Broadway at 25th
22 November 1909: 1. 2508 Broadway (Avenue J): Charles Fowler (1858-1931) and Minna Wolf Fowler (1862-1937) owned this house at the corner of Broadway and 25th, living there in 1910 with their son Charles, Jr. (1885-1967) and daughter Linda (1891-1981). Charles, Sr. was the principal partner of Fowler & McVitie, steamship agents for Morgan Steamships and the vice-president of the First National Bank of Galveston, with offices in the Cotton Exchange Building; 2. 2422 Broadway (Avenue J): “Open Gates” was the grand home of Magnolia Willis Sealy (1854-1933), widow of George Sealy (1835-1901) who lived in the house in 1910 with her sons George, Jr. (1880=1944), Robert (1891-1979) and William Willis (1893-1966), and daughter Rebecca Willis (1885-1979); 3. 2328 Broadway (Avenue J): “Ashton Villa” the home of Rebecca Ashton “Bettie” Brown (1855-1920), her sister Matilda Ella Brown Sweeney (1865-1926) widow of Thomas H. Sweeney (1850-1905) and her family: Moreau Brown Sweeney (1885-1918); Charles James Sweeney (1888-1961) his wife Guinevere Graham Sweeney (1887-1974) and son Charles James Sweeney, Jr. (1907-1954). Ashton Villa was built in 1859 by James Moreau Brown (1821-1895) and Rebecca Ashton Stoddart Brown (1831-1907), the first house built on Broadway and one of the first private brick residences in Galveston. The Sweeney Family had been living at another historic Galveston house at 2402 Avenue L, also built by James Brown, for his daughter on the occasion of her marriage; 4. Broadway at 25th: Rosenberg Monument [See Contemporaneous view adjacent].
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24 March 2019: 1. 2502 Broadway (Avenue J): Zilla Car wash, a self-service car wash much used by day trippers just returning from the beach to remove corrosive salt and annoying sand before heading home; 2. 2419 Sealy (Avenue I): The Sealy Mansion has been refitted as Open Gates Conference Center, a University of Texas Medical Branch media and catering center for university events and conferences; 3. Broadway at 25th: Rosenberg Monument [See galveston.com website for a detailed examination of the monument].
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Postmarked: 22 November 1909; Galveston, Texas
Stamp: 1c Green Ben Franklin #331 Flag Cancel To: Miss Josie Hanson Brazoria Texas c/o H. H. Hanson Message: Hello Josie, How are you? I guess you thought I had forgotten you, but we were in Houston a week. We had a fine time. How long are you going to stay. “Mayme” [Partial fingerprint on address.] Josephine Gertrude “Josie” Hanson was the daughter of Joseph George Hanson (1867-1947) and Gertrude Genevieve Grisham (1870-1924). Josie’s great grandfather was Henry Furlong Hanson (1822-1870), who was born in Washington, DC and came to the Republic of Texas in the 1840’s and settled in Stephen F. Austin’s colony. There on 27 February 1843 in Matagorda County he married Charlotte Slade (1825-1900), also from Washington, DC, daughter of Henry Clinton Slade (1796-1843) and Charlotte Weems (1801-1841). Henry Slade was a slave owner in Washington, DC, holding 3 slaves in addition to his family of 3 daughters and 2 sons, all of whom came to Texas, then an independent nation welcoming slavery.
Henry Furlong Hanson was a well educated man who first taught school at Caney in Matagorda County, then became a bookkeeper in East Columbia. Like most educated of the time, his penman was beautifully scripted and samples of his documents can be seen in the museum at the San Jacinto Monument. He served in the Civil War in the Volunteer Cavalry of the 16th Brigade, and suffered wounds from which he never fully recovered. He died in 1870 when Josie’s father was only three years old, leaving his widow Charlotte with four minor children. Josie’s maternal grandfather, was John Henry Grisham (1839-1887) was from Vicksburg, Warren County, MS. His parents, John Jackson Grisham (1815-1853) and Penelope Catherine Bird Newsome (1818-1907), had moved to Liberty County, TX before 1850 where J. J. was an accountant. After John’s father died, Penelope married J. Hanney, a Galveston druggist, John H. Grisham married Charlotte Thompson (b. 1841) and soon after the start of hostilities joined Waul’s Texas Legion as a Captain and returned to Vicksburg to defend the city during General Grant’s long siege. Along with 20,000 Confederate troops, Lieutenant General John Clifford Pemberton surrendered on July 4, 1863 and was immediately paroled and given a 30 day furlough. Troops were instructed to return to Texas and report to camps there, but it is not certain whether he rejoined the war. |
John H Grisham is enumerated on the 1870 census of Galveston as a store clerk with his wife and children: Robert E. L. Grisham (5) and Gertrude (3) [Josie’s mother]. In 1880 the family was at #16 Houston Avenue in Houston [just to the south of Washington Avenue]. John H. Grisham, a railroad delivery clerk had added to the family two more children: Charlotte (b. 1871) and Beatrice (1879). John H. Grisham died 13 April 1887 and his daughter Gertrude Genevieve Grisham married Joseph George Hanson 15 October 1888 in Galveston. Their first child Josephine was born there on 20 November 1889, followed by the rest of the family: Marie Zuleika (1892), Gertrude Gladys (1894), Paul Joseph (1896), Edwina May (1900), and George Lee (1903).
When Josie received this postcard she was visiting her Uncle James Douglas Hanson (1848-1924), the only Hanson living at Perry’s Landing in Brazoria County. Other postcards in the series of 21 cards in the collection were mailed to Josie in Brazoria, so perhaps she was making the rounds to various relations. Her correspondent, “Mayme,” was evidently not a relative, or she would not have addressed her card c/o H. H. Hanson, perhaps confusing Josie’s Uncle James in Perry’s Landing with her cousin Henry Furlong Hanson (1872-1934) in Brazoria. If Mayme was not a relation, she may have been a friend or neighbor. In 1910 only three young women named Mayme [Mamie] lived in Josie’s neighborhood in Galveston (Ward 10), and only one lived close. She was Mayme [Mary Octavia] Pike (b. 1888), daughter of Rufus Pinckney Pike (1848-1916) and Ella Octavia Malloy (1857-1927), who lived at 1814 Avenue L just two blocks from Josie. In 1910 she was working as a bookkeeper in a furniture store, but no subsequent record can be found to reasonably posit her as the postcard author. Josie married Samuel Clinton Kirkpatrick (1890-1953) about 1910 after a courtship revealed in the postcard collection. From Galveston, Samuel Clinton had taken a job with St. Louis - San Francisco Railway – “Frisco Lines,” whose main routes linked North Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas and Missouri. Samuel’s parents were Clinton Samuel Kirkpatrick (1857-1929) and Octavia Veronica Marchand (1861-1937), married in 1884 in Galveston. Octavia’s father Ferdinand (1815-1889) and mother Octavia Liénard [Leonard](1821-1895) were well established in Galveston, coming to the island in 1851 from Rougegoutte in Alsace, France. Ferdinand worked as a carpenter and ran a grocery store, later buying 1000 acres in Virginia Point on the shore of Galveston Bay near where ferries to the island originated. Josie and her husband had their only son, Samuel Clinton Kirkpatrick in 1911, and by 1920 were living in Dallas where Samuel Clinton, Sr. worked as a chief clerk for the railroad. Living with them there were Josephine’s adult siblings, Marie (25), Henry (20, a railroad clerk), Gertrude (24, a nurse), Edwina (19, a clerk in a publishing house), and Paul (23, a commercial traveler for a publishing company), while the youngest, George Lee (16), stayed behind with their parents in Houston [1424 Harvard Street] as Joseph George carried over his occupation as post office letter carrier from Galveston in 1900 and 1910. Josie and Samuel Clinton returned to Galveston by 1920 where they remained in their home at 3128 Avenue P through 1940 while Samuel worked for the Acheson Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad, probably out of Union Station [LINK]. However, since he was an A T & S F executive with headquarters in Chicago, they also stayed at an apartment at the Palmer House, one of the nation’s grandest hotels [1940]. Samuel died in 1953 and Josie died in 1969 in Saint Petersburg, FL; they are buried in Cavalry Catholic Cemetery in Galveston, as is their son, Samuel Clinton Kirkpatrick, Jr., who died in 1963. Old Catholic Cemetery in Galveston holds the remains of Ferdinand Marchand (1815-1889) and his wife Octavia (1821-1895), and their daughter Octavia (1861-1937) and son-in-law Clinton S. Kirkpatrick (1857-1929). |
James Henry Hanson, Josie’s first cousin, gave this photograph to her in November 1909 when he lived in Perry’s Landing, Brazoria County, TX. Very possibly this was gifted to her on her visit to her Uncle’s farm on the trip mentioned in the postcard above. James Henry Hanson would marry and become a farmer in Brazoria County next to his father, James Douglas Hanson, until about 1930 when he moved to Freeport and worked as a contracting carpenter. Living to the age of 104, it seems likely he returned to rural Brazoria County before he died in 1991. He is buried at Gulf Prairie Cemetery in Jones Creek, Brazoria County, TX, once the resting place of Samuel Fuller Austin (1793-1836), father of Texas, reinterred in 1910 at the Texas State Cemetery in Austin.
The photograph was taken by Frank Schlueter at Schlueters Advertising and Souvenir Photographs in Houston. |