Wednesday, February 5, 1936 - Calendars for the Bedrooms

 

"I went down to Elsies and ate supper.  I made a calendar for Bob, Bill, and Jack to hang upstairs.  I made one for our Bedroom.  I gave Joyce my crayons so as to color.  I didn't have to go to school today.  The snow is so deep and the roads not plowed, so they shut the school up."

What is interesting about this entry is that it explains the sleeping arrangements.  The boys slept "upstairs", which I believe was probably a half story or attic, given the photos we have of the house.  There is a window in the south gable.  It appears that Shirley and Joyce shared a bedroom.  Where did Bryan and Marie sleep?  Did they share a room with the girls or did they sleep on a fold out sofa in the living room?  Were there two small bedrooms on the main floor?

Zillow states this house has only one bedroom and one bath, and 552 square feet, but then again, it states the house was built in 1938, which is obviously wrong!.  The square feet is probably considered usable space only and the upstairs is likely not counted.  Another real possibility is that there was no bathroom at the time my family lived there.  They likely had an outhouse and used a tin tub for bathing; and then later on, one of the bedrooms was converted to a bathroom.

Shirley's Home in Norton Township (now Norton Shores), Michigan

When I first set out to discover where Shirley lived in 1936, I found Wm. B. Robbin [sic] in the 1936-7 Muskegon City Directory (which includes information for the county, as well) living on Rural Route 5.  That wasn't exactly helpful information!  However, it turns out the family is listed more than once in the same directory!  Besides the alphabetical listings by Rural Routes, there are alphabetical listings by household.  What's interesting is that household listings had apparently current and outdated information, because it listed Bryan and Marie at their current address and also Marie at their old address!

"U.S., City Directories, 1822-1995," database, Ancestry Library Edition (https://ancestrylibrary.com : accessed 30 December 2020), entries for Marie, Robt L, and W Bryan Robbins; citing Polk's Muskegon (Muskegon County, Mich.) City Directory Vol. 1936-37 XXX, p. 359.

In the bottom entry of the above image, we can see that W. Bryan, an automobile mechanic, and Marie Robbins were householders (h) on the east side of Austin, 5 houses south of East Broadway in Norton Township.  The entry above states that Robert L. Robbins (Bob) resided or roomed at his parents' home. The top entry shows Marie Robbins as a machine operator for the Amazon Knitting Company, and that she resided on Rural Route 5 on East Broadway in Muskegon Heights.  That location was their former address, confirmed by the 1930 Federal Census, which lists the family at 416 East Broadway, Norton Township.  The Muskegon Heights listing in the directory was likely the post office that served the rural route.

I then did a search in Google Maps for the intersection of Austin and Broadway, and looked at that map, wondering if the house furthest south on the east side of Austin would have been the same one my Robbins family was living in.

Zooming in on Google Street View, I was able to capture this image:

This did look like the house I had seen in some of the photos in scrapbooks Marie made for Bob and Joyce, which have been scanned (Marie apparently made a scrapbook for each of her five children, with photos of some of their recent ancestors as well as relatives, and photos of each of them from babyhood to adult).

Joyce and Jack on the back steps of the Austin Street house, c. 1936.
Notice the back porch is being enclosed, and there is a water pump off to the right.

Joyce, Marie, and Bryan, 1935
On front steps of Austin Street house

These photos taken by Joyce and added to her scrapbook in 1984 confirmed I had the correct house.

The caption in the scrapbook reads:
"House on Austin St. Muskegon, Mich. This picture of house taken in 1984 They added to front."

Back of house, 1984