Following Edward’s death in 1922, great grandmother Annie continued to live at the family home at 541 East D Street. Daughter Helen remained with her, studying music with prominent musicians in the region until mid 1926, then spending two years in Vienna. Returning in 1928, Helen lived at home as she built the Pomona orchestra and took it through its first concert season. Helen left home for good in late 1929, moving to New York to marry Edgar Bircsak.
Annie lived alone in the East D Street home for 11 more years until her death in December 1941. She was 10 blocks away from son Joe’s family at 501 North Vine Ave.
Personal information about Annie remains hard to find. Even Joe’s stories and detailed diaries don’t give us much beyond mentions of frequent visits. That she lived in Edward’s bigger-than-life shadow may also have contributed to our knowing less about her.
But we have managed to assemble a reasonable profile of Annie, her ancestry in Scotland and Vermont, the burden she shared with Edward in caring for Sadie Spear in her final decade of bad health, and the bargain she happily struck with fate in marrying a man 18 years her senior. She was a true pioneer, crossing the western frontier, following Edward through Cheyenne and Eureka with infant children in tow, and forging a new life in the tiny frontier town of Corona.
With Edward, Annie raised three talented, successful children, giving them the freedom to pursue diverse paths much different from their own–philosophy and practices of raising children that were passed down to future generations. Whatever Annie said when when young Joe came home at 2am after walking home from Pomona having missed the last train, or when Helen was sweeping through Los Angeles building a groundbreaking musical career unheard of for women in the 1920s, she did not discourage them.
With other sources of information dwindling, we can turn to our own memories which link us to ancestors we never knew. A family photo circa 1932 shows Annie at about 74 years of age, sitting in the front yard at 501 North Vine with our father, her young grandson, Gordon.
The linked memory evoked by this photo is simple: I (we) know exactly what it feels like to sit in this exact spot, in the warm, dry late afternoon air, the short, stiff grass crinkling underfoot. That sensation, engrained from early childhood for the rest of our lives, also shared with our father, was equally familiar to our great grandmother, Annie.
Bridging the Silences 