Tag Archives: childhood

Growing Up

Dorothy Turnbull was born on July 24, 1922 and grew up in New Orleans.

 My father was born in Algiers, which is across the river from New Orleans. I think people today know something about the area from Katrina. Algiers suffered, but not as much as the city proper. But long time ago he was from there.  I always used to tell people though, they said, “Oh, my, you have an interesting background!”  (laughs)  Algiers thinking of the foreign land.

She had one older brother who was two years older. Dorothy’s father was a real estate developer, but she doesn’t really remember any hardship as a child.

This photograph comes from the collection of Dorothy Turnbull Stewart.

Edna Jean Clark

Meet Edna Jean Clark, who goes by Jean. Jean was born and grew up in Stayton, Oregon, which she called “a family town.”

My great-great grandfather came there in the early 1800s and founded the town.  The town is named for him. Stayton, Oregon.  My family all grew up there.  My brother and I and my cousins.

Jean’s mother was a Murphy and her father a Richardson. related to that original Stayton who founded the town. They got married 1911.

Stayton was a logging community, and Jean’s family all worked in the industry. That meant the family often moved around the area as her father got new jobs.

He was always a logger or a farmer depending on which was the best. We did a lot of moving from one log camp to another. I grew up, my first grade class was in a logging camp where there were just eight children in the first grade and only one in the second grade and then several along scattered through. It was a one-room school. Pot bellied stove on the floor.  We played on the the sawed off logs as a playground.

The certificate of marriage comes from the collection of Jean Clark.