Happy Mother's Day!

Today is always a bittersweet day for me it has been 30plus years since my mother past away, but like anyone who has lost a parent there isn’t a day that I don’t think of her. But as the family genealogist I have continue the work she started so many years ago, before my father died and before the age of computers. She would marvel now how much is available now and how many tools are available for us family genealogists, such as online databases, access to online library materials, and now DNA. The DNA availability would of been something my mom would of definitely accessed, because she was a woman with a complicated past and there was a cloud that always hung over her of where she came from and who were her parents other than names on a certificate.
 

Audrey King Seekford

My mother was born in 1924 in Washington DC, to Leora Seekford, who was a maid for middle class family in Washington DC, Mr and Mrs Chebithes. Mr. Chebithes full name is Vasilos Isadore Chebithes who was a patent attorney and a Greek immigrant. He was a founding member of the AHEPA Organization, an became the Supreme President, from 1924-1927. When he married Mrs Chebithes was 30 years old at the time they married and she was 49 at the time and had two grown children.  So the question you might be asking yourself is how the heck did she end with this other family, and that was something that was a nagging pain that my mother suffered with all her life.

So lets start with the basics of what she knew and what she shared with me when I was old enough to ask questions. As I said Leora Martin Seekford, was maid for the Chebithes family.  She came to District of Columbia from Compton, Virginia sometime between the time after she had her forth child in 1922 to 1924 before she was visibly pregnant with my mother.  As I said, she had my mother on the 30th October 1924, in a small laying in home in DC. 

Leora Martin Seekford

So post birth and recovery she deposited my mother with Mrs Eva Chebithes, who at the time had just turned 50.  By deposited I mean exactly that she turned my mother over to them, as she did with her other four children who she left with cousins back in Compton and Luray.  Leora was never very maternal, and so she moved on and within four years she was divorced by Marion Keyser Seekford (for desertion) and remarried to Jacob Stouffer in Hagerstown, Maryland.. she would go on to divorce him as well an marry one last time to Oscar Bryant.

Marion Keyser Seekford

My mother’s life went on in the District of Columbia, New York and back to the District of Columbia. She grew up not knowing that she had two brothers and two sisters, and a father instead she was happily growing up with Greek cousins and schools in the historic district of Brooklyn in a nice brownstone house.

The Chebithes divorced, he left for Maryland and she came back to Washington DC and my mom spent her later years in Foggy Bottom where Trader Joes is located today, at 1116 25th Street, Washington NW.  She also grew close Mrs Chebithes daughter Gladys Fatt Hronick, who I grew up knowing as Aunt Gladys but she was more like a grandmother,  and her children Richard, Joseph and Louise.  It was Joseph who spilled the beans one day when they were playing and she said he yelled out to my mother that she was adopted.   During my mothers school age years, Mrs. Chebithes would always put mom down as Eva Chebithes not Audrey Seekford, as she did on census forms I found, so the seed of who am I was sewn deeper.

My mother (Audrey King Seekford) left and Gladys Fatt Hronik (Mrs Chebithes had been married before)

My mom went on with her life, she finished high school at Western High which is now Duke Ellington School of the Arts.  She later joined the Sisters of Charity, she had been brought up in Greek Orthodox Church which is similar to the Catholic Church.  She joined the Sisters of Charity so she could learn nursing, but she fell ill and left.  Gladys got her a job with the Federal Government as a Clerk Typist this was after we entered the War in 1941. She met my father while he was on leave from the Navy in DC and they were married in 1950.

Audrey Seekford Cantley at Wedding Reception at Junkaroo in DC

She moved up from clerk typist to accounting and statistical work working at the Department of the Army, with a brief stint over at the Department of Commerce in the late 50’s, she returned to the Department of the Army to be the person who received and compiled the causality and death count from Viet Nam which took a toll on her.  She spent the rest of her career on various projects as Budget Analyst for weaponry like the Abram’s Tank which never would past tests but would run on a desert parade ground.  I would wonder what she would think knowing all that money they appropriated out finally paid off and they could now use it in a war we should never had entered again (just a personal opinion).

She still wondered who Leora and Marion Seekford were, so in 1980 Jimmy Carter wanting to cut the Federal Workforce, offered a early out with a bonus for those who had the years (which had) but not the age, she was only 56, to retire.  So with the death of my father in 1975 who adamantly opposed to her doing this for fear she would end up hurt, we began our adventure.

I went to the library and started digging through Virginia and Maryland phone books, In Arlington we found an Aaron Seekford who pointed us in the direction of Amos Seekford who lived in Manassas.  Amos was a cousin of Marion and he gave us the brothers and sisters names to my mother, so we decided the call Monroe the one closest to my mother who lived in Maryland.  I placed the call an explained to him who we were, and that we were just looking for information not anything else.  He let us know that Leora was in a nursing home in Alexandria, Virginia.  So the following weekend we met up with Monroe and Maxine (his wife) and finally mom was able to meet Leora, who had suffered a stroke, she was basically dying, but my mom was able to see her and touch her.  So we had come full circle and closed the loop for her.

It was a strange feeling being close to Gladys and her children Richard, Joe and Louise and their families We had spent birthdays, graduations, weddings, and holidays together. My mother was very close to Louise, Joe her husband and her and stood for my parents when they were married, and my middle name is Louise. We lost Gladys in 1983, she approved of mom quest to find her mother. So we lost Leora in 1982, but mom had developed a close friendship with Monroe and Maxine, and I had cousins and nieces and nephews. Monroe passed away in 1986, the day he died my cousin Janice (his daughter and her husband) were helping us move. In 1988 my mother passed at my house with visits from her Monroe and Maxine and my cousins, at the same time my mom sister Virginia was also dying of cancer. She passed one month before my mom died. Mom’s two older siblings lived longer Norman died in 1996 and Pauline the oldest lived in 2005, Maxine called to give me the news. We have all remain close to some degree even though we live miles apart now, so after 40 years here we are..and she would be happy.

Mom, Maxine, Me (Jean) Janice, Monroe (behind) James

Jo, Juliet, Francesco, Oliver, Jon, James, Jean (Me), Janice, Ruby and Jamie