Now that they’ve all arrived at their destinations, I can finally show off the holiday art card I made for 2021! I’m not too big on the winter holiday season – I’m not religious, I don’t really celebrate any sort of traditional Christmas or religious holiday, and have found it hard to find happiness during this time of year – I’m pretty deeply introverted, so large parties are not my thing, and feeling guilty for not being happy during that time of year is difficult to deal with when everyone has these high expectations and standards of how/when/where/why you should be happy and celebratory. For the past I think 4 years now, I’ve gotten into the habit of making a not-holiday-specific art card instead of buying pre-made cards as a way of giving myself a creative challenge and finding my own way to something happy without following a cookie-cutter mold of how things should be. It also fits in with my idea that the winter holiday season should be more about the people and the gathering rather than the stuff and the things, so creating something with my own two hands feels more meaningful and less wasteful than buying stuff that might end up being returned, sold, traded, re-gifted, etc. Being together in person with the pandemic and all has been difficult, so this sort of fills in that gap a little too by having something handmade to send to family and friends.
On to the card! After last year’s complicated 3 layer screen print, I went a little simpler this year with a two piece linocut of the canal houses in Amsterdam. I sort of took ideas from houses I’d photographed while traveling and various photos around the internet and mashed them together into this. Then, once I saw the empty space above just the houses, I took the scrap cut from the houses and made a little windy sky to fill that space. I used a batch of cards I picked up in bulk when AC Moore closed (I’ll be using those for years to come) and printed with black Speedball Fabric Ink in black as well as a standard Speedball Block Printing Ink (water based) in a light blue color. The block itself isn’t even real linoleum, it’s a rubber “Soft-Kut” printmakers block that I get in 12×12″ pieces and then cut down to fit each project. The rubber is like sneaker sole material and is easier to carve and definitely a lot less hard on the carving tools, though it can be a bit less exact, especially on corners and edges since it smooshes and squishes with the tools. Proper lino is a nice, hard surface and definitely gives me better lines, but it’s more difficult to cut and work with and can sometimes crumble. As for the ink, I like working with the oil-based fabric ink much better, but didn’t happen to have the blue color on hand in the same ink, so I used the classic water-soluble ink for the sky bits. The water-soluble ink tends to leave a texture behind, but dries immediately while the oil-based ink prints cleaner and flatter, but takes a few days to dry completely.
Overall, I really liked this year’s card! I did put together a screen for the inside message, “From our home to yours,” and the back of the card for the date and credit lines, so it’s all hand printed between the linocut and the screen print, no printer printing. Now I’ve got to start thinking about next year’s card at some point!
Curley Miller and his Ploughboys in The Economy Rodeo on Diamond Street
If the title sounds like a country music band, well..
It’s probably because it is a country music band.
This image is likely from a program or promotional poster/flyer for the band and was found in a scrapbook of my grandmother’s who was kind enough to note “Coalport, 1936, In Person” up in the top left corner. Coalport refers to Coalport, PA in Clearfield County, and it’s easy enough to assume she saw the band in 1936. Economy Rodeo seems to have been a popular radio station program during the time period, featuring country music acts. The reference to Diamond Street appears to reference the radio station WWSU that operated out of the Hotel Schenley in Pittsburgh – an article from 1931 mentions the station opening on the 10th floor of the hotel which is located on Forbes Ave, formerly known as Diamond Street. The hotel is now the student union building for the main campus of the University of Pittsburgh. I couldn’t find an advertisement in any newspaper for that specific concert in the photo note, but I did find quite a few other ads for similar shows around that region of PA.
So, I went on a little dig to see what I could find about Curley Miller since genealogy is my focus and I know precious little about the early days of country music. Grandma was a huge fan her whole life, and we’d routinely show up for visits to find her watching the Grand Ole Opry reruns on TV, so this type of bluegrass/country music would’ve been right up her alley.
Curley Miller was born Calvin Ellis Miller to parents Calvin McCormick Miller and Elda Blanche Miller on 2 December 1914 in Versailles, Allegheny County, Pennsylvania (found via the PA birth records index, the actual document should be online in the next year or two). He shows up on census records in 1920-1930 as “George Miller” instead of Calvin, but the birth record clearly shows his name as Calvin. It’s possible they may have called him George around home to differentiate between Calvin the child and Calvin the father.
He lived for the majority of his early life in McKeesport, Allegheny County, Pennsylvania with his mother and father, and later his stepfather (verified by census records). A half-sister, Mildred Evangeline Espy, would later join him in the music scene as Millie Wayne. Our Curley Miller is not to be confused with a different Curley Miller from the Milton, PA area though which is what made my initial searches lead in the wrong direction. The first newspaper reference I could find was in 1935 when Curley was about 21 years old and playing on a local Pittsburgh radio station, KDKA.
Just two years later, Calvin Ellis Miller married Sybil Clarice Lowell in Greensburg, PA on 25 April 1937 (verified by Westmoreland county record search).
Sybil seems to have gone by the name “Sally Dare” or “Molly Dare” as part of the group and likely is the woman seated in the middle of the photo. Advertisements in old newspapers have photos of her that look awfully similar. There are also ads referring to their daughter “Patsy Belle” having been part of the act as a “Child Singing Star.” I did find the three of them living in Wheeling, West Virginia as of the 1940 census but was unable to find anything about Patricia “Patsy Belle” after that point. Patsy was also born in Tennessee (according to the census) two years before Curley married Sybil, so this may have been a daughter from her first marriage. Sybil was granted a divorce on 28 April 1941 while living in Wyoming. The divorce decree mentions zero children affected by the divorce, so I’m not entirely sure if Patsy Belle was their child or just part of their travelling act? Not enough paper evidence to support that, and I couldn’t find a birth record for Patsy at all.
Part of the fun of sorting out fact from fiction were articles like these, telling fantastic stories about Curley that were part of his stage persona and printed in newspapers, but weren’t at all true according to paper records. That article states Curley was born in Oklahoma, and while this birth location also appears on the 1940 census, he was very clearly born in Pennsylvania. I started to wonder if the stage/radio persona bled into his real life. That hunch was confirmed in a later article from 1974 in Florida.
The article, which has a problem with column formatting, states,
“Miller comes by his interest in “songs of the soil” naturally. Two of his ancestors were killed at the Alamo and a great-uncle (The Rev. William Snider) was the Indian agent to whom Sitting Bull surrendered when he came down from Canada.
While Many parents were reluctant for their offspring to enter show business, it was different with Curley. His parents were both horse enthusiasts and expert at trick riding. They were also amateur entertainers.”
As far as I have been able to research, absolutely ZERO of that is true. He didn’t have a great-uncle named William Snider (I found the names of his grandparents and none of them were Snider/Synder). As far as ancestors being killed at the Alamo, none of that tracks at all since all I can find is that his ancestors lived in Pennsylvania. For the bit about his parents, on their marriage license, it lists his father as a machinist and later in the 1910 census as working in an electrical shop, and his mother was a music teacher. Granted, his mom may have helped foster Curley’s love of music, but there’s no paper evidence to prove any of the claims he made in the article.
He did participate for years in the West Virginia country music scene and participated in the WWVA Jamboree in Wheeling, West Virginia (link to tour program in 1941, alternate link to the program page about him). He had been drafted into the Navy during WWII which meant he left radio. When he returned home after the war, he returned to civilian life and went into horse training, still as a showman, taking the title of “Colonel Curley Miller” with his dancing horses in various rodeos and circuses.
He later moved to Florida in about 1962. While in Florida, he continued working with radio as a talent director, according to the article above.
He died on 14 Feb 1994 in Orlando, Florida (obituary link). His obituary states, “Mr. Miller was a retired project director for an employment service,” which I guess could mean he was a talent scout which would fall in line with his history in the entertainment business. Every genealogist loves long obituaries with tons of detail, but this one had very little. There’s a granddaughter mentioned, but no daughter, though this could possibly be the aforementioned “Patsy Belle.” The 1950 census is due out this year (2022), so it’s possible I’ll be able to find out more once that’s released!
Random stuff in scrapbooks seldom leads me down a deep dive into the history of the subjects in photographs, but once I started digging, the information about Calvin “Curley” Miller ended up being so fascinating, and a great example of the difficulty in separating actual factual documents from self-reported information in newspapers and sometimes even censuses.
Long time, no blog! As you can imagine, a lot has changed in the 2.5 years since I last posted anything here. But, this isn’t a post about that.
We recently came across my maternal grandmother’s scrapbook, and I scanned everything into the computer. She kept a lot of fun little things, including a photo of “Herman Luzier” along with a page of photos of other musicians. Herman is holding a steel guitar in the photo, and a quick search on Newspapers.com turned up an article saying he was from the same area as my grandma and played music on the radio. Through some more sleuthing, I found that Herman was born on 20 Sep 1912 and died 3 Feb 1985, having grown up around the Clearfield, Pennsylvania area. The article from Newspapers.com is added below. Just a short update, but I hope to go through more of these random photos and bits of history grandma saved in an effort to digitally preserve them and maybe, someday, should someone go internet searching these names, they might be reconnected with their families!
This month’s prompt for Sew My Style included two pattern options, the Sheona Top/Dress by Athina Kakou and the Givre Top/Dress by Deer and Doe. Both are pretty basic tees that are extended to knee-length straight dresses. I really can’t wear straight dresses like that since they don’t flatter my body shape, so I opted to keep it simple and sew the Sheona Top. I didn’t have any knit fabric on hand for this, so I ended up finding a cute little anchor and “x” print from Girl Charlee. It’s *so* hard to find cute knits that aren’t florals or juvenile prints, so I maybe went with something a little more simple than I would otherwise, but the price was right at $6.75/yard and it’s 100% cotton jersey instead of a polyester blend. Before I sewed the top above, I did end up sewing a wearable muslin out of clearance fabric from Joann’s that was marked as “youth” fabric, but also the only cotton knits they had in the store that weren’t awful floral prints were in the youth section, and it was either the fabric seen below, or rainbows and donuts (I WAS SO TEMPTED THOUGH).
The fabric is kind of sheer in spots with a sort of burn-out effect and there are all these little lady bugs doing funny things like laundry, pushing a carriage, playing jump rope, etc. It’s adorable, but definitely designed with someone younger in mind. However, that’s never stopped me from wearing silly prints before, and it’s not about to stop me now! I sewed the lady bug top at size 24 thinking that since I was between sizes, I’d best size up since the pattern mentioned negative ease in the hips and that’s the opposite of my shape and comfort in terms of fit in clothing. I have Hips with a capital H, so.. yeah. Anyway, the 24 ended up being a little big – the shoulder seam is a little low, there’s too much space around the bust (another issue I have with fit in general), but the hips were right! So, I decided to cut down the pattern to the 22, but kind of cut between the two sizes at just the hips which worked out pretty well. I also opted for the short sleeve in the final version since I tend to layer cardigans over short sleeves.
It’s not a bad fit! I mean, it’s a fairly stretchy fabric for being cotton knit, and of course being a knit fabric means it’s got a fair bit of forgiveness in the fit anyway. The length is surprisingly spot on, considering I’ve got a super short torso and most tops end up mid-thigh instead of just above the widest part of my hips where they should be. If I did this again, I’d probably make the short sleeves just an inch longer, and see about maybe scooting the waist curve up a few inches. Maybe I’d even take the bust sizing down too? It’s a lot of fiddling around for a t-shirt, but having a go-to pattern that fits would be really great. Also, learning how to do those adjustments on an easy-to-sew pattern would make future sewing pattern adjustments even easier.
Overall, I’m really happy with how this came out, and I absolutely will wear both the ‘muslin’ and the final t-shirt. The pattern was incredibly easy to follow and sew, and I finished them each in maybe an hour or two between cutting and sewing. The designer also has TONS of modifications and pattern hacks available to change the neckline, sleeves, hem line, etc, so once I’ve got a solid base fit on this, the possibilities are nearly endless which is what makes it such a great starting point for other sewing!
If you want to check out what other sewists made this month, check out the hashtag on Instagram, #SewMyStyle2019.
