stories

A Philadelphia Story

Tue, 15 Jan 2008 14:49:24 +0000

Italian Grandmom lived at the head of Broad Street after leaving South Philly where she raised her family. I believe the big "B" is still there at the end of the very broad street. She was quite fair as a young girl and I was told she had strawberry blond or reddish hair.

She maintained a garden in her yard until her late 80's.

She raised several children including Grand-dad Fortuna who was her older sister's child. Italian Grandmom's name was Mary!

The children I knew about and/or knew were--Joe, Louis(boxer), Andy (Amadeo), Ida, Louise, Ester (who they called Celeste pronounced Cheleste) and of course Helen--.

She never learned English and would get on the phone to her daughters Helen and Ester when we would visit and talk about us--she referred to me as the "Americootize".

I didn't catch all she had to say but my college Italian had me believing she liked me. We never visited that she did not insist we eat!! The menu was always the same--roasted chicken and canned peaches!!

Many times Hersey kisses were thrown in and she always provided us with wrapped up food to take with us.

Unfortunately--her cooking was not very good and we usually donated the snack pack to the first homeless we saw. Once, when in Philly searching for a place to live--we stayed the night at her house.

Doc Joe and I were put into separate rooms (we had 3 kids at this point) and we were actually physically tucked in--I awoke in the middle of the night to her lovingly wrapping a cloth around my head to keep me warm.

By this time--she had caught on to the fact that I had a little Italian and spoke to us very slowly to facilitate understanding. This understanding came about during a visit when I needed the facilities and had to ask where the bathroom was--when I came down from the bathroom--she was on the phone to Helen frantic to tell her I had some understanding and wanting to know if she had ever said anything uncomplimentary! The family in Philly was a joy to me--When visiting South Philly with Joey, Treesy and George on a Sunday afternoon (when Doc Joe was working)--At Gilda would always bring out the white wine (and food), At Ester taught me how to make pizzelles and "gravy" (red sauce)and often treated us to Sunday dinner.. At Helen provided us with loads of new rolls of wall paper (flocked no less) when we moved to Malvern.

We once gave Granddad Fortuna a surprise b'day party at our house in West Philly and invited all his siblings that were still in Philly--he had been slightly or majorily estranged for years but they all came and treated him like the "Godfather" when he arrived. I think he liked it--there was a lot of Italian, hugs, kisses and tears!

We also hosted a 90th B'day for Italian Grandmom at our house in Malvern. Everyone brought something and it was hugely attended.

Once, Doc Joe and I appeared with the kids unannounced on a hot summer afternoon to find Italian Grandmom outside working on her garden tomatoes. She was working in the direct sun--bending over weeding. She quickly rose to her feet at our approach and dramatically lifted her hands to her head. She told Doc Joe she was sick--and reached for his arm. I slowly asked her symptoms--with hands and voice--she indicated she was dizzy. Always being the master of diagnosis--he advised her to "stop working in the Sun and stand up slowly"!

After her 90th B'day her late onset diabetes caused her to have first one leg and then the other amputated and she went into a nursing home.

She didn't like it there and basically starved herself--when I asked her what was wrong with the home--they seemed to be caring for her well there--she responded that she hated the food--they only served pasta on Wed!

I will always treasure the memories of these great people!

Granddad Fortuna (even long after his association with Trudy) spoke of his early time with Camille in affectionate terms. He described her as the most beautiful woman he had ever seen--protected and sheltered by her family (primarily her mother). I believe he met her when he was a sales person traveling from Philly to sell supplies to DC stores. I think he may have had her family's store as a customer. His favorite story was about having her appear unexpectedly at his mother's front door in South Philly one Sunday morning!! He said that was when he knew she was "the one"! He then moved to DC. I think he really loved her and that her decline was his great sorrow and he did not have the tools to deal with it (personally or for her). He always described her as being brilliant--I too think she was highly intelligent. We have all seen the photos--she was beautiful!

Granddad Fortuna took us to Canada one summer (this is another involved story). There we learned that many of the Fortunas made the trek to North America and to some went to Philly (I seem to remember their ship was turned away at New York) and some to Canada.

What I know [More on Wiley Durden - ed.]

Tue, 08 Jan 2008 05:01:07 +0000

The Durden family apparently came what was the colonies in the late 1600's/early 1700's, and started to show up in Georgia late in the 1700's. A Benjamin Durden shows up in 1830, he was a Revolutionary War veteran that got land in a lottery from area that was taken from the Creek Indians at the conclusion of that war. From what I could understand, you got extra preference in the lottery if you were a Revolutionary War veteran, so a lot of families brought their elderly fathers and grandfathers to Georgia to get land. There is no clear relationship with Benjamin to us, although that name is common in the Durden family. He had a son named Wiley, but I don't think that Wiley is our ancestor, the ages are different as is the middle initial. The Durden's liked three names, Benjamin, Wiley, and Francis. Most of the Durden men had one or two of these names.

Our ancestor doesn't show up until the 1870 census, his name was Wiley Francis Durden. He was a school teacher in the 1870 census. Family tradition is that he was an Indian and taught Indian children. Supposedly the Indians in Twiggs County got together and paid him privately for schooling their children. Before you go off thinking we are going to have our own casino, there is a bit of a hitch. There is no record at all of any Indian community remaining in Twiggs County. There were some clustes of Cherokees that stayed behind after the forced removal, but that was in Northern Georgia. Twiggs was in Creek territory, and they were pushed out in the war. So, I would say that Wiley Francis was NOT an Indian.

So, what was the deal? Wiley doesn't show up in the 1860 census, although some Durdens have drawn some lines of the family tree from him to others, the dates, ages, and middle initials don't jive. Wiley also didn't show up in the "History of Twiggs County" that I found in a library here as a school teacher in 1870, so he was not in an "official" school. During Reconstruction many black people pooled their money together to hire a teacher. Also, as Reconstruction ended, the schools were shut down by the Klan, which would explain why in 1880 Wiley was living in Macon as a "peddler of tin". More controversial is why Wiley doesn't show up in the 1860 census. After Emancipation a fairly large number of freed slaves of mixed race "passed" as white. That might explain why the older generation of Durdens down here had kinky hair and dark skin. While the aunts say the Durdens were big in the Confederacy, they couldn't give specifics, and according to Uncle Ben, Wiley was not in the Confederate Army.

Wiley had a son Benjamin Wiley (see what I mean about the names?). Benjamin Wiley was illiterate, which is odd being his father was a teacher. Benjamin was orphaned and supposedly adopted by an Englishman who lived in Macon. That may be another story, but it would be hard to invent that one, generally myths are about ancestors being "Cherokee princesses", or "Confederate War Heroes" and such, not adopted by foreigners. Ben had a number of sons and daughters, I can't name them all from memory, but he had Wiley, Jim, Ben, and a couple daughters. He was widowed by late middle age and apparently found raising children to be a hassle.

According to the story I was told, he raised horses, and decided to take a herd of them to Northern Georgia to trade for a Cherokee wife. He herded the horses up with his sons, and Jim had malaria (this was a third world country back then here in Georgia). Jim had been given quinine pills and got the great idea that he could cure his malaria all at once by taking all of the pills at once. That apparently didn't work so well, but it did make him dizzy and he fell off his horse. Supposedly, he lost his hearing from that. I don't know if that's how he lost his hearing, but he was deaf.

Ben wasn't able to strike a deal for a Cherokee wife, so he went back home to Hawkinsville (a town south of Macon). He instead married a 16 year old girl who already had a child out of wedlock and was in a jam. She had other children, like Uncle Ben, who was still alive when I moved here and told me most of the stories. Ben Sr. wasn't very much of a father figure to his second group of children (who by the way didn't look like him at all) because he was so old when they were born. Grandfather Wiley didn't like the second wife, but he was very good with the kids from the second marriage. He was very close to Uncle Ben.

One aspect to Great Grandfather Ben was he traded his children around a bit. He made Wiley quit school after 3rd grade to go work in a textile mill. He arranged marriages for his daughters for business deals. He would sell his children's belongings without hesitation. His daughters' arranged marriages didn't work out well at all which brings up an interesting story about Uncle Ben and the Spanish Flu Epidemic.

One daughter got Spanish Flu and couldn't make it to work at the mill. Her husband was a worthless drunk, and he beat her severely because of this. Down here at that time that kind of thing wouldn't get you in trouble with the law, so it became a matter of family pride. Uncle Jim was sent to "talk" to the guy. As he was leaving in a wagon, he was given a shotgun by his father "just in case". As he took the wagon over a bridge over the river in Hawkinsville, his drunken brother-in-law came out and started shooting at him with a pistol. Jim shot him in the arm with the shotgun. The guy came up to Jim, held the pistol at point blank to him and tried to kill him. Because he was so badly wounded in the arm, he couldn't pull the trigger. He bled to death shortly after and Jim was put in jail. Great grandfather Benjamin got him out with his connections - as they say down here, the guy just "needed killin'" It was not something the Durdens liked to talk about though.

Wiley's brother Jim also could make money very easily, he owned a bunch of slot machines. They illegalized them down here, but he pretended he didn't know. When the police told him he wasn't supposed to have them anymore, he pleaded ignorance on account of his deafness and they let him slide (but he had to get rid of the slot machines).

The aunts will alternately say that Wiley's family was rich and owned a big dairy farm, or was poor white trash. Actually, they were pretty poor, but they did have a bit of land which they farmed. Great grandfather Benjamin held a supervisory position of some sort at the local mill, but that wouldn't necessarily make you middle class. One story that each aunt claims was her is that Wiley took them to dinner at G-grandfather Benjamin's house, and they weren't to touch the food because of all the flies, and the poor people didn't have enough to eat anyway. Well, unfortunately their collective memories were a bit wrong if Uncle Ben told me the right story, and his makes the most sense.

Mom's story about that visit was she was 16, and Ben says it was her. Mom was really hot at 16, and Ben was about 12 so really noticed her. They served food to her and Grandfather Wiley, but they were too poor to buy screens for the house. The food was covered with flies and Mom refused to eat. Ben was horribly embarrassed by the whole thing, and when he was old enough to work he bought screens for the house. As for quantity of food, Ben said that food was one thing that they had lots of because they grew their own. Apparently Grandfather Wiley was really mad at Mom because of what she did. Uncle Ben said that Mom was being stuck up because her mother had a "high paying government job". I pointed out that Nana's high paying job was as a cleaning woman. Ben said to them at that time "that was high paying".

It's late, so I have to stop writing. Ben told me some other more entertaining stories, but they can't be posted here. Some may have to go to the grave with me, because the people we descend from didn't behave very well.

I can say that the reason Wiley lived here was because of his drinking. According to relatives here, Nana kicked him out of the house due to his drinking, he did not abandon her. They periodically would get back together when he'd quit drinking, but then he would relapse and she would send him packing. I can't say I don't blame her, she had daughters to raise, and she to her credit, she NEVER said a bad thing about Wiley. None of the relatives have anything bad to say about him either. He just drank too much, but he tried his best. It's sad, but one story that I am sworn to secrecy about shows that he was a better man than I ever realized or hope to be, you'll just have to take my word for it.

Bill

Wiley Durden's Christmas Record

Tue, 08 Jan 2008 03:50:36 +0000

Wiley Durden's accent -- on his Christmas record -- is a very upscale Southern accent, which is pretty amazing considering he was made to quit formal education after 3rd grade and worked in textile mills and as a common laborer until he went in the Navy. According to relatives here that knew him personally, he learned everything in the Navy. The story we were told that his first wife (he was a widower) was a schoolteacher who supposedly taught him everything was a myth. His first wife was Ida Mae Long, who was 16 when he married her (he was 18). Nobody knows anything about her, and the census records are silent. I suspect she died in childbirth. This place was a third world country before WWII. This must be the last record he made, or close to the end because he got pneumonia at the end of his life, and this sounds like it. He had a lot of things wrong in the very end, but the pneumonia was the final straw from what I was told down here.

Treesy's Tale

Thu, 04 Oct 2007 19:44:22 +0000

I once asked Grandad F about his relatives in Italy. He said that he had a cousin, Ernesto Fortuna, who was a hospital administrator and living in a town outside of Rome - that was in the 90's so the guy may still be around. The town had a short name that I THINK began with a P. I would recognize it. You know already that Gr Gramom Fortuna was in fact a great AUNT. Grandad's mother died during the influenza epidemic, and his fathe rmarried her younger sister, which was the custom. The sister raised grandad and had Helen et. al. Mom knows all of their names. I don't know how they ended up in Philadelphia, they obviously came to America through NYC.

Rita told me that Gmom F's heritage is partly Hungarian. Accoridng to Rita, her family was more genteel, from Florence, and supposedly connected somehow to the makers of I THINK Bertoli olive oil. They ran a grocery in DC, not sure how they ended up in DC.