged about my mystery relative, Rose (Caires) Vieira. I hope that someone would read the post and tell me what had happened to her. My cousin, Teresa, and I had put together what we had, which was very little. With our efforts exhausted we turned to the web for…