Contagious Genealogy: A Pandemic

My paternal grandparents were married on the 9th of April in 1939. It was a Sunday in San Bernardino, California. Harry and Alta (Eggenberger) Foltz, 9 Apr 1939, San Bernardino, California. But it wasn't just any Sunday in April, it happened to be Easter Sunday. They were accompanied by two of their friends from the Pasadena area, where they were living at the time, Jesse E. Chamberlain and A. E. Myers Jr. Jesse was a laundry mangler residing nearby Alta, so I assume they met by chance within their community. Myers and his family ran the restaurant that Harry bartended at on the corner of Orange Grove and Fair Oaks avenues in Pasadena. It appeared to be a very small affair, indeed, as I know Harry's out-of-state mom was not able to be in attendance and I assume the same went for Alta's out-of-state mom, as well, their fathers both having passed away when they were younger. Harry and Alta (Eggenberger) Foltz with marriage witnesses Jesse Chamberlain and A. E. Myers, Jr., 9 A

It's ironic that the most colorful character in my family tree was born with the surname of White! Related to me only through marriage to a great granduncle, Gertrude was anything but plain, white bread. "Grandma Dean, 1912"; Ancestry (https://www.ancestry.com : accessed 5 Nov 2024), user-submitted photo by Shannon Katz-Dean on 11 Feb 2018. The images left behind of Gertrude clearly shine a light on this woman's wild and free spirit. She certainly didn't maintain societal norms for her day.  "Gertrude White";  Ancestry  (https://www.ancestry.com : accessed 5 Nov 2024), user-submitted photo by Shannon Katz-Dean on 29 Aug 2017. Born in 1893 in Upshur County, West Virginia to farming parents of modest means, the U.S. censuses show her education spanned at least from age 7 through 17 reaching the 8th grade, which is already far superior to the majority of the men in my family tree who typically dropped out of school around the age of 12 or so to begin earn