Life of a Dedicated and Religious Woman-My Mother

My maiden name was Neely. My father had small farm in Winterville Georgia. Later they name a small town Neely Town because there was so many Neely living there near Athens, Georgia. My father name was Peter and my Mother’s name was Lela. There was fifteen of us children. The boys names were General, Sam, Phillip, Charlie John, Matthew, Redding, and Benjamin. My sisters names were Glady, Flossie, Ruby, Gertude, Naomi, Marie and I.

On my Father’s farm, most of my brothers worked in the field with the other field hands. I kept the books because I was good mathematician and was interested in vegetation. Prior to the marriage of my parents, my mother had taught school. She would teach us correct pronunciation, mainly words in the bible and our story books.

In 1934, Father left the south, leaving us in Georgia, with the intention of sending for us later. The Bo weevils had got into the crop and Father had soil erosion, had a bad year. Mother was reluctant about letting him go alone and she had always relied on him making the right decisions.

In the first letter Father wrote home, after passing thru Chicago and Cleveland, he decided to stop in Detroit. In the letter that he wrote to mother, he said that he had misplaced ten dollars. Father had put his decimal point in the wrong place and mother had read it to be a hundred dollars. In the year of 1927, a hundred dollars was considered to be a lot of money. Father was one of the first man of color to own a Cadillac. He had driven his car but Mother put us on the train. We kept only our necessities. The youngest ones was allowed only two toys apiece. On the train, Mother had packed our lunches and we was kept together. It took us around three days to reach Detroit. We moved on Elba Street, staying in a few homes that was too small for our family. I was young and it made me very happy to see my father again. I had looked forward to it.

My father was a plasterer by trade also My cousin by marriage had already settled in the city. He was trying to figure out how to contract large jobs and was glad when my father came to Detroit. They formed the Neely and Brewer Company. They build many homes, and they would plaster all the new homes that they built. My uncle Mitchell joined the Company and then they did the cementing too.

Father rented a flat for $40.00 a month. When the downstairs became vacant, my parents rented the entire house. When the landlord went up on the rent, luckily my father was able to buy the house at 3645 Elba Street. We lived next doors to the Bryson Family. Mrs. Bryson was one of my mother’s closest friends.

The first school that my mother enrolled me in was the Miller School. It did not meet my mother’s approval for her girls, so she transferred us to the Smith School. I remember those days as good times., happy times. We played together, walked to school together and had a lot of fun along the way.

We lived in the neighborhood where there was a lot of Italians and Germans. The only unfriendly children I can remember meeting that we could not get along with were those children that we referred to as redheads and cockeyed children. With the Germans and the Italians, we shared the good with the bad..

When I attended the Harris School, a teacher recognized that I had a speech impediment, she took the time to teach me how to say my words correctly. I spent two years there and went on to graduate from Eastern High School.

My father died in 1927. I asked my mother if she would let me get a job. I worked in Mrs. Kant’s store. Mrs. Kant paid me .50 cents an hour to sell her candy. At the end of the week, I would make $10.00 dollars. I would rush home and give it to my mother and she would give me back a dollar. With that dollar, I would buy her a box of snuff and a lb of pork chops, a luxury she would not allow herself because of her many responsibilities.

Mother grew most of our vegetables at the back of the house. I have since learned that growing ones own vegetables does save on the grocery bill. To this day, when I work in my garden, and put away food for the winter, I get much pleasure from working with the soil. We came from the earth, and when we meditate on having a rich garden, we do.

I was the ninth child. Mother depended on the oldest children to look after the youngest children. The principals she instilled in me still remains and because of those principals, I feel quite protective of my sister Marie. She and I are the only survivors of my family. I, being the only one that had no sisters near my age, I could not go the places my sisters went, Charlie was next to me and he teased me a lots. Our lives were just the opposite.

One day, Mother left me in charge of the grocery book and Charlie tried everything he could to get that book from me. I could deal with Charlie but not my mother.

One Saturday morning, Mother found a basket on the back porch with all kinds of goodies in it. Mother was curious as to where it came from. An Italian woman told my mother that her husband had a grocery store and since there were so many children for my mother to raise alone, that was why she had shared a little of what they had with us.

While growing up, I would often visit my twin cousins after my chores was finished. Many times, both of them would fight me, but I still enjoyed visiting them.

A Hamtramck boy introduced Reverend Thomas Howard Lowe to me, my future husband. We had a beautiful courtship. We had planned to elope but mother read the marriage columns each day and she found out about it before we could tell her. I felt I had broken my Mother’s heart then because she had planned for me to go to college.

If I had it to do all over again I probably would have done the same thing. I haven’t met any man that came up to my husband’s standards and I am 93 years old now.

We were so in love and these days I gaze upon my mother’s picture and ask her forgiveness if I broke her heart.