JOANN SAEMANN

1913-1997
Illinois

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My mother was born on June 25th, 1913, at twenty minutes past one in the morning, at the Monroe Street Hospital in Chicago, Illinois. It was a time of peace. World War I had not yet begun. She was the fourth of six children. Her brothers and sisters were:

Already with three children, my grandmother still put together a sweet baby book for her daughter Joann.

GIRLHOOD IN OAK PARK, ILLINOIS

My mother's childhood was spent in the neighborhood of Forest & Chicago Avenues, in Oak Park, Illinois. Her parents bought a large stucco house on the corner, at 429 Forest Avenue, in 1906. It was always white stucco with brown trim. There was a large yard in the back, with a stucco wall all around. At one time, they kept a pony there. There was a tree in the back and her mother used to hang the wash out in the backyard. There was two doors in the back, one that served the main quarters and one leading down steps into the basement.

Across the street from 429 Forest Avenue, was the home and studio of Frank Lloyd Wright, the very famous, and infamous, American architect. By the time my mother was born, Frank Lloyd Wright had already gone to Germany with the wife of one of his Oak Park clients. His children were mostly grown, but his wife still lived there. My mother told me that she used to play in the famous play room on the second floor. She never said who she played there with. It wasn't as if the Wright children were her age and she was one of their playmates. Mom always told us that the neatest thing about the house was the tree growing in the middle of the house through the roof.

The Wright’s had a Chinese cook, and my mother enjoyed relating the story of an incident with the cook. Mom attended Home School, about a block away from her house. The playground was actually just across Chicago Avenue from the Frank Lloyd Wright home and studio. There was a fence of three metal bars surrounding the playground, and one day after school, Mom and her friends were “walking” on the fence. Across the street, they saw the Wright’s Chinese cook standing in the doorway and called out to him over the street,

Chinky, Chinky Chinaman
Sittin’ on a fence,
Trying to make a dollar
Out of fifteen cents.

He came running out to the street, brandishing his huge curved meat cleaver back and forth over his head, yelling at them in Chinese.

By the 1950s-1960s, the Frank Lloyd Wright house was derelict. It had been broken up in to apartments. The tree was still growing in the house, and it had been altered on the outside.

Mom attended Home School, which was about a block away from her home. She never spoke much about her school; never had any stories or special memories of grade school. Except for her oldest friend, Myra Brundage. The name of another friend was Adams.

My father recalls that he met his future wife when she was only ten years old. His family had moved to Oak Park where they lived north of Chicago Avenue, but not many blocks away. His sister, Amy, knew my mother’s older sister, Charlotte. One day my father was playing around in my mother’s neighborhood and remembers seeing my mother climbing around in the second-story rafters of a house being built. The carpenters were gone for the day and all of her gang of friends had “taken over” the place. Still up in the rafters, her mother called her for dinner, probably never knowing where her daughter was playing. He thought she was awfully cute.

The house mom grew up in was quite large. Since the time of the house being sold in 1949, the house has been divided up into apartments. More on that later. Even so, with six children, there weren't enough bedrooms for everyone to have one's own room. I often asked my mother about her bedroom, and she said she never really had one. She would share a room with one or the other of her sisters. Once they were gone, I suppose she had a room to herself.

Well, my grandmother and grandfather had rooms of their own. I'm not sure when they split up their bedrooms, but that was Mom's memory for probably as long as she had memory of it. She said the reason was that her mother didn't want any more children. By 1918, she had six. When pressed time and again, my mother finally admitted that her parents really didn't like each other that much. Perhaps that was the assessment from her mother's point of view, as interpreted by the daughter. So, when grandpa moved into his own room at the front of the house, it eliminated a bedroom that children could have had.

Mom's elder sister, Elizabeth, studied piano. Our mother studied violin. For some reason Mom remembered with vivid distaste, Elizabeth's constant (as she described it) piano practice, and she would mimic the sound. She hated it and felt that Elizabeth was pampered beyond belief toward her goal of being a concert pianist. I never knew of Aunt Elizabeth playing any piano, but then again, we didn't have a piano, nor did other of our relatives at whose homes we could have heard her play if she had been there at the same time, and been willing to do so. We did know that she had a piano in her New York City apartment, and the piano was in her home in Indiana the last few years of her life, but by then she was too sick and I never heard her play. I do have a photograph of her at the piano. Click here.

Go to JOANN AS TEEN AND YOUNG WOMAN [Not Ready Yet]

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PRIMARY REFERENCES

SECONDARY REFERENCES

WORK STILL TO DO

20 July 2006 – Submit to the http://www.genhomepage.com/really_new.html>What’s New in Genealogy Homepages, Website.

OUR SAEMANN ANCESTORS AND RELATIVES

Helen C. Sutton, 74, of 615 Mott St., died Tuesday at her residence of an apparent heart attack. She was born in Sheboygan, Wis. on Nov. 15, 1907 to William and Mary T. (Reidel) Saemann. On June 8, 1931 in Oak Park, Ill., she married John Richard “Dick” Sutton, who died in Oct. 1975. She had moved to Kendallville 51 years ago from Michigan City (where her husband was born) and was a member of the Christian Science Society, Kendallville Public Library Board and had been a substitute teacher in the local schools. Surviving are a daughter, Kathryn M. Meibers of Rome City; 2 sons, John R. Jr. of Blue Springs, Md., and Gary H. of Wichita Falls, Tex.; and 7 grandchildren. Died 7-20-1982.
Source: Obituaries

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Official Website of the
Burch, Nickel, Sheldon, Griffin,
Saemann and Brazelton Family
This is the Joann Saemann Page

Joann Saemann’s daughter
West Jordan, Utah

Copyright © 2007 Joann Saemann
Last Updated - 1 February 2009

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